Samuel Roux; Post 2 (Venus Hottentot)

In our discussion of the poem and movie about The Venus Hottentot, one major thought kept going through my head. This was my thoughts of the overabundance of similar reactions. I think we focused far too much on the treatment of Sarah Bartmaan and the cruelty of it all, and not enough on when it was taking place. This was the turn of the 18th Century. Europe was on a quest to discover. What they saw in the Khoi-Khoi was something they had never seen before. This concept is completely unknown to us, we're a part of a completely different world where everything is at our fingertips. We've learned beyond these primitive ways, but at the time they were startled. These explorors saw a different breed of human, of course they were interested in examining them! This one Khoi-Khoi women offered Europeans a great deal of knowledge, and to not realize this is a great shortcoming. Putting yourself in the era of your study is truly the best way to understand all points of the study.