Body Trade: Captivity, Cannibalism and Colonialism in the Pacific

Body Trade explores the history of the South Pacific traffic in human bodies from the eighteenth century to the present. Scholars from art history, cultural studies, anthropology, literature and film examine the ‘captive body’ as it is represented in a range of media - from Captain Cook’s Journals and Melville’s novels to contemporary painting, popular culture, and such movies as Jedda , Meet Me In St Louis and The Murmuring . Revisiting Europe’s colonial project in the Pacific, Body Trade exposes myths surrounding the trade in heads, cannibalism, captive white women, the display of indigenous people in fairs and circuses, the stolen generations, the ‘comfort’ women and the making of the exotic/erotic body. This is a lively and intriguing contribution to the study of the postcolonial body.