ABSTRACT
Guido Abbattista presents a metanarrative of the living ethnic exhibitions from the point of view of their dehumanizing forms and effects. This phenomenon is analyzed through the constitutive aspects of its 19th- and early 20th-century variations, drawing a distinction between and exploring the features of the older form of the ‘freak shows' and the modern version in the developing Western mass-communication society, public entertainments, business, and popular racism. The living ethnic exhibitions are illustrated in their complex relationships with science, public opinion, national identity building, and current ideas of civilization and historical time. Their contradictory and conflictual aspects are highlighted by taking into consideration the organizers' intentions, the public's reaction, and the protagonists' behavior, showing how inadequate simplistic interpretations of a multifaceted phenomenon are. Finally, the chapter follows the history of living ethnic exhibitions until very recent times, suggesting that those forms of public spectacles, even if they have certainly changed in terms of features, contexts, and aims, have not completely disappeared to the extent that the Western treatment of human diversities still reveals exoticist, essentialist, racist, and dehumanizing attitudes.
