Racialised Performance and the Construction of Slovene Whiteness in the Late Habsburg Empire

Andreja Mesarič
Lecture, 30′

In English
Free admission

Literature on living displays of indigenous people, commonly known as ethnographic shows or “human zoos”, argues that these performances offered Western audiences a palpable experience of their supposed racial and civilizational superiority. By portraying indigenous people as “savages” and placing them at a lower stage of human development, these shows also served to justify Western imperial expansion. However, racialised popular entertainment forms such as ethnographic shows and circuses existed in the European periphery as well, including the Slovene-inhabited regions of the late Habsburg Empire. Since these regions had only tenuous links to European imperial expansion, how did the encounters with racialised performers in the late Habsburg period inform Slovene notions of “race”?

In her lecture, Andreja Mesarič will argue that this experience not only contributed to the dissemination of Western racial discourses regarding blackness, savagery, civilization, and modernity, but also tied the emerging Slovene national identity to Europeanness and whiteness.

At 16.30, the lecture will be followed by artist talks (in English) by George Chakravarthi, Lana Čmajčanin and Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, moderated by Tina Palaić.

This lecture will be live-streamed.

Organisation: City of Women as part of the European project BE PART co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union, in co-operation with Škuc Gallery; support: Creative Europe, Ministry of Public Administration, Municipality of Ljubljana.