Humans on show: performance, race and representation.

Particularly in the nineteenth century, zoological gardens, trade fairs and circuses included humans for entertainment and curiosity value, but also used them as a means of illustrating then current ideas of evolution. These kinds of displays continued well into the twentieth century, and beyond, with mounting concerns voiced about representation, identity and appropriation. From the 1990s, there were a number of staged interventions in zoos and museums to draw attention to the denigration inherent in this form, so highlighting the objectification, racism and othering in such practices, although also in curatorial practices in ethnographic museums. The most vehement controversy occurred in Europe, with its peak in 2014, around Brett Bailey and the Third World Bunfight's production, Exhibit B, of colonial and contemporary structural violence. In considering the framing of an authoritative and critical voice in relation to humans on show, and in opening up questions of mimesis and subjectivity, I draw attention to the paradoxes of positioning in the interrogation of histories of race, and the difficulties of depicting racism without perpetuating its hostilities and violence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]