Venus Noire - Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in Nineteenth-Century France (Paperback)

Even though there were relatively few people of colour in post-revolutionary France, images of and discussions about black women in particular appeared repeatedly in a variety of French cultural sectors and social milieus. In Venus Noire, Robin Mitchell shows how these literary and visual depictions of black women helped to shape the country's post-revolutionary national identity, particularly in response to the trauma of the French defeat in the Haitian Revolution. Venus Noire explores the ramifications of this defeat by examining visual and literary representations of three black women who achieved fame in the years that followed. Sarah Baartmann, popularly known as the Hottentot Venus, represented distorted memories of Haiti in the French imagination, and Mitchell shows how her display, treatment, and representation embodied residual anger harboured by the French. Ourika, a young Senegalese girl brought to live in France by the Marechal Prince de Beauvau, inspired plays, poems, and clothing and jewellery fads, and Mitchell examines how the French appropriated black female identity through these representations while at the same time perpetuating stereotypes of the hypersexual black woman. Finally, Mitchell shows how demonizations of Jeanne Duval, long-time lover of the poet Charles Baudelaire, expressed France's need to rid itself of black bodies even as images and discourses about these bodies proliferated. The stories of these women, carefully contextualized by Mitchell and put into dialogue with one another, reveal a blind spot about race in French national identity that persists in the postcolonial present.

General

Imprint:	University of Georgia Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	Race in the Atlantic World, 1700-1900
Release date:	May 2020
Authors:	Robin Mitchell
Series editors:	Richard S Newman • Patrick Rael • Manisha Sinha
Dimensions:	229 x 152 x 18mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Paperback
Pages:	208
ISBN-13:	978-0-8203-5431-6
Categories:	Books > Humanities > History > World history > 1750 to 1900 Books > Humanities > History > European history > General Books > Humanities > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Ethnic studies > Black studies Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Gender studies > Women's studies > General Books > History > European history > General Books > History > History of specific subjects > Social & cultural history Books > History > World history > 1750 to 1900
LSN:	0-8203-5431-7
Barcode:	9780820354316

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!