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John M. Flaxman Library SAIC School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Facing Race Pleasure

Banner reading "Enduring Legacies of Fetishizing and Consuming the Black Body"

The black body has been commodified and fetishized since European imperialists first captured and put them on display, often without clothing, to attract tourists (Asare, 2021). These dehumanizing and profit driven practices facilitated European colonizers’ later invasions of the continent of Africa for its resources, including the free labor of Africans. Enslaved African and African American men were often displayed naked in town squares at slave auctions and sold for higher prices based on white slave owners’ racist assumptions about their potential for profit based on their observations of Black men’s bodies.1 When the importation of Africans was outlawed in the US, white slave owners and auctioneers began to focus on the size of enslaved Black men’s external reproductive organs as indicators of their potential for reproducing more free laborers. The legacy of white “curiosity” about the size of black men’s genitalia persists in the solicitation of the black body in its duty to fascinate, provide pleasure, and increase profits and prestige for white people.

1 See an example: This photomechanical print shows “An African man being inspected for sale into slavery while a white man talks with African slave traders.” - Library of Congress.

SUGGESTED REFLECTION QUESTIONS

  • In what ways do non black people consume the black body? 
  • What does it mean to fetishize the black male body?
  • Where have you seen representations of the fetishization of the Black male body in the art and design world?
  • How might the histories of objectifying and fetishizing the black body be relevant to “The Panhandler Project”? 
  • In what ways can art be both intentionally provocative and still reproduce racist legacies?  
  • How does the dehumanization of black bodies contribute to non black peoples’ modern consumption and profiteering of art and other cultural productions created by black people?
  • How can art creation be humanizing for marginalized subjects who are navigating histories of dehumanizing exploitation?
  • What does power sharing look like between artist and subject when social power differentials exist between them?
  • In what ways do people of color collude with racist behaviors, practices and attitudes? 
  • A prompt in one of Barbara’s syllabi invites students to make art that is “offensive and pisses people off”. How might a student consider creating art that engages this pedagogical approach while also being mindful not to reproduce well documented legacies of oppression and exploitation? 

ARTICLES & CHAPTERS

What is Fetishization and How Does it Contribute to Racism?
Janice Gassam Asare | Forbes | February 7, 2021

The Black Body as Fetish Object
Anthony Paul Farley | Oregon Law Review | vol. 76 (3) | p. 457-535 | Fall 1997

Sila ay Malaki: Anti-African Racism, the “Filipino Gaze,” and the Paradox of Black Masculinity in Collegiate Basketball in the Philippines
Satwinder Singh Rehal | Chapter 9 in Appealing Because He Is Appalling, Edited by Tamari Kitossa | University of Alberta Press | 2021

Humanizing Black Lives In Protest: Emotion, Embodiment, And Interracial Witnessing
Roberta Chevrette & Aaron Hess | Quarterly Journal of Speech | p. 1-25 | 2024

‘You Lot Are So Hot’: Race, Black Men and Commodity Fantasies
Chris Haywood | Chapter in Sex Clubs: Recreational Sex, Fantasies and Cultures of Desire | Springer International Publishing | p. 135-158 | January 2024

What Is Internalized Racial Oppression and Why Don’t We Study It? Acknowledging Racism’s Hidden Injuries
Karen D. Pyke | Sociological Perspectives vol. 53 (4) | pp 551–572 | 2010

Understanding Internalized Racial Oppression And Internalized Racial Superiority [Presentation]
Ramsey County Human Services Anti Racism Leadership Team | 2011

BOOKS

Audio & Videos

Please note: Many of these A/V resources are more generalized topics, but related to the above themes and could be used for broader context

Lorde Take the Wheel
Brendane Tynes, Alyssa A.L. James, and Chrystel Oloukoï | Zora’s Daughters Podcast | Season 1, Ep. 5 | 92 min. | September 2020
This podcast DOES include transcripts