Angelo Soliman: desecrated bodies and the spectre of Enlightenment racism

Abstract

The case of Angelo Soliman − a black man raised in the royal courts of eighteenth-century Vienna who appeared during his lifetime to have attained significant social status and acceptance into bourgeois society, only to have his body stuffed and exhibited after death in a natural history museum − is discussed in the context of Enlightenment race theories at the core of a then-new ‘scientific racism’. This article explores his representation in its wider discursive and historical context, and critically reflects on predominant narratives and typologies associated with him. The piece then reflects on contemporary attempts to retell his story – via museum exhibitions, literature and film – some of which started to critically reflect on age-old European stereotypes of blackness used in earlier representations of Soliman. The piece promotes a discussion of Soliman’s life from a more critical, historically reflexive, de-colonialising and anti-racist position that questions white normativity and the scientific racism of the European Enlightenment and colonialism, the foundations of modern racism.