Sámi instrumentalisation of body violence: a site of colonial practices of othering (GER)

In 1875, a Sámi family and their herd of reindeer were exhibited as a ‘Lapland family’ and ‘People from the Far North’ at the first Hagenbeck ‘Peoples’ Exhibition’ in Hamburg. Until the 1950s, at least 30 Sámi groups travelled through Europe as part of these exhibitions. The staging of supposedly primitive and exotic living conditions of certain marginalised ethnic groups as ‘authentic and natural’ as possible confirmed and expanded existing clichés and stereotypes based on a racist sense of superiority. In addition, Scandinavian and German scientists developed ‘racial theories’ at the beginning of the 20th century and categorised and measured living Sámi and Sámi human remains. This meant that the Sámi were subjected to two types of mental and physical violence: On the one hand, by having their bodies reduced and instrumentalised to a certain European image in order to profit from it. Secondly, their bodies were appropriated in racial biology experiments in the ‘name of science’ and labelled with power asymmetric narratives. Both are practices of othering (Spivak 1985; Said 1978; Fabian 1983) aimed at the degradation and marginalisation of race and ethnicity, in which bodies were socially and medically constructed as different and inferior.

In my lecture, I will approach these sensitive topics by analysing and positioning Sámi and Finnish artists: In their picture series ‘Jump in Diorama’ (2011-2013), Annika Dahlsten and Markku Laakso trace the authenticity, artificiality and voyeuristic mechanisms of ‘human spectacles’ based on Laakso’s family history at the original locations in Hagenbeck’s zoo, among other places. In her large wall drawing ‘Nordic Race Science’ (2016), the artist Minna Henriksson emphasises the relationships between central racial scientists in the Nordic countries and Germany between 1850 and 1945 and their connections to associated institutions. Based on these artistic works, I use the example of the Sámi to explore the role of bodies and their relations in a racist and colonial system in which bodies were appropriated, controlled, instrumentalised and used in the service of knowledge production.