Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive by Danielle Bainbridge
Many thanks to NYU Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy
of Danielle Bainbridge’s critical and thoughtful examination of the
intersection of slavery, disability, and performance in Currencies of Cruelty: Slavery, Freak Shows, and the Performance Archive. This was a
challenging yet rewarding read for the insight and voice it provides to several
performers during the period of enslavement and the antebellum period that
followed, with most of the focus centered on an amazing woman, Mille-Christine
McKoy, whose conjoined body was promoted as one individual, who was two
different people, or as Bainbridge notes their tombstone reads “a soul with two
thoughts. Two hearts that beat as one.” This was a fascinating book that
explored the extraordinary life of Mille-Christine McKoy and raised questions
about her life where she was born into slavery, and how her disability afforded
her status and opportunities to develop a voice. However, Bainbridge’s research
and analysis into Mille-Christine’s life identifies that this wasn’t always as
straightforward as historical archives might suggest, which raises further
lines of inquiry into the nature and subjectivity of the recorded history and
artifacts that researchers like Dr. Bainbridge encounter. I wasn’t expecting
this line of questioning in the book, and it’s something that I will need to revisit
and grapple with, especially since the last chapter that deals with texts and
performances that descend from these archives and voices, both aural and
silenced. Nevertheless, Dr. Bainbridge identifies gaps and areas in the
archives where Mille-Christine’s voice(s) are mostly absent, and questions
whether her performances are celebrations of her talent or exploitation of her
enfreakment. Dr. Brainbridge’s research explores how earlier exploitation of
Mille-Christine on stage as a girl led to her ability to reset the parameters
of her performance, and to develop further skills including singing, dancing,
and talking simultaneously in different languages, to further her individuality
and humanity. Nevertheless, these performances were conducted under ownership,
and despite her status as free after the Emancipation Proclamation, her prior
enslavers as well as others sought to control Mille-Christine’s personhood. Dr.
Bainbridge presents court cases and other letters from the Freedman’s Bureau sent
on behalf of Mille-Christine’s parents that argued for her return to her family.
Furthermore, Dr. Bainbridge compares Mille-Christine’s challenges to her
autonomy and performances to other individuals who were often exhibited and
exploited during the 19th century before and after slavery including
Chang and Eng Bunker, probably the most well-known conjoined twins, Joice Heth,
the supposed nurse of George Washington, and Blind Tom Wiggins, a pianist and
composer who possessed an incredible gift for music. In all of these cases, we see
how exhibitors often exploited these individuals due to their uniqueness. I
also found it interesting that Dr. Bainbridge notes how many of them served as symbolic
representations for America as the question of slavery gradually ripped the
country apart. Both the McKoys and the Bunkers conjoined status was often
mentioned in the context of uniting the country together while Joice Heth, who
was not nearly as old as PT Barnum claimed, served as a reminder of the
beginning of the country. Furthermore, we see that this kind of exploitation
and misrepresentation not only occurred in their lives, but often after death
as well when Heth was publicly autopsied for paying customers and the Bunkers were
cast after death, with their bodies, organs, and casts on display at
Philadelphia’s Mütter Museum. Throughout Dr. Bainbridge’s book, there is a call
for the respect and humanity these individuals deserved and often did not
receive in life and after their deaths.
I also appreciated Dr. Bainbridge’s reflections on visiting
the Mütter Museum, a museum I’ve been to a few times and actually took students
on a field trip there (our school was a few blocks from the museum) to see an
exhibit on presidential health. While I find the museum fascinating, I also
find it to be a deeply disturbing place. Dr. Bainbridge’s reflection on her
reflection was a great point to consider our own interests and fascination with
difference, disability, and death, and it’s something that has stuck with me
since reading the book. Overall this was a fascinating and thought-provoking
book. Dr. Bainbridge’s questioning of historical archives and positing that
they are future perfect, or rather always looking to shape the future by
describing the past, kind of reminded me of School Teacher’s admission about
the definitions belonging to definers in Morrison’s Beloved. Dr.
Bainbridge’s deep and detailed questioning of the archives not only raise
questions about the nature of power and voice in historical analysis, but they
also led her to create her own performance and short film about Mille-Christine’s
life, and compare her own production to other works that use archival material as
a means to elevate new voices to the historical record. This is especially
important since performers like Mille-Christine, the Bunkers, Blind Tom, and
Joice Heth mostly were denied a voice being both people of color and people
with disabilities, identities that intersected and provided them unique public
exposure, yet also predetermined their identities. The last chapter on aural
fugivity in these works was also interesting and left me wanting to read these
poems (Olio and Zong!) and watch Dr. Bainbridge’s short film Curio,
which was adapted from her stage production. I enjoyed reading about her
process and ideas for creating the stage performance and then adapting it into
a short film and consider the kinds of production changes she needed to make.
Furthermore, I liked reading about how her work was inspired by and connected
to the poems Olio and Zong!, inspiring me to seek out these
texts. While this chapter differed from
the other more historical-based chapters that analyzed the archival materials
related to Mille-Christine’s life, I think it showed how artists and scholars
can use archival work to provide voice and humanity to the forgotten and
misunderstood. Furthermore, it emphasizes the importance of not just aurality,
but also silence, and how meaningful silence and the absence of voice can be
when examining texts and archival materials. In fact, Dr. Bainbridge’s work
will make me listen closer for the silences and pay more attention to the
absences, since it’s not always what is written, but often times what is missing
or hidden that adds additional meaning. Although this is a challenging read and
a scholarly text that not only analyzes history but also theorizes about voice
and identity in archives, it is a rewarding read that will challenge our
thinking about history, archival materials, and identities, especially the
identities of those with disabilities. Highly recommended!
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