ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the enduring legacy of colonialism in the discursive construction of Black female bodies, in two ways. First, it examines the language used to describe the body of the South African runner Caster Semenya (an intersex cisgender woman) and compares it to the language used to describe the body of a woman from a different era, “Hottentot Venus” Saartjie Baartman. The aim is to establish to what extent “colonial intertexts” (intertextual links to colonial representations of the Other) were and are used in the representation of contemporary Black women. Based on the findings, this chapter then argues that the continuing use of language drawn from colonial annals in describing Caster Semenya shows the persistence of colonial representational regimes predicated on Western knowledge/beliefs and knowledge production around what constitutes Black womanhood and femininity. Second, the chapter examines official South African government responses to the charges that Caster Semenya is a man and to the tests used to determine her biological sex. In doing so, the chapter argues that their responses indicate resistance to an “abyssal line” that draws a distinction between Black and white female bodies by reifying white bodies as the norm. In defying the “abyssal line,” these government officials answered the ontological question of what is “normal” and “natural” with respect to the Black female body on its own terms, and not those set by the West.
