Quand le sexe incarne la race : le corps noir dans l'imaginaire médical français (1800-1950)
Abstract
From the late eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century, the body of African people became, for French doctors, an object of study in a context where racial taxonomy and colonization grew. Black women in Africa, and especially among the Hottentots and Bushmen of southern Africa, seemed to represent their race by their sexual characteristics, described as exuberant. According to doctors, Black men also seemed to have large sexual organs. Beyond a racial marker, analysis of sexual attributes also allowed doctors to speculate on African hypersexuality.
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