http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7883-1790
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Abstract
Particularly in the nineteenth century, zoological gardens, trade fairs and circuses included humans for entertainment and curiosity value, but also used them as a means of illustrating then current ideas of evolution. These kinds of displays continued well into the twentieth century, and beyond, with mounting concerns voiced about representation, identity and appropriation. From the 1990s, there were a number of staged interventions in zoos and museums to draw attention to the denigration inherent in this form, so highlighting the objectification, racism and othering in such practices, although also in curatorial practices in ethnographic museums. The most vehement controversy occurred in Europe, with its peak in 2014, around Brett Bailey and the Third World Bunfight’s production, Exhibit B, of colonial and contemporary structural violence. In considering the framing of an authoritative and critical voice in relation to humans on show, and in opening up questions of mimesis and subjectivity, I draw attention to the paradoxes of positioning in the interrogation of histories of race, and the difficulties of depicting racism without perpetuating its hostilities and violence.
Au dix-neuvième siècle en particulier, les jardins zoologiques, les fêtes foraines et les cirques montraient des humains pour leur valeur divertissante et de curiosité, mais ils les utilisaient aussi pour illustrer les idées de l’époque sur l’évolution. Ce type d’expositions s’est poursuivi pendant une bonne partie du vingtième siècle, et au-delà, des préoccupations croissantes se faisant entendre concernant la représentation, l’identité et l’appropriation. A partir des années 1990s, un certain nombre d’interventions mises en scène ont eu lieu dans des zoos et des musées pour attirer l’attention sur le caractère dénigrant inhérent à cette forme, y compris dans les pratiques curatoriales des musées ethnographiques. La controverse la plus véhémente sur la violence structurelle coloniale et contemporaine a eu lieu en Europe, culminant en 2014, autour de Brett Bailey et du spectacle Exhibit B de la compagnie Third Word Bunfight. En étudiant la formation d’une voix critique faisant autorité concernant l’exposition d’humains, et en initiant des questions relatives à la mimésis et la subjectivité, j’attire l’attention sur les paradoxes du positionnement lorsque l’on interroge les histoires de race, et la difficulté de dépeindre le racisme sans perpétuer ses hostilités et sa violence.
Mots-clefs:
Acknowledgements
This article is based on a paper entitled Humans on Show: The order of things and the challenge of display, presented at the Point Sud Conference: Political Subjectivity in Times of Transformation: Classification and Belonging in South Africa and Beyond, Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Studies (StIAS), Stellenbosch University, 30 September – 5 October 2016. I am indebted to editors and reviewers for their comments, and particularly to Katharina Schramm and Kristine Krause for their insight, advice and gentle persistence in shaping this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
ORCID
Lenore Manderson http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7883-1790
Notes
2 I draw on extensive notes from my observations of various exhibitions from 2013 to the present, including The Jew in a Box (Jewish Museum Berlin 2013); observations of ethnographic collections no longer displayed in South Africa and the US (not discussed); informal conversations and scholarly debates about these and other works including Brett Bailey’s Exhibits; the extensive archive of images reports and debates on the web, blogs, Facebook pages and YouTube video reports; and newspaper accounts of earlier examples of humans on show.
3 Ota Benga’s stay at the Bronx Zoo (the New York Zoological Gardens) followed his appearance at the St Louis World Fair in 1904, and a period in residence at the American Museum of Natural History. His zookeeper at the Bronx Zoo, Madison Grant, was strongly wedded to ideas of evolution with Europeans at the pinnacle, and Ota Benga’s housing was an instantiation of these views.
4 In reaction to this particular expo, Lebovics (Citation2008) describes that a number of poets, novelists and painters belonging to the Parisian Surrealists signed and distributed a protest tract, calling on a boycott of this representation of the colonial project and its ideological underpinnings.
6 This group played a powerful role subsequently in protests against Bailey’s Exhibits.
8 See also Coco Fusco’s website: http://www.thing.net/~cocofusco/performance.htm; and that of Guillermo Gómez-Peña: http://www.pochanostra.com/
10 Performance installations have provided another means to interrogate institutional and scientific racism and other ways of devaluing differences. I include in this category of work Jennifer Miller’s performances as a bearded lady in US circuses; Kath Duncan’s autobiographical journalism, broadcast and film on congenital limb loss, amputee identity and devotees; Raimund Hoghe’s exploitation of his severe scoliosis in dance. These works all reference freak shows and voyeurism while taking advantage of the shock value and power of the body/their bodies (Manderson Citation2011). Along similar lines, actor Tilda Swinton’s performance in an exhibition named The Maybe at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, when she slept in a glass box, and, arguably, the contemplative work of Marina Abramović, particularly The Artist Is Present (Museum of Modern Art, March 2010), both challenge our ideas of place, people and the context in which they are shown or show themselves. They are also important examples of agency: the displays of self are the choice of the artists involved.
11 Animation advertising the exhibition is still able to be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcsaibr3auw
12 For news clips, see Michelle Kosinski, Today.com, 3 April 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EXTWRcKvXw; Fred Schang, CNN, 5 April 2013 and his interview with James Kirchick, who described this aspect of the exhibition, and his participation in it, as “an ironic take on being a Jew in Germany” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibNT43eilRU; and Patrick Evans reporting for JewishNewsOne, 5 May 2013, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ot2YJzzOLl0.
13 https://www.popularresistance.org/deep-racism-the-forgotten-history-of-human-zoos/
https://www.google.co.za/#q=human%20zoo%20france%20youtube&rct=j
15 Brett Bailey exhibits in Europe, 3 May 2010. http://www.artlink.co.za/news_article.htm?contentID=24567
16 http://archive.kfda.be/projects/projects/2010/12th-night-never-i-will-not-be-held-black/plus; Interview with Boyzie Cekwana by Gilles Amalvi for the Rencontres chorégraphiques de Seine-Saint-Denis, March 2010
20 For a description of the project, http://www.thirdworldbunfight.co.za/productions/exhibit-a-b-and-c.html. There is extensive web coverage of Exhibits A and B, particularly on the controversy concerning the Barbican’s programming of Exhibit B. See among other sites, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/28/exhibition-b-barbican-protest-petition; https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/sep/24/slavery-exhibition-black-actors-cages-shut-down; https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/sep/05/exhibit-b-is-the-human-zoo-racist-the-performers-respond; https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/12/exhibit-b-human-zoo-boycott-exhibition-racial-abuse; https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2014/sep/24/barbican-criticise-protesters-who-forced-exhibit-b-cancellation; http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2014/09/barbican-art-show-displaying-black-people-exhibits-human-zoo-cancelled-after; http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/art/news/exhibit-b-human-zoo-show-cancelled-by-the-barbican-following-protest-9753519.html; https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/11/-sp-exhibit-b-human-zoo-edinburgh-festivals-most-controversial.