Black Venus: African Women in 19th Century France with Dr. Robin Mitchell

Girod: Hello everyone. Today’s special episode is an interview with Dr. Robin Mitchell. Robin Mitchell is an Assistant Professor of History at the California State University, Channel Islands. She received her master’s degree in late modern European history from the University of California, Santa Cruz and her doctorate in late modern European history from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation investigated the correlation between representations of black women in France and the aftermath of the Haitian revolution. In this interview we talk about her new book Venus Noire, Black Women and Colonial Fantasies in 19th century France. Venus Noire talks about three particular black women and their experiences in 19th century France. Ourika, Sarah Baartman, and Jeanne Duvall. Ourika was a young slave who became a pop culture icon. Sarah Baartman was a famous South African woman who toured across Europe allowing Europeans to examine an African body in a circus like atmosphere. Finally Jeanne Duvall was an actress and lover of Charles Baudelaire one of the most acclaimed French poets of all time. Each of these women left behind an important legacy which Dr Mitchell aims to uncover in her new work. Furthermore she argues that each woman represented different anxieties experienced by France as it sought to understand and at times control Africans. This became particularly important after the Haitian Revolution during which black slaves with the help of some tropical diseases defeated the white French forces and achieved their independence. Empire, prestige, French glory, and fear all come together in the treatment of these black women. One final thing I want to note this was the first digital interview I did. It is high quality in most parts though there are a couple small scratches in it. Aside from the odd guest contributor the French History podcast has been a one man show and I’ve had to write edit produce promote and host everything myself. So thanks for being patient with me as I work out the technical stuff. Without further ado. Please enjoy.

Girod: Thank you very much for being with me Professor Mitchell. I was very excited to speak to you. You’ve been very active on Twitter sharing much needed perspectives on things that I didn’t know too much about and I think this is one particular topic that perhaps not a lot of people who are even interested in French history might know about which is black women and France in the 19th century. Can you tell us how you got started studying this?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Actually I got started studying this because of my mother when I was a child. It was an interesting upbringing for me. Didn’t get a lot of black history in my elementary school and so my mother decided to start supplementing it. And so what she did was she started reading Harlem Renaissance writers to us and every time she read a Harlem Renaissance writer she said, “oh he went to France” or “she went to France.” And so from about the time I was five years old my assumption was if you were black you were supposed to go to France.

Girod: that’s really fascinating especially because, and I can’t believe I’m going to plug another episode that we did. But I interviewed Taylor Morrow who, he did an episode on black men serving in France in World War One and World War Two and how those experiences of black men living in a desegregated society when they came back to the United States, they wanted to change America. And so at least for that generation they had a special connection to France. So I wonder if that was part of it.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Well, a lot of them didn’t even come back. A lot of them wrote letters to friends and family and said, you know, send my toothbrush. If you look at Tyler Stovall book he he goes in to this notion that there were black folks that were there during the war and after it was over said there is absolutely no way I’m coming home. And so I always knew bits and pieces about blacks in France. I remember telling an elementary school teacher that my mom said there were black people in France and she said no there weren’t. I always believed that my work comes from trying to prove my mother right. And it’s nice to say that I think I have.

Girod: Well on that note let’s get to your book itself. So your book deals with black women in the 19th century France and you start off with a really fantastic story about how you met Sarah Baartman. That is powerful for many reasons. One of which is that I think all native French speakers struggled to do archival work in France. It’s intimidating. You don’t want to sound stupid or embarrass yourself. I know that I had that experience, but your story is also powerful because you talk about encountering in person what was once just an object of scholarly study. Can you tell us about this experience.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: It was actually, I think, probably the most profound experience I’ve ever had as a scholar. I think I became a scholar in that moment. And I think it’s because I told the truth about it when I got to the [archives]. I didn’t have an appointment. I hadn’t written ahead to say I was coming. I simply showed up and said you know there’s someone here I want to see and I don’t think I’ll ever forget the security guard looking at me like I was, I had lost my mind. And I remember standing there and I said you know you can’t move you can’t move and you can’t talk. And finally he just picked up the phone and called upstairs and Philippe hadn’t gone to lunch yet. He was in charge of that area and came downstairs and I said you know I would like to see her. And to this day I tell this story to my students. I tell the story to other people and they think why were you not arrested. And to this moment I still don’t know why wasn’t. I just felt like this was what I was supposed to do and that’s what I did. And so, what was interesting for me is when I arrived I didn’t think anything was left. I was hoping to talk to somebody who had seen the body cast. I had hoped to sort of walk around the space and so I think I was wholly unprepared not to find out. There were still some things there.

Girod: And can you just for the clarification of our listeners. So what is the object you are actually talking about?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: What I’m talking about is there’s a plaster body cast of Sarah Baartmann. That has been taken off display. So it was crated up and in a room in the basement. And so when I got there I said, you know, I’m hoping there’s some letters or I know that there were paintings on, I knew about objects, but I didn’t know that the body cast was still there. And so when I said is there anything I can see. Philippe said, “Well would you like to see the body cast.” And I just I wasn’t prepared for it. And so I remember I think I said yes. But in retrospect I wonder if I just shook my head. But he took me to the room and they brought this enormous crate out and I remember thinking other folks have said that they tried to see the body cast and they couldn’t. And so they brought this enormous crate out and they started unscrewing it. And I had such a physical reaction to the fact that I was about see it, and I looked around the room, I saw other plaster cast of heads, death masks, and I started getting really hot and I thought this is, this is not good. And when they first finally pulled off the door I just burst into tears. I was horrified at my own reaction. And Philippe, bless his heart said you know this is absolutely normal that you would respond this way. And he was so kind to me and I’ll never forget it and said Would you like a minute to sit with her and I said I would. And I sat and I cried, I cried, and cried and cried and then I put my hand in her hand and yes, it definitely came across as a very moving moment in your writing which I think also speaks to your ability to communicate in the written form as well. And I think it must have been so striking that there was actually, that French people at this time were so fascinated by the body of a black woman that they felt the need to take a cast of her. Now granted one might say that Sarah Baartman wasn’t exactly the typical body but even still it was very strange I’d imagine.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Well, to this day I still wonder, you know, Georges Cuvet a naturalist who had the cast made was so excited to see her body and was very discouraged that she wouldn’t let him. So, to this day I wonder if he embellished the cast. No he was, he is almost gleeful when he talks about you know finally she’s dead. I can I can look at her. And so I wondered to this day if he didn’t add a piece there or take a piece away there. And so while I’m, I’m grateful I got to see the cast and I’m grateful I got to see the closest facsimile of her I ever did. I wonder to this day if that’s actually what Sarah looked like.

Girod: Right. So, before we actually jump into the book itself. Historians traditionally have been told to be neutral although, this practice is changing. What do you think is the proper emotional connection one should after their subject matter.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Well one I don’t think any of us are neutral. I think we all bring ourselves to our work. We’re all biased. I think what happens with historical work is often that certain bodies are allowed to, for us to assume that they’re neutral and then others are not because I’m a black woman looking at black women. I think there might be a notion that I can’t be objective. I think the difference for me is that I was just open about it. That I knew that there was going to be chatter and that I could do the work of a historian but that to pretend that I was some neutral body was a lie. But I think it’s a lie for all of us.

Girod: Right. I think perhaps you do a service then by admitting your bias then because you even go to lengths to emphasize with and connect with Sarah Baartman the person. So, on that note your book revolves around three black women who were in France from the Ancien Régime and the Second Empire: Ourika, Sarah Baartman and Jeanne Duvall. Before we go into each separate one could you in your own words describe who these three women were and the France that each of them lived in.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: OK. Well with Ourika was brought to France around 1786 and you’re going to hear me say a lots of times around or we’re not quite sure when because of the bodies themselves these, women are often enslaved and so we don’t know that much about them. Ourika arrives around 1786, or at least the early 1780s. She dies around 1799. She was purchased as a type of house pet by the governor of Senegal and brought as a gift for his, for some of his relatives. Sarah Baartman also known as the Hottentot Venus arrives in, is born around 1770, she arrives in Europe around 1810. She’s shipped to France around 1814 and she’ll be dead by the end of 1815 beginning of 1816 and Jeanne Duvall, as far as we know was born in France around 1820, she dies around the 1870s. So each of them see a very different kind of France. Ourika grows up as a type of degraded aristocrat. And so she’s seeing a very particular kind of France with a lot of money, a lot of prestige, and a lot of attitudes about what will ultimately happen in the Haitian revolution. Sarah Baartman comes to Paris when Paris is an occupied city and so she comes in, I believe to a France that is deeply troubled not only by the loss of the Haitian revolution but have people on French soil that they don’t think belong there. And in the case of Duvall, it’s interesting because we think she was born in France. We think her father and her grandfather were white Frenchmen. And so it’s difficult to say what kind of France she sees because it’s the France of her home, it’s where she’s from. But it is a France coming to the end of its slave empire. And I think there’s a lot of anxiety about that.

Girod: So, let’s start by talking about the Hottentot Venus, Sarah Baartman. Can you explain that moniker and its paradoxical nature?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Sure. Hottentot is a pejorative. So, the idea of putting something like Hottentot, she was South African. we believe she was Khoikhoi. And so putting that with Venus is designed to be, amusing. If you look at play that Paris puts on about her. What you have are a bunch of white Frenchmen women talking about her beauty, talking about that she’s truly a Venus. And none of them have seen her and that’s sort of the point in the play. At one point they see a picture of her and they all sort of recoil in horror. So it’s, it’s supposed to be sort of a joke. She’s not beautiful, she’s not Venus, yet the attitude is in Africa. She would have been considered that. And so putting those things together is supposed to be satiric for the viewers because they look at her and are supposed to be horrified by her. I think what’s interesting about the Hottentot Venus and I think what’s interesting about the representations of her is how much they change. And for me what that says is when they put a representation of her out there, they don’t always get the response that they’re hoping for. And so if you look at multiple representations of Sarah Baartman she changes in all of them. She gets taller, she gets fatter, she gets darker, she looks more masculine, and part of it is because I don’t think the French can actually control how people are actually seeing her.

Girod: What’s really fascinating, I think is how she was represented to people not just in print but also in person because she was displayed in a cage and people would go up and poke her. Is that not the case?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: That’s what happened in England. I know in France she was on rue St. Honoré for a while. And there seems to be some discrepancy in how people got to view her. I think if you had money you could see her more privately. At one point there’s, I believe it’s a fake story about her being brought into a restaurant. Although I know that she was brought to the Palais Royale and people could look at her there. But you had to be of a certain standing to have access to her. I think for more working class folks, for more commoners, you could poke at her, you could see her in a more circus like setting. And so I think it really depended upon who you were as a white French person in terms of the access to her. And so I think that’s why the representations in journals and in newspapers were so important because they just kept reinventing her.

Girod: I think the story that you told of how Baartman was examined upon her death was probably one of the most harrowing things that I’ve read. Again this is a compliment to your exquisite writing. Can you tell us about what happened to her after her death and the quote unquote autopsy that occurred.

Dr Robin Mitchell: You know it’s interesting because I wonder sometimes about her treatment. And believe me I’m no fan of Georges Cuvier In her death at least she wouldn’t have had to witness her own humiliation, which is what she got in life. Cuvier says things like, I tried to offer her candy if she would let me look under her apron and she said no.

Gary Girod: And so specifically when you say her apron…

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Yes she had a covering over genitalia. And so he kept saying, you know, he kept saying I want to see under it. And she wouldn’t let me. And what was wonderful to me is the moment where I realized she said no to him and he accepted it. And so he was almost gleeful I think when she died to be able to look at her body sort of without having her in front of him saying no to him. The autopsy is difficult. You know, when I was in Paris the last time I went to the Jardins des Plantes where Cuvier’s theater is and they use it now I think for presentations and things and they said do you want to go in. And I said no I don’t. I couldn’t do it because it seemed like such a place of such profound sadness and degradation for her. I wanted to, as he put it, understand black female sexuality. And he thought by looking at Baartman he could do that. And so as a result of him looking at her vulva and looking at her breasts and looking at different parts of her body he thought he could in many

ways explain hyper black female sexuality. And that’s what he did.

Girod: So, do you see a difference in the treatment of Baartman after death than in life?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: That’s hard to say because again, she was, I think she was deeply humiliated when she was live. There are lots of examples of her saying that she was cold or that she wasn’t getting food that she needed. I think she was physically ill near the end of her life. And I think she was self medicating with alcohol and so there was there some evidence to suggest that she might have been an alcoholic as well near the end of her life. And so I think what we see is a type of defilement by Cuvier and then for a long period of time she, her body cast was removed from public view and then it was brought back. And I remember hearing about the fact that people were using her body cast in ways that were deeply, deeply inappropriate and then they removed it from view again and I hope it stays removed forever.

Girod: Sarah Baartman obviously had these experiences in a certain place at a certain time. Can you tell us what it was about France that made them so obsessed with her, as a person and just as a black woman? Because you connect this with France’s colonial empire and its decline.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Yes, and I think that’s why, I think one of the reasons that she’s fascinating is because in many ways most white French men and women couldn’t go to the colonies. And so the colonies come home for them in the form of Sarah Baartman. And so this is about her body but it’s also about embodiment. And I think one of the other reasons and this is the argument one of the arguments I make in the book, is that France has suffered a trauma in losing the Haitian revolution and they don’t know what to do with that trauma. That they have made arguments about their own military superiority, that they’ve made arguments about their own racial superiority. And both of those things come into question when they lose the Haitian revolution. And so what you get are people like Napoleon saying, well we didn’t really want it anyway, you know, Haiti. It’s not that big a deal, when in fact it was a huge deal. Also Sepinwall says the loss of Haiti was cataclysmic. And I agree with that. And so, I think she represents a distraction in many ways, and a way to deal with that loss in a way that might have appeared to be more safe in the beginning. And what I mean by that is, black masculinity becomes very important when France loses the Haitian revolution. And so one of the reasons that black women, I think, are important is because it’s a way of talking about race and it’s a way of talking about gender using a body that appears to be safer. And by safer I mean a black female body. The problem with that is that France has been doing things with black female bodies in their colonies. And so once those bodies hit French soil I think they don’t quite know how to deal with them. I think that’s the big difference. But I think she is something unique and interesting to them. But I also think it’s a way of them working out some of their drama.

Gary Girod: Definitely. So, now let’s move on to our second character, Ourika. Your chapter on Ourika was particularly fascinating to me because I had no idea that French aristocrats essentially bought young black slaves to use as pets and that even Marie Antoinette practiced this. Can you flesh this out and give us a little more background for our listeners?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Well, what I love about France is its contradictions. If you look at Sue Peabody’s work she talks about the legislation that goes into the 18th century to keep blacks off French soil. At the same time, and this is what I find interesting, is that you’ve got white French men and women who just simply don’t care that the law is telling them they can’t bring these bodies. And so the idea is, if blacks are a sign of wealth and prestige for a lot of white French men and women particularly the nobility until they have them around, they dress them up, they put jewels on them, and it’s an it’s a sign of their own prosperity. The problem for me, and the thing that was sort of fascinating to me is that having black bodies around, because they not only had children around, they had pygmies. And so having these black bodies around could lead to rumors. And so, I’m working on a case now where one of the women that I’m studying, a French noble woman, has a child who they claim to be black as the devil. And the way they joke about it is they say she must have really liked chocolate. And so on the one hand you have blacks being presented as forms of wealth, at the same time. I was interested in what happens when you have, perhaps a black male child with a white French woman. What could that potentially lead to. And so the idea of having these people around is, it makes you look good. The problem is when people are seeing these bodies around and they start making comments about, wow, there are a lot of black people in France. And so there start there starts to be commentary about while there are a lot of black people in France when in fact they’re not. They just seem to be concentrated in these sort of noble enclaves.

Girod: Yes, I believe in your book you said that, I think it was at the beginning of the 19th century, there were an estimated three thousand black people in France.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Pierre Boule counts them. And I think he’s got a better figure. But it’s incredibly low for me. When you think about the rhetoric attached to those bodies being there. They seem to be talking about them as if they’re everywhere and they’re not.

Gary Girod: Absolutely. So, in the case of Ourika, she seems to not have a particularly different life from many black slaves in France. However, after her death she profoundly impacted French culture? Can you explain why?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Ourika has a really fascinating case. Because if you look at the letters from her master and mistress she seems to have had a relatively noble upbringing. She got to run around, she lived in a noble home. They taught her languages. She grows up to be a little aristocrat. To the point where, I think people are worried about what to do with her because they can’t marry her off to someone who would be appropriate for her, because once she’s black they can’t marry her to someone who’s enslaved, but she’s had this somehow noble upbringing at least for a while and so they can’t marry her off to sort of a white nobleman. I think the reason that work, the actual work is so important is, she dies before questions about what to do with her come up. And that’s what makes what I talk about in the book, I call it or it can mania, several decades after she dies so interesting. Because it allows white Frenchmen and women to wrestle with those issues about, is race inherent, is her inferiority inherent. Then how do we deal with the fact that she speaks all these languages and she’s actually noble in many kinds of ways. And so I think the way they deal with it is literally by eating her, by being her, and by wearing her. And by that, I mean wearing, a type of blackness that has much less ramifications than they’re actually dealing with a black body.

Girod: Right. And specifically when we talk about Ourika mania, she became something of the Coca-Cola of France where you describe how practically any item that you could purchase was associated with her. Can you go into that a little bit?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Yeah. After the duchess Dodura writes the novel about her. There’s, everyone starts duplicating it. There are a number of poems that come out. There are a number of terrible and they are terrible plays that come out about Ourika. And there are Ourika bonnets, and there are colors, and we think that there was an Ourika biscuit. We also think there was an Ourika ham. And so you could literally eat her, you could wear her. You could become her. And it makes people really, really nervous. Particularly, when white French women. Have to wear blackface to portray her on the stage. And so, commentaries in the newspaper talk about how these white French women are ruining their natural beauty by wearing blackface. So, there is this moment in time where I think it allows not only white Frenchmen to sort of talk about her, and they do. They talk about her in the plays, they talk about her in the poems in an overtly sexual manner, but it allows white French women to sort of take on Ourika in a way that doesn’t cost them things ultimately. They can just simply take off and Ourika on it when they’re done.

Girod: Right, to go back to the novel. So, there was a famous work on Ourika which, could you essentially go into the ending and explain that to us?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Well the novel itself is a young, black woman who has entered a nunnery, who’s telling her story to a medical doctor about her life as growing up in this French noble home and falling in love with her adopted brother. And she goes through the Haitian revolution. At the end she dies because she has to die. It’s it’s interesting to me with my women, my colleagues say is she dead yet? And I always say no not yet, but she’ll be dead soon because they didn’t die right. If they’re not sequestered they have to die because their presence is the problem. You can talk about them, you can use their bodies, but at the end of the day it only works if they die. If they die, if they don’t die you have a problem. And I think when we talk about Jeanne Duvall, I can sort of return to this theme because the problem with Jeanne Duvall is she lives her common law husband. 

Gary Girod: So, I think that would be a perfect time to transition then and talk about Jeanne Duvall. Why did the artistic community demonize her the way that they did?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Because she lives, and she lives longer than Baudelaire. I think with Ourika, I think with Baartman, by the time white Frenchmen and women get their hands on them, they can manipulate them any way they want to because they’re dead. Jeanne Duvall appears to have been born in France and she is raised in France. She speaks French and she doesn’t conveniently die in enough time for Baudelaire or his contemporaries to sort of mold her. She keeps pushing back like she does when she’s alive. And so, I think that’s the important distinction that by the time Ourika mania has happened, two decades have gone by there’s nothing left of Ourika to sort of push back on. Baartman has died and Couvier has taken her over. Duvall sort of looks at you and says, I’m standing right here. And I think that matters.

Girod: Yeah. That was particularly fascinating especially because you mention how Duvall met with so many great artists and even a famous photographer at the time. And yet there are no surviving photos of her.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: No, and it was sort of devastating for me because I found an image that I thought, this could actually be Duvall. And so I wrote the museum, Nadar’s Museum and said you know is this, is this her? And they wrote back and said no, this isn’t her. And so it’s sort of particularly devastating to me that I don’t have an image of her that exists outside of Baudelaire’s drawings and all of these sort of impositions of who she was by his contemporaries. And then by, honestly, by his biographers I I have a little bit more sympathy for Baudelair’s contemporaries than I do for his biographers because the biographers are not neutral in trying to manage her.

Girod: I think what is interesting when looking at the case of Baudelaire and Duvall is that Baudelaire, he writes all of these, what are, what you could consider to be somewhere between a love letter but then also crazed drunken 2am text where he talks about how she’s overpowering, that she doesn’t love him enough, and it seems like her biographers or I should say the biographers of Baudelaire when I mentioned her, essentially cast her as the trope of the domineering black wowan.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Yes, and I think that trope of the domineering black woman changes over time. But I want to return it for a minute back to this notion that she somehow overpowered Baudelaire and that seems to be sort of a long running argument and many of the writings about Baudelaire and I don’t think she overpowered him at all. She had no money. She was by all accounts not a very good actress. She only did it part time. She was most likely also a sex worker or at least had multiple lovers. I don’t think he was overpowered by her at all. I think if anything she was overpowered by him. He had resources, she didn’t. You know, it was Baudelaire who told Jeanne, please take this letter in which I say I’m going to commit suicide, you know, to my solicitor because Baudelaire couldn’t do it himself. It was it was Jeanne Duvall that allowed Baudelaire to write the most ridiculous letters to his mother saying, you know she did this and she did that and she’s being so mean to me. And she’s taking lovers and all of those things for the time are absolutely appropriate for a part time actress. She would have a lover who could actually financially help her. She would also have a lover that she loved. And then she would have other lovers. So it’s not inappropriate for part time actress during the bohemian human period to have lovers. The problem here is race. It is her race that makes her different from all the other sort of French part time actresses doing the exact same thing. And in this case then, that becomes, that she is dominated and overpowered Baudelaire who is, you know, absolutely powerless in her grip. And it’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous. I think they both were really complex people who gave as well as they got. I don’t, what I love about Jeanne Duvall is that she’s not perfect. At one point I think she poisoned Baudelaire’s cat. He also hit her in the head with a, you know, with an anvil. So, they were not perfect human beings. And as someone who’s not quite a fan of Baudelaire, one of the things I had to come to grips with is ,they were together for a very long time. They loved each, they apparently loved each other or were dependent upon one another. And that has to be respected.

Girod: I think it was Chris Rock who said, if you’ve never thought about killing someone you’ve never been in love. Maybe they really were in love then.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Yes, I remember that. Well, one of Baudelaire’s last letters to his mother when he was very very ill. It’s terribly poignant, where he he’s begging his mother to please make sure that she’s taken care of. And he says, you know, I’ve loved her for a really long time. And I remember at one point he says, she sold her things to make sure I had money. And so, you know, every time he stole from her he also wanted to make sure at the end of her life that she was somehow taking care of. And you know it’s a poignant letter.

Girod: And I think if we take his ridiculous letters to his mother, talking about Jeanne did this or Jeanne did that, we have to also say at the end of his life when it seemed clear he was going to die, his thoughts were with Jeanne.

Girod: So, you connect each of these three black women to a different point in France’s history and to different anxieties. On the one hand there is Baartman and the anxiety over losing their French colonies, particularly San Dominique, Haiti. Then there is the case of Ourika and the idea that white women would act black. What do you think is the anxiety that Duvall echoed and why was it necessary for white French people to demonize her?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: I think what Duvall does is she is alive at the end, the definitive end of slavery for France. Slavery ends in 1848. She she’s alive for it. There are black bodies on French soil. And I think the anxiety of that is very present. I will say, the loss of Haiti goes through every one of these stories. Either, and I think it touches these women either directly or indirectly. But they’re still talking about that loss. And so what was interesting to me about these French anxieties is throughout all of the changes in France, from Republic to monarchy to empire back to monarchy, back to Republic, one of the things that stays consistent is slavery. And so, that to me is one of the commonalities here. It is in each case, they seem to be, the French seem to be trying to deal with it in different kinds of ways. But that slavery enslavement the colonies is consistent through out these three stories. And I think that that’s important.

Gary Girod: So your work is not just about blackness. It’s also about gender and sexuality. Why do you think it is that so often cultures try to demean something by eroticizing it? Why is it considered to be wrong or lesser when it is inherently sexual?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: That’s a good question. I think in the case of these women, white Frenchmen have been misbehaving in their colonies for a long time. And increasingly what we’re finding out is so we’re white French women. Is that they’re having sex with black folks and they shouldn’t have been doing that. It was tacitly okay for white Frenchmen to have these black lovers. But, the problem is is they don’t leave that in the colonies when they go home. And so after the Haitian revolution there are a number of refugees that come back to France proper. With a belief according to Darryl Meadows, that they be compensated for their losses in France. And in many ways they’re not. And so, their anxiety about their loss of property, their loss of prestige, starts turning in to starts moving in a racial direction and very specific kinds of ways. And so the eroticizing of black women I think was already happening in the black colonies. I think it’s different however trying to figure out what to do with that once you get on French soil. Because French soil is not supposed to have slaves on it. And so there is a way of sort of dealing with the eroticizing of the black female body and exoticizing it that is supposed to bring some kind of distance for white Frenchmen. I think that’s why someone like Cuvier becomes so important with Baartman is that he allows them to say, this is a scientific case. This isn’t, you know, I’m not attracted to this body. I’m looking at it scientifically. The problem with that is when you read these autopsy he is not able to sustain that level of distance. He talks about her neck being pretty, and that her voice was pretty, and you look at it and you go, what is he doing? And so, they’re trying to achieve this distance of saying, this is sort of this erotic thing over here. But I don’t think they’re ultimately able to do that. And I think it makes these women stories so interesting because it’s not just about these women, it’s about the white people looking at these women, and really trying to negotiate what it means to look at these bodies, and in some cases to be attracted to those bodies when that’s inappropriate.

Girod: so your book deals with the erotization and exotization of black women between the late 18th to 19th century. Do you see any parallels between your work and that of contemporary France?

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Absolutely. I end the book with Josephine Baker Josephine Baker was going to be my object of study when I went to graduate school. I thought I was interested in the fact that when I was in France and I told people I was studying black women they all said Oh Josephine. And so I thought, What is this thing that sort of allows the focus on blackness on Josephine Baker? And so I ended with Josephine because it is a continuing issue. There was a club a couple of years ago in France called I think called La Femme Noir. I think it’s closed now. But, the fact that you know they name a restaurant after the black woman in some kind of way is quite fascinating. And so, I don’t think this is something that France has come to grips with. I don’t think they’d come to grips with that in the 19th century so I certainly don’t think they’ve come to grips with it in the 20th or the 21st century. And so I think this, I hope that this resonates in terms of how race and gender function in a nation that doesn’t want to look at race.

Girod: Yeah, it is really fascinating. And I think, going back to what you said about how there are so many different France’s. I can’t help but think of how you have blatantly, if not, what’s the word… if not outright discriminatory. Obviously having something like La femme Noir is at the very least not tactful or sensitive but on the other hand did you see that Miss France this year was from Guadeloupe and is of African descent. So, yeah, it seems like it’s such a strange thing how now the most beautiful woman in France is considered to be a black woman but then on the other hand you have this other side of France that can’t believe that there are so many black people within France, particularly because of the refugee situation.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: Well you know I remember a few years ago they had another. Miss France of African descent and there was quite a lot of drama about it. And so you know picking these women I think matter. Absolutely it matters. But I also think it it sometimes, we need to be careful that it’s not saying, see we’re OK because we have this black woman as a beauty queen. I mean look at the United States, I think five or six of the top beauty queens in America are now black women. Does that mean we don’t have a problem with race. No it doesn’t. Does it mean some things have shifted. Absolutely. You know what’s fascinating to me about France is these contradictions. I love these contradictions. I love France. You know my intent has always been to try to see a France that a lot of people didn’t want to acknowledge existed. It’s a complicated story. I wanted it to be complicated. I wanted to bring in some nuances. But, France is a complicated nation. It will continue to be complicated. They on the one hand talk about race not existing. And then they have problems with immigration. I wish I had a great, you know, pithy phrase to say this is what Francis but I can’t do that. What I wanted to do was show France that many people including some historians didn’t acknowledge existed. And I think acknowledging that there were black people on French soil, that people were trying to figure out a way to make sense of that. Once we figured that out I hope we can get at least some, I think once we acknowledged that blacks were on 19th century French soil then we can acknowledge they have always been there and that they were there in the 20th century and that they remain in the 21st century.

Gary Girod: Well you know I think what you said that ‘France is a complex nation and will always be so.’ I think that’s as pithy a statement as we’re going to get. So thank you very much for this interview. It has been enlightening.

Dr. Robin Mitchell: My pleasure. Thank you for asking.

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