Teratological Machine in the Female Body: The “Hottentot Venus” as Beauty-and-the-Beast from a Decolonial Feminist Perspective

Abstract

This chapter aims to show how some (female and racialized) bodies are constructed as monstrous. The concept of teratological machine allows us to understand the mechanism through which human recognition is denied to some bodies, characterizing them as a life with a negative value. The case of Sara Baartman, also known as “Hottentot Venus,” a South African Khoikhoi woman who was exhibited as a freak show attraction in 19th-century Europe, makes clear how Western culture is based on racial and gender hierarchies. For Europeans Sara's body combines the features of beauty and bestiality, embodying a beauty-and-the-beast component in her performance. Decolonial feminist perspective sheds light on a close connection between the appropriation of bodies and of territories under the Western white man supremacy. The practice of dehumanization and the dispossession of territory under a gender and racial system survives to the present day.