Spectacle

April 6, 2015
Newkirk (Within the Veil) centers this meticulously detailed monograph on the life of Ota Benga, a young Congolese man who at the beginning of the 20th century suffered the indignity of being caged with an orangutan at the Bronx Zoo’s Monkey House. Although Benga himself left no written record of his experiences, Newkirk pieces together his story from the texts, photographs, and other records produced by the “lettered elite” whose members were complicit in his capture and display. While other African men and women, including the “Hottentot Venus” Sarah Baartman, had been exhibited to European audiences, Benga’s experience was unusual because it took place not in a “human zoo” but in one devoted to animals, thus depicting this African man not simply as exotic, but as a failure of human evolution. Newkirk places Benga’s story in the context of an ever more segregated and aggressively racist United States, a Europe intent on exploitation of Africa’s human and material resources, and a scientific culture that venerated objective inquiry but refused to question established ideas about race. The book might have benefited from a more effective structure, as it wanders through various times and locations. Nonetheless, readers will be moved, especially when reading about the tragic turns Benga’s life took in the years after he was released.