Burial of the image

The expropriation and appropriation of Sarah Baartman by the colonial and capitalist gaze has lasted long enough. It is not a good idea to create new images of her, because each new image repeats and continues the past exploitation and humiliation of her body. Introduction: The quote above declares that through creation of new images and representations of Sarah Baartman, Ms Baartmans body has to live through the past exploitations and humiliations once again. Not only does the authors moral judgment of these images depend on the fragile relationship between the new and past. The author has to live with the subliminal frictions resonating within his own textual representation of Sarah Baartmans fate that is, he is denying himself any word in this matter. The validity of his moral judgment, however, relies on yet another differential binary relationship of words each liaised with the temporal term new or past respectively that of the image and the body in other words: the original versus the copy. In this essay I will try to unmask the doomed marriage of these terms, which the authors argument is based upon, and put forward the claim that Sarah Baartmans body is nothing but image. There never was a casting of Sarah Baartmans body being exhibited at the Muse de lHomme.1 It is her skeleton, her actual body, that is the sculpture, which has been molded in her image and it is its crumbling cast this body of text attempts to scratch off. In the end, nonetheless, this text has to unveil its own role in representing Sarah Baartmans fate, or rather in representing her representations with all the moral implications that may entail. Argument: In most cultures and most notably Western ones, an image is just an auxiliary addition for understanding and grasping the object it is referring to. Because of its seeming dependence on the object, because it has to reproach itself with being just an image2, the image generally is considered to be only second rate, valuable only in its connection with the object which is the true subject of value the slave to its master. This phenomenon is not only evident in the words own etymology but can also easily be exemplified in archetypes of Western culture: So God created man in his own image,/ in the image of God he created him; []3. Obviously this passage, while also noting mankinds noble descent, emphasizes the hierarchy between the creator and his creation

The so-called casting of Sarah Baartmans body was exhibited at the Muse de lHomme until 1976 (Maseko Zola (1998), The life and times of Sarah Baartman) 2 image comes from the Anglo-Norman and Old French and denotes artificial imitation and later on even illusion, likeness and semblance (Image (2010). Oxford English Dictionary (01 March, 2011). 3 The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (2007), para. 27.

 man is but an image of God. Another example, rooted in a different culture with different traditions, but similar outcome, is the Echo myth in Ovids Metamorphoses, in which the nymph Echo incurs Junos wrath and is punished by her voice being muted and condemned to abjectly repeat what others say. Image as a way of punishment? Image as a way to inflict pain? This bears strong resemblance to the quote. Curiously, as dreadful as Ms Baartmans past has been, the truly egregious deed, it seems, is its repetition the inscription of the past castigations upon eternity, which places itself within reach through (especially modern) media of representation. The image gets the air of a continuous, ritualistic resuscitation of her mutilated, deceased body. As the body has died, so the common view, its remnants, the skeleton and the images, dont but should do so, too. The final transfer of her skeleton to South Africa, its burial, the calls for a stop of imagery all of them are attempts to counter ritual by ritual. However, in contrast to the common view, if the endower of meaning, the body, has died no meaning, no image of the body could survive at least as long as one adheres to the above mentioned strict hierarchy of body to image. The image is dead already. How is it then that the discussions about Ms Baartman survived? Even in her lifetime, Ms Baartmans body rarely had the flesh and bones that so picturesquely constitute the body in every biological science book. Scientists sought to affirm their ideologies through it, the demure citizen desired confirmation of his civility through confrontation with the rawness of its sexual nature this lecherous need for assertion itself a perverted sexual covetousness the quixotic anti-slavery movement saw its exhibition as a call for further action, a symbol for the latent perpetuation of slavery, and the owner of it saw it as a capitalist venture. Ms Baartmans body was and is myth. The growing awareness of the Baartman case just extended its scope the more vehemently it was rejected the more laboriously were representations produced, produced even with the firm intent to deprive the very representation of its own resources the call to stop for images. The myth of Ms Baartman seems to have sprung from her body. But like every origin and archetype, it is a myth recalling its roots. A recall without the previous call is inconceivable to us but the call will only be recognized as such through re-call of the call. There is no realization of the call until, so to speak, transcended and referred back to by the meta-reflexive re-call, which in return can only re-call its call. The recall will always be originality in disguise in short: a recall will always be a re-call. Any myth starts with its core with the myth of core.4

The Echo myth in particular seems to facetiously play with the theme of mythical originality the echo contorts the original call, while also recalling at least part of the its content.
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Obviously Ms Baartman herself has never expedited herself as myth. Few of her words are preserved and the sources remain questionable as all of them filter her words through their very own lens. Basically nothing she did has been retained through her own force and will. Her myth was created by others but created it was nevertheless with regard to her body. As the myth, as the imagery develops throughout history and the complex of self-referentiality and referentiality becomes ever more intertwined, a critical point is reached, when the chronological recovery of the imagerys history itself becomes the focal point of interest from entities (seemingly) external to the myth itself5. While the search for origins of the myth by the author of the above quote and others certainly is understandable especially for a people who have suffered a similar fate , an image ban and a burial of the body will only symbolically put her body to rest. Symbolically, that is, through representation. The author of the quote will have to live with the contradiction that anything written about Ms Baartman, any call to stop perpetuating her fate through images, will have reverberations in the halls of history, will be re-called. In order for the myth to be put to rest it will simply have to sink into oblivion. But is this really what one could wish for? Consider the pseudo-scientists who finically dissected Ms Baartmans body just to reaffirm their prepossessed ideology of inferior races. Nobody would call for a stop to science if this kind of pseudo-scientific mentality would resurface today. Instead, it is almost universally opined that the scientific method should not be tossed but changed for the better. Change and not forget! What is this better? While still comprised of signs and representations, science has the advantage over other myths that it is or has become very well aware of the fact that it is contrived by images and signs (e.g. no math without numbers and calculus operators) this self-consciousness and the ability to adjust to modulations6 in the network of this imagery have made it such a model of success. This is precisely what the author of the above quote lacks: the awareness of creating representations of Ms Baartman himself, undermining the basis of his argument, while parroting the myth of her body with his call to stop reinstating the unoriginal the image. Ms Buikema on the other hand, in examination of the body versus image paradox, takes a fully different road. She, too, succumbs to the separation of the signifier, which she identifies as the body, and the signified, being qualities and attributes artificially and unduly ascribed to the body (implying that there is some originality of the body, which is corrupted through e.g. false mindsets of colonialists). For Ms Buikema, though, the problem is not that imagery of Ms Baartmans body exists, it is that images run the risk of evoking a corrupting sense of the body the problem is not

A very well-known example would be Schliemann, the father of modern archeology, setting out to excavate Troy. 6 What these modulations exactly are, I will leave open to debate as this is leading off-topic. This is not the right place to invent a theory of science that explains how reality, another myth and image as soon as one writes and thinks about it, as soon as one puts it into images, influences the associated network of imagery in order that the latter fit reality the better.

the presence of any image but its possible state of referral to other, corrupting images. By separating the body from its attributes assigned to it by images, Ms Buikemas hope of freshly 7 created images, which dont evoke (at least) corrupting attributes, seems to be yet another try to return to the body which hasnt received its due approbation and representation in its true state of being, exculpated from stereotypes, so far. And therefore it seems that her argument falls foul of my point that this return must fail as it always will be only symbolical, unreflective and thus evoke the unwanted corruptive imagery. In practice, however, we reach the same result. The statue she examines is highly evocative of Ms Baartmans past8, and thus is not new or fresh in Ms Buikemas choice of words. But Ms Buikema does get quite close to my idea of reflexive representation the statue avoids reinforcing the stereotypes not through naively forbidding its own existence but exactly through the evocation of the past stereotypes in a reflexive manner. This reflexive distance, this distance of the representation to itself and its evocation, is the decisive factor in preventing a simple repetition of stereotypical past images. Conclusion: My argument to reject the above quote and its implications is based on two fundamental pillars: The fact that there is no body, images could revert to as the author of the quote makes them out to do. The fact that Ms Baartman herself is image, symbol as there are no unmediated remains of her own9 words and wishes, yes, even body. Even if there were any as it seems to be the case with her body the skeleton that until recently stood at the Muse de lHomme it will be perceived only with her past in the back of the head, and only through signs and representations which is exhibited in perfect manner by the symbolic value assigned to the skeletons ritualistic burial. Consequently, the question remains: What is to do with this self-referential web of images? Let it sink into oblivion (if obliviscence can ever be a consciously orchestrated process at all)? Stop it (amounting to basically the same thing)? Self-referentiality and the perpetuation and extension thereof through reproduction, even when trying to achieve the exact opposite, is the most fundamental cultural phenomenon. It is impossible to solve this paradox through language or any other means of communication, which necessarily has to make use of representation. But a critical and reflexive approach towards it seems to me the weapon of choice not oblivion.

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Buikema, Rosemarie (2009), p. 81. As it is a patchwork of scrap metal, it suggests that Ms Baartman body has nothing natural to it. Everything on her body seems to be artificially added to it. The statue is chained, evoking her past as being basically a slave. 9 I myself am aware that by using the words own and unmediated I fall victim to my own argument suggesting that there is no such thing as the original or body.

This essay, of course, has to fail any attempt to solve the aforementioned paradox, but it is aware of its existence. And thus this essay hopes to prevent Ms Baartmans story to sink into obscurity and oblivion by contributing to a reflexive and critical examination of it. Myths are the easier to be corrupted by demagogues and diatribe when a critical and reflexive attitude towards them is lacking.

References: Buikema, Rosemarie (2009). The arena of imaginings. Sarah Bartmann and the ethics of representation. In Rosemarie Buikema & Iris van der Tuin (Eds), Doing gender in media, art and culture (pp. 70-84). London/New York: Routledge.
Image (2010). Oxford English Dictionary (third edition). Retrieved 01 March, 2011, from

http://www.oed.com.ezproxy.ub.unimaas.nl/Entry/91618

Maseko Zola (1998), The life and times of Sarah Baartman (documentary film). South Africa, distributed by Icarus Films, New York The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (2007), para. 27. Retrieved 03 March, 2011, from: http://esv.scripturetext.com/genesis/1.htm