Abstract
This article employs art-historical and cultural-studies analytic practices to argue that visual representation of the black female body, specifically the body of the ‘Hottentot Venus’, throws into question the conceptual nature of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Venus and Kara Walker’s Camptown Ladies. Furthermore, the article contends that the efforts of both playwright and artist to treat Sara Baartman/the ‘Hottentot Venus’ as an abstract concept – the endlessly revivable image of the black woman reduced to her sexual parts and parodied within popular culture – deterritorialises the historical Sara Baartman and imposes US concerns, rather than those of southern Africa, upon her narrative and its afterlife.
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