Translator: Denise RQ Reviewer: Robert Deliman
Imagine with me that our roles were reversed,
that you had to stand in front of an audience,
much as I am now,
but that you had to do so while scantily clad.
Now, those of you who might be in a better shape than I am
might not feel so daunted by that idea.
But imagine how differently you might feel if, standing in front of an audience,
an audience that didn't care about your name,
that it wasn't interested in knowing about your identity
or who you were, where you were from,
what if you had to stand in front of that audience,
perhaps elevated, perhaps in a cage,
where your body was being observed
for being a freak, for being strange, for being abnormal.
Imagine if your body was paraded around in a foreign land
where people gazed upon you intently, actively, unabashedly.
Does that change your idea
of what it would mean to stand in front of an audience?
Does it get us to think about that a little differently
if I told you that this is actually something
that is very real, that has happened before?
Would it actually change your idea
of what it means to stand in front of someone
if you were also told
that, while standing scantily clad in front of an audience
that didn't know who you were, had no interest in knowing who you were,
that objectified your body,
also objectified certain parts of you: your ass, your breasts, your genitals?
Well, as fate would have it,
this isn't just imagining, this is, in fact, a true story.
This is a Black South African woman
by the name of Saartjie Baartman, also known as Sarah,
who in 1810, left her South African home as a servant to a white man.
Sarah, as she was called,
was paraded throughout Europe in the 19th century for five years
because of her body.
Look at her.
Of particular interest, during her "exhibitions" -
which is what they were called;
the first one being at London's famous Piccadilly Circus -
were her breasts, her ample buttocks, and her genitals.
Sadly, while she was on display and being exhibited,
she became ill.
Five years later, after being on tour, even though Abolitionists protested
because they wanted to get her off of an exhibition,
they wanted her to no longer be a show,
but it wasn't quite clear
whether or not she was owned, whether or not she volunteered,
or willingly participated in being a show.
Imagine, at the age of 26
dying from an unspecified illness and in poverty - abject poverty, in fact.
This is in fact what happened to Sarah,
but even as she was toured around as an anatomical anomaly,
what's fascinating about Sarah's story
is that she continued to be exhibited even in death.
After she died in 1815, at the age of 26,
her body was autopsied.
After the autopsy, her skeleton, her brain,
and her genitals were preserved.
Eventually, they made it to Paris's Museum of Man
where they were put on display until 1974.
After many years, nearly 30, of red tape - we'll call it red tape -
her remains were eventually repatriated to her South African home, in 2002.
So, this may seem like an odd way to begin to think about
what it means to actually be embodied and perhaps to be disembodied.
Is there really a mind-body problem?
It actually raises a very interesting question.
When we think about Sarah Baartman's story,
one of the things that becomes fascinating
is that it points to a kind of 18th-century imaginations
of Black women's bodies.
Those imaginations have lasted and continued well into the present.
In Sarah's body, we get to see how Black women's bodies become signified,
they become actual objects for us to observe, on the one hand,
to explore, but also to consume.
Sarah's story is significant,
and I hope that you remember her name from the time that we leave here,
but what's also fascinating about Sarah's story
is how it speaks to this larger constructions
of Black female identity and their lasting into the present.
So, Sarah's body was looked at
for being exotic, for being strange, for being freakish,
for being the antithesis of white womanhood.
All of these labels continue into the present;
before we get to the present though,
I think there's another place for us to stop.
This image, which is considered historically
a much more positive representation of Black women's bodies,
is called "Portrait of a Negress."
It was unveiled in 1810 and painted by Marie Benoit.
What's fascinating about this picture, and with this portrait as it was,
is that when you look at her body,
one of the things is she's looking almost directly at you.
That portrays a kind of strength,
a kind of energy that the reader of this picture, of this text,
actually is allowed to see and to engage.
The beautiful ornate draping of the cloth around her body
actually signals a type of sophistication,
as does - I don't know if you can see it as well -
she's wearing subtle jewelry.
All of these things have led us
to read this picture historically as being a positive one,
but I'd like to think that there's a different way of reading it,
no less beautifully, but different.
Remember, this portrait was unveiled in the same context
that Sarah Bartman's body was being toured throughout Europe,
so there are other things going on when one sees this Black woman's body.
She's unnamed, we don't know her name, she is just a Negress.
What is also fascinating
is that her headdress presumes or at least alludes to the fact
that she may be African.
Lastly, the exposure of her breast indicates her role as a servant,
but it also indicates that, sadly,
her purpose was, in many ways, to be consumed.
Literally: her physical body was there for consumption, legally.
This may seem like an interesting kind of comparison to Sarah Baartman,
but it actually moves us
into a very provocative kind of modern context.
Yes, it is exactly what you think it is.
This is a portrait of Michelle Obama, the First Lady of the United States,
also called the FLOTUS -
which is what I like to call her even though I don't know her -
I like to call her the FLOTUS.
This portrait, which was actually unveiled in October of 2012,
right before the 2012 presidential elections,
was released by a Spanish magazine, "Fuera de Serie."
There are tons of questions to be asked about this image,
and time prevents me from being able to engage them fully,
but I will just point these things out:
that there's a throwback
to this wonderful kind of beehive hairstyle is very interesting,
that she's draped in the American flag is fascinating,
but it is the exposure of her breast
that again, causes us pause in terms of thinking about
how Black women's bodies become represented.
Why on earth would anyone think of it as being appropriate
to present the First Lady of the United States partially nude?
But not just partially nude as an enslaved woman -
because that's what the original portrait ensued.
It's a fascinating question;
it's one that I'm still puzzling over to this day.
One of the things that becomes interesting though
is Michelle Obama's body, her literal body -
even though it's not her real body, it's an imagined body of hers -
becomes used, it becomes commodified, it becomes a way to sell a magazine.
How striking is it then
that the first Black First Lady of the United States -
a position that had been exclusively held by white women -
becomes associated, not just in body but also in position,
to that of someone who was enslaved?
One of the things that is striking to me, and you may be wondering, is what on earth
does Sarah Baartman, does the "Portrait of a Negress,"
does a very inappropriate appropriation of Michelle Obama's face onto an image,
what on earth does that have to do with science fiction?
Well, in my work, I'm always trying to - for lack of a better word -
uncover, uncover the ways
that we can begin to think creatively and constructively
about what Black women's bodies signal in our popular imagination.
But how can we deconstruct them?
And it's science fiction that gives us an interesting way to think about it.
Science fiction has its own problems in terms of representations of race.
That aside, this brings us to Octavia Butler.
Octavia Butler is, to me, quite frankly, a kind of unsung hero.
She has an unfortunate kind of obscurity, in some ways like Sarah Baartman,
in that many people don't know her name.
How many of you had heard of Octavia Butler before?
In a room of 100 people, there are maybe ten hands.
So, one of the things
that's fascinating about Octavia Butler as a writer and a thinker
is she's constantly, in every single effort of hers,
pushing us to think differently
about how we see Black women's bodies as being represented,
how we see them as being constructed, how we see them being manipulated,
and how we see them being commodified, objectified.
One of the characters in Octavia Butler's books,
and she's written over 20, she's written over 20 novels,
she tragically died in 2006 at the age of 58,
but in her lifetime, she received a MacArthur Fellowship,
she was the recipient
of the Nebula and Hugo awards for best science fiction,
so she has all of these accolades
and yet, so few of us, like Sarah Baartman, know her name.
in her work, she's constantly pushing us
to think differently about Black women's bodies.
So you can see from the cover,
you can see there are some interesting things going on
with gender, with race, with embodiment -
Wildseed has like three heads of a woman -
I mean, that's very fascinating to think about,
but in her work, she's also contesting.
She's contesting the ways
that the stories that permeated in 18th and 19th centuries
about what Black women's bodies came to signify,
she exposed them.
In her novel "Dawn," for example, which is one of my personal favorites,
she has a character Lilith,
and Lilith - the name has its own signification -
is a Black woman who has survived Earth's humanicide,
is captured by extraterrestrials, put in a deep sleep for 250 years,
and when she wakes up,
she is personally charged with awakening other human beings
so that they can return to Earth.
Now, in the process of her being awakened,
she also has a responsibility of mating with extraterrestrials
to continue the race of people.
That puts her in a precarious position, to say the least,
with the other human beings that she wakens up.
Nonetheless, what I love about what she's doing with that character,
and what she does with many of her characters,
is that she gets us to think anew
about what it means to actually be embodied, and in some cases, disembodied;
what does it mean to actually take a modern popular figure
like the First Lady of the United States,
to take her head and re-appropriate it onto someone that actually wasn't hers?
Is there something else that can be seen through that?
Octavia Butler, and through her lens,
will get us to actually say, "Yes, there is."
That speaks to this long history
of the use of Black women's bodies in very particular ways,
but what's also fascinating about that is that there are ways to move beyond it.
And that's what Octavia Butler encourages us to do.
I'm passionate about her character,
I think her work is the shit, y'all; really, I do!
For lack of better phrasing, I really do.
And what I want people to know is I want folks to understand
that it is important to continue to disembody, literally,
and to disrupt the traditional expectations
of what it means to actually be embodied as a Black woman,
standing in this space before you as a Black female body,
and being observed;
it takes on a very fascinating tone
when you think about Sarah Baartman and its appropriation of Michelle Obama.
But when we look at what it means
to be embodied and disembodied through the lens of Octavia Butler's work,
that gives me hope.
It gives me hope in an era
where social media and popular culture would allow Black women's bodies,
whether it's Beyonce's, whether it's Rihanna's,
whether it's Tina Turner, Janet Jackson, that whole nipple slip thing -
"Nipplegate," as they called it -
all of these moments get us to think what would it actually mean
to not think of those as somehow being representatives
of bodies that are exotic, or abnormal, or somehow inhuman.
What would it actually be to think about those bodies as powerful,
to think about those bodies
as having the ability and the uncanny knack
for releasing people from their traditional expectations
of what it means to be a Black woman?
I like to think that Octavia Butler gives us the opportunity to do that.
I like to think that this is a conversation
that through science-fiction, despite its limitations -
and believe it or not, through social media -
that we can actually begin to change.
So, some of you may very well be wondering
why on earth the title of the talk, "#dangerousbodies #blackwomen #scifi"?
If I were going with a traditional title,
it would be something to the effect of dangerous bodies,
dangerous bodies, black womanhood,
disrupting popular culture, and interventions of science fiction.
That would be the formal way of thinking about it,
but there's something else going on here.
So, before we go any further, what I would like for you to do
- I know that they told us to power down our devices,
but I actually want you to power them up
because I need you to participate with me for a moment.
Really, literally, take them out, turn them on.
So, the great thing about social media -
and even though I still have lots of questions
about whether social media becomes the best outlet
for getting us to think anew
about representations of Black women's bodies -
there is this thing called a hashtag.
For those of you who know what hashtags are,
I hope everybody in here knows what hashtags are,
but I love hashtags.
I get really excited about hashtags, and here's why.
Hashtags give us the ability,
for those who are curious, and study, and do work in popular culture,
to actually study what's trending,
so we can see the different themes and tropes that emerge,
and we can use these hashtags to group them.
So, that's fascinating, but the other great thing about hashtags
is it gives us an opportunity to publish things
that we might not necessarily think of putting together -
#dangerousbodies, #black women, #scifi would be an example.
It also gives us the opportunity
to allow things to go on and to continue indefinitely.
So no one has control over who does what with a hashtag,
no one can actually retire what happens with the hashtag.
So, it's with this in mind that I actually want you to participate.
I want you, if you own -
how many of you are on Facebook? Oh, perfect! -
so I want you to post a Facebook right now.
I want you to tell everybody, "I'm in this talk" -
but I want you to actually utilize these hashtags,
and I want you to begin conversations with the people
who are in your communities to think differently and to compel them.
I want you to tell them who Sarah Baartman is.
I want you to tell them about this crazy-ass image
of the First Lady of the United States
being appropriated onto the body of an enslaved woman,
I want you to tell them about all of these different things
and push them in these conversations;
like really, I love that you all are tweeting.
Oh, yes, how many of you are on Twitter?
I'm on Twitter, you can follow me at Dr. Ron or Dr. R&B, whatever it is,
it's at doctor - d-o-c-t-o-r - R&B.
But I want us to continue to have these conversations.
Really, I want you to post right now.
People posting, what are people saying;
and I want to know what people say - you can't tell me now, but in the break-
what folks are actually saying; are they curious?
I want you to leave this moment curious,
I want you to remember the names of these women
whose bodies have been inappropriately used,
but I also want you to think about using science fiction,
and in particular, the work of Octavia Butler
to think about what it means to be embodied,
what it means to be hyper visible when it comes to Black women's bodies,
but what it also means to be sometimes invisible.
I want you to continue the conversation,
I don't want this conversation to stop right now,
I want this conversation to go on indefinitely,
I want to hear back from you, I want this to be an exchange,
and you know, this is the first kind of go-at-it for me,
but I want us to use social media to be able to do that.
I thank you greatly for your time this afternoon,
and please, like I'm not kidding,
I'm going to be looking to see who's tweeting,
I'm going to find you, I can see pictures of you -
I have kind of a photographic memory -
so I'm going to come, and say, "Who did you talk to?",
and I'm going to find out what they said.
Thank you for your time
and #dangerousbodies, #blackwomen, #scifi.
Thank you.
(Applause)