Hottentot Venus

The Curious in Ecstasy or Shoelaces, by Louis François Charon, 1815. Satire of English fascination with South African–born Saartjie Baartman, who was exhibited under the name Hottentot Venus. The British Museum, London.

Foreigners

Volume VIII, Number 1 | winter 2015

Preamble

Them

By Lewis H. Lapham

When we talk about the foreign, the question becomes one of us versus them. But in the end, is one just the opposite side of the other?

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Miscellany

Having come to the U.S. through Portugal, French pilot Antoine de Saint-Exupéry wrote and illustrated part of The Little Prince—one of the best-selling works of fiction of all time—in a twenty-two room mansion on Long Island in 1942. “I wanted a hut,” he reflected, “and it’s the Palace of Versailles.”

When you name yourself, you always name another.

—Bertolt Brecht, 1926