Where to go from Here: Venus in Two Acts

Saidiya Hartman, 2008

After reading many upper-class English women, one might be left questioning whether they are the only marginalized ones history advocates to be read. Though these women’s stories were typically recorded more extensively than lower class women, does this leave no hope for historians looking for another point of view? Saidiya Hartman’s 2008 historical essay, Venus in Two Acts addresses some of these gaps by exploring the problem of the archive. Hartman writes through the cracks of the narratives of white, higher class people to find diversity in the archive, though it is not traceable without extensive research into the fine lines and margins of pages. Referenced by Jennifer Morgan in her detailed talk about the archive and the black slave woman, Hartman starts to uncover Venus in the archive, but her journey reveals more about what was hidden and lost than what was found. The archive, described by a Google search as a collection that “records important events in history.” Although this is true, Hartman takes a nuanced view into what or who is included in this “collection.” She describes it as violent, impossible, and as a display of violated bodies. She uses the records of others to build the narrative of these bodies, specifically African girls sold into the Atlantic slave trade, known only by each other. Hartman goes as far as to ask, “What else is there to know? Hers is the same fate as every other Black Venus: no one remembered her name or recorded the things she said, or observed that she refused to say anything at all” (2). The story of Venus represents countless women whose names, stories, and even existences go unheard of in history because of how little they mattered on a ship, on a piece of paper, and in a dungeon whose only exit led to the Captain’s quarters (Morgan).

However, Hartman does not focus completely on the tragedy that is the loss of these lives. She goes on to ask, “How can narrative embody life in words and at the same time respect what we cannot know?” (3). Although the faults of the archive must be acknowledged, she does not commit Venus strictly to a death sentence. Instead, she describes her life and times might have been like while she herself was living it. Even so, is it unjust to continue to construct narratives for those who have little concrete history to back them up? The comparison of the archive to a tomb or mortuary begins to answer some of the questions previously asked about how and why certain groups are seemingly untraceable in the strings of history. 

She addresses these complex answers by asking another question: Where do we go next after discovering the impossibility of constructing a non-functional record for the untraceable Venuses of the archive? It is important to continue to focus on life as well as death in history, as this practice prevents the opportunity to boil a life down to how they died or were killed due to certain qualities. Though death is important to factor into the equation of life, reducing Venus to her deathbed does little more than the archive does. Including her life makes her real and relatable as a fellow person who was born, lived, felt, and died on the same Earth people do today. Overall, Venus represents the untraceable, and in doing so highlights the women who were different from the Trapnels and Carys of the time, and causes readers to question what happened to these women, where they came from, and how they lived, apart from simply acknowledging their deaths. 

Source: Hartman, Saidiya. "Venus in Two Acts." Small Axe, vol. 12, no. 2, 2008, pp. 1-14. Project MUSE - Venus in Two Acts (jhu.edu) 

Image Source: MoMA Venus in Two Acts Exhibit venus-in-two-acts-cassandra.pdf (moma.org)