Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires

Blanchard, Pascal; Bancel, Nicolas; Boëtsch, Gilles; Deroo, Eric; Lemaire, Sandrine; Forsdick, Charles

ISBN 10: 1846311748 / ISBN 13: 9781846311741

Published by Liverpool University Press, 2008

About this Item

In a soft cover with white titles to spine and black titles and a colour illustration to front. 452 pp. with 80 illustrations in colour and black and white. The book is in very good condition. There is very minor shelf-wear to the extremities of the cover and very slight bruising of the corners of the book. The binding is tight and the pages clean and unmarked. Gift Aid no. 10443. This item is being sold under the Retail Gift Aid scheme to support Amnesty International UK Section Charitable Trust. Gift Aid enables us to increase the value of donations by 25%. Amnesty International UK Section is acting as an agent selling this item on behalf of one of our Gift Aid Donors.

Seller Inventory # 915102

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Human Zoos: Science and Spectacle in the Age of Colonial Empires
• Publisher: Liverpool University Press
• Publication Date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1846311748
• ISBN 13: 9781846311741
• Binding: Soft cover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket

About this title

Synopsis

‘Human zoos’, forgotten symbols of the colonial era, have been totally repressed in our collective memory. In these ‘anthropo-zoological’ exhibitions, ‘exotic’ individuals were placed alongside wild beasts and presented behind bars or in enclosures. Human zoos were a key factor, however, in the progressive shift in the West from scientific to popular racism. Beginning with the early nineteenth-century European exhibition of the Hottentot Venus, this thoroughly documented volume underlines the ways in which they affected the lives of tens of millions of visitors, from London to New York, from Warsaw to Milan, from Moscow to Tokyo… Through Barnum’s freak shows, Hagenbeck’s ‘ethnic shows’ (touring major European cities from their German base), French-style villages nègres, as well as the great universal and colonial exhibitions, the West invented the ‘savage’, exhibited the ‘peoples of the world’, whilst in many cases preparing for or contributing to their colonization… This first mass contact between ‘us’ and ‘them’, between the West and elsewhere, created an invisible border. Measured by scientists, exploited in shows, used in official exhibitions, these men, women and children became extras in an imaginary and in a history that were not their own. Based on the best-selling French volume Zoos Humains but with a number of newly commissioned chapters, Human Zoos puts into perspective the ‘spectacularization’ of the Other, a process that is at the origin of contemporary stereotypes and of the construction of our own identities. A unique book, on a crucial phenomenon, which takes us to the heart of Western fantasies, and allows us to understand the genesis of identity in Japan, Europe and North America.

About the Author

Charles Forsdick is Drapers Professor of French at the University of Cambridge.