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 h...