Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Silberstein, Elodie

Titel

Grace Jones: The Return of the "Feral" Woman

Ist Teil von

• Animality and Humanity in French Late Modern Representations of Black Femininity, 2023, p.85-105

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2023

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This chapter surveys the creative work of French artist Jean Paul Goude (1940-) to reflect on post-colonial representations of black femininity and on the staging of non-human animal performers. Under Goude's artistic guidance, Jamaican American performer Grace Jones (1948-) rose to fame in the 1980s. In Goude's iconic photograph Grace in Cage (1978), Jones is naked and trapped in a tiny enclosure. She exudes a feral sexuality. Raw meat on the floor draws attention to her carnivorous nature. Goude's theatrical world evokes big cat acts in menageries. Feeding shows and orchestrated taming acts reached a peak of popularity in the 19th century. The chapter assesses why the re-enactment of this imagery of conquest and its architecture of control resonated with French late modern national and sexual cartographies. It interrogates how during the Jet Age, Goude's animalization of Jones and other muses have perpetuated long-lasting colonialist and speciesist tropes such as the fascination for wildness and the yearning for virgin geographical and sexual territories. The subject is timely. On September 29, 2020, France's minister of ecological transition, Barbara Pompili, announced a gradual ban on using wild non-human animals in traveling circuses and marine parks.