Freak Show

practices. This understanding opens up new ways of recognizing the assumed able body and privileged logics in rhetorical theories, practices, and models of meaning-making. Definitions Central to understanding ableist systems is understanding the ways that ableist discourses affect bodiesparticularly disabled bodiesin an effort to maintain power. In order to interrogate the interaction between ableism and rhetoric, the larger definition of rhetoric from which I work primarily draws on Jay Dolmage's definition of rhetoric

The Hottentot Venus was an icon of primitive sexuality and ugliness, but also the victim of commodifi cation and sexual exploitation in the freak shows of the nineteenth century. Similarly, she was the object of medical observation at a time when blackness and otherness were connected with human inferiority. Chase-Riboud wants to contest these notions in her novel The Venus Hottentot (2003) and to retell the story of Sarah Baartman, following the Neo-Victorian trend of rewriting the past and giving voice to the marginalised. She also highlights the presence of these colonial traces of the past in our postcolonial present and claims agency and beauty for black women.

African American Review, special issue on Blackness and Disability [pending final approval of post-peer-review revision].
William Henry Johnson, an African American "pinhead" performer in American freak shows, was the most popular African American performer in the nation from the 1870s through to his death in 1926, and he has become a fixture of disabilities and critical race theory studies of American freak show culture.

This paper is an in-depth exploration of the cultural phenomenon of the freakshow; it examines the history of Western freak shows from approximately 1850 to 1950, and posits that underneath the (largely superficial) conventions of the freak show exists a performance modality of freak, examples of which can be seen to exist in contemporary culture.