Gutta and the "Dahomean Amazons" in Prague: On the Intersection of Race and Disability in the late 19th Century Ethnographical Exhibitions.
Abstract
Tracing the visit of a group of so-called "Amazons of Dahomey" in Prague in 1892, the paper interrogates the history of representations of race and body within the colonial context of 19th Century Central Europe. As the members from different non-European nations appeared within the freakshow culture, performing on stage alongside other "human marvels", such as the "conjoined twins" or "lilliputians", this paper urges for critical appreciation of the interplay between race, gender and bodily difference that sustained the colonial ideology of the exotic "other" as well as the notion of normative body of Euro-American individual.
Focusing on one particular case - the death, burial and the after-life of Gutta, the "Dahomey Amazon warrior" in 1892 Prague - the paper analyses different imaginations of race, gender and bodily difference in popular culture of the time, as well as the agency and self-fashioning of the performers who often became "professional savages", cunningly responding to the expectations of their audience.