From Reverse Ethnography to Cultural Performance: Reenacting Colonial Shows in Contemporary France

Abstract

Cuban-American performance artist Coco Fusco uses the phrase “reverse ethnography” in her essay “The Other History of Intercultural Performance” to describe what she did in 1993 when she exhibited herself and her co-performer Guillermo Gomez-Peña in the United States and in Europe as caged newly discovered Amerindians. Using the codes of colonial shows, she pretended to be the colonial exhibit, while the true exhibits were the viewers and their (post)colonial concerns. This intention seems to be central to South African Brett Bailey's Exhibit B: the museological exhibition of performers of African and Afro-Caribbean descent embodying the different stages of the (post)colonial enslavement of Africans by Europeans, from slavery to asylum seeking. Despite Bailey's best intentions, the show met with disapproval in London (where it was eventually cancelled) and encountered an even greater opposition in Paris in November 2014. Whereas the media tended to analyse the opposition in binary terms (Black protesters opposing a White artist for daring to show African suffering), a closer analysis of the petitions and interviews points to the problem of African and Afro-Caribbean invisibility in French culture and cultural institutions. Indeed, the recent fascination with “Afropeanism” fails to move from the narrow spheres of academia and small theatres to national stages. Once a performer in Bailey's installation (Exhibit B hires local performers from each city it visits), Guadeloupean choreographer Chantal Loïal offers an alternative to the South African's vision when she impersonates Sara (“Saartjie”) Baartman (also known as the Hottentot Venus) in her dance show On t’appelle Vénus. Loïal exposes and questions the spectators’ laughter while mixing in South African songs, Guadeloupean chants, and African dance moves. The famous colonial exhibit thus becomes a powerful illustration of African and Afro-Caribbean culture. Despite being recently awarded the prestigious Légion d’Honneur (one of the highest official distinctions in France), Loïal was not appointed head of the Centre Chorégraphique National de Nantes for which she was shortlisted: her failure seems to underline the above-mentioned lack of visibility she campaigns against. This essay shows how Bailey's installation and Loïal's danced performance expose, sometimes unintentionally, the possibilities and failures of the cultural representation of African and Afro-Caribbean history and culture in contemporary France.