Human Exhibitions
Kaup valmöguleikar
From the 1870s to the second decade of the twentieth century, more than fifty exhibitions of so-called exotic people took place in Denmark. Here large numbers of people of Asian and African origin were exhibited for the entertainment and ’education’ of a mass audience. Several of these exhibitions took place in Copenhagen Zoo, where different ’villages’, constructed in the middle of the zoo, hosted men, women and children, who sometimes stayed for months, performing their ’daily lives’ for thousands of curious Danes.
This book draws on unique archival material newly discovered in Copenhagen, including photographs, documentary evidence and newspaper articles, to offer new insights and perspectives on the exhibitions both in Copenhagen and in other European cities. Employing post-colonial and feminist approaches to the material, the author sheds fresh light on the staging of exhibitions, the daily life of the exhibitees, the wider connections between shows across Europe and the thinking of the time on matters of race, science, gender and sexuality.
A window onto contemporary racial understandings, Human Exhibitions presents interviews with the descendants of displayed people, connecting the attitudes and science of the past with both our (continued) modern fascination with ’the exotic’, and contemporary language and popular culture. As such, it will be of interest to scholars of sociology, anthropology and history working in the areas of gender and sexuality, race, whiteness and post-colonialism.
Nánar um bókina
- Taylor & Francis
- 9781317120391
- 9781472422453
- ePub
- 1
- Rikke Andreassen
- English
- 2016-03-09
- 100
- 2
- 2
Kaflar
- Cover Page
- Half Title page
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- List of Photographs
- Acknowledgements
- Series Editor's Preface
- 1 Humans on Display The Era of Human Exhibitions1
- Theories and Terms
- A Secret Archive
- Behold the Strange Foreigners
- The Hagenbeck Era
- Exhibitions in Denmark
- Audiences
- Living Advertisements
- Varied Exhibitions
- Danes and the Savages
- The Savages Must be Genuinely Savage
- The People behind the Exhibitions
- 2 Race Science and Racial Hierarchies1
- European Race Science and Danish Race Research
- Human Exhibitions as a Window to the Past
- Darwin and Survival of the Race
- Natural People and Noble Savages
- Barbaric Savages
- Museum of the Extinct Races
- Just as Wild as in the Books
- Denmark as a Civilised Metropolis
- ‘The Africans' vs ‘the Danes'
- People of Culture
- The Yellow Peril
- The Many Exceptions
- The Danger of Interracial Relationships
- Race and Class
- Concluding Remarks
- 3 Agency and the People Behind the Exhibitions1
- To India in Search of People
- Accounts from the Exhibited Inuits
- The Story of an Exhibited Boy From St Croix
- Being Exhibited for the Amusement of Others
- The Disruptive Behaviour of the Exhibited People
- Contracts
- In the City and Among its Citizens
- Subjects and Objects in the Logic of the Exhibitions
- 4 Gender, Sexuality and Romantic Relationships1
- The Exotic and the Sexual – Two Sides of the Same Coin
- Exhibition of the Sexual – Saartjie Baartman
- Women are Important for the Exhibitions
- Sexuality and Nature
- Women as (Black) Bodies
- Harem Exhibition
- Focus on the Women's Appearance
- Asian Women
- Descriptions of the Exhibited Men
- Half-Naked Wrestlers
- The Men Were Too Wild
- Exhibition of the ‘Exotic' Men
- Danish Women with Exotic Delirium
- Fear of Interracial Relationships
- Interracial Relationships and Class Affiliation
- Women's Emotional Cosmopolitanism
- Attempt to Control Interracial Relationships
- Control and Punishment
- Interracial Romances Could not be Stopped
- Attractive Asian Men – A Departure from the Existing Research
- Alternative Discourses in Public Morality and Everyday Life in Copenhagen
- 5 The Forgotten History The End of Human Exhibitions
- Copenhagen Zoo Stops its Human Exhibitions
- The Last Major Human Exhibitions
- Exhibitions and Entertainment Later in the 1900s
- The Human Exhibitions' Tracks
- Race Representation Today
- Biological Racism, Cultural Racism and Nationalism
- Bibliography
- Index