Ourika mania’
Interrogating race, class, space, and place in early nineteenth-century France
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12915645 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robin Mitchell (DePaul University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2015 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 85-95 |
| Publication date | 2015-09-22 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | African and Black Diaspora An International Journal (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1752-8631 • E-ISSN: 1752-864X |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17528631.2015.1085665 |
| OpenAlex | W2463394159 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 10 |
The Duchess de Duras heard about a little black girl who had, in 1788, been purchased as a house pet by the Governor of Senegal and given to his uncle, Monsieur de Beauvau. In 1820, the Duchess began writing a novel about the child (creating the first black female protagonist in European literature). Fifty anonymous copies of ‘Ourika’ were privately published in 1823, but the copies did not remain in the shadows for long. This essay examines how and why this black girl became such a potent representation, so popular that she inspired a brief but important period of hyper-visibility in Paris: ‘Ourika Mania.’ What interrogations of categories and spaces in early nineteenth-century Paris open up through our investigation of both the real and fictional ‘Ourikas?’ The dilemmas sparked by representations of Ourika reiterated that no matter how ‘proper’ the body, blackness precluded inclusion into definitions of Frenchness
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Girl · Literature · Mania · Period (music · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Representation (politics · Sociology · Decadence, Literature, and Society · Gender Studies · Historical Studies and Socio-cultural Analysis · History · Law · Literature and Culture Studies · Philosophy · Psychology
The black Atlantic
The French Encounter with Africans
Black Venus
More than meets the eye … representations of black women in mid-19th-century french photography
France after Revolution. Urban Life, Gender, and the New Social Order
Revolutionary Sons, White Fathers, and Creole Difference
The Diligent
Women and slavery
"The "Diligent
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |