Abstract
A key problem with animal biographies—their inability to represent a single historical subject—emerges through the representation of taxidermy in literary history. Fiction writers from Charles Dickens to H.G. Wells to Ernest Hemingway sow a seediness into taxidermists that blossoms in recent bestsellers by Téa Obreht and Kate Mosse, where practitioners draw taxidermy more explicitly into stories of murder, sex crimes, and revenge among humans. But taxidermists’ literary biographies are shadowed by those of taxidermy itself, and its associations with exterminationist politics across species lines. Through fictions by Gustav Flaubert, Julian Barnes, and Gergely Péterfy, I sketch a parallel tradition of attempting to recover the lives more directly represented by the objects, and its consequences for human, animal, and human-animal relationships. Museum specimens and a performance-art reconstruction by Brett Bailey bookend the discussion to underscore the biological and cultural catastrophes at stake in these recovery efforts.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Morris, History, 93.
- 2.
Quoted in Poliquin, Breathless, 169.
- 3.
Alberti, “Introduction,” 2–3.
- 4.
Thorsen, Elephants, 10.
- 5.
Swinney, “Afterword on Afterlife,” 230.
- 6.
Wakeham, Taxidermic, 5.
- 7.
Morris avers that seven full taxidermy mounts of people presently exist, amid stories of several others that cannot be confirmed because “museum curators are somewhat secretive on this issue,” see Morris, History, 90.
- 8.
Desmond, “Postmortem,” 161.
- 9.
Poliquin distinguishes taxidermy from “most other processes of bodily preparation” precisely through this “distinction between the palpable world of materials and the spiritual otherworld of material forces,” see Poliquin, Breathless, 23. I would add that she also identifies an aesthetic wherein taxidermized humans became enframed in animal worlds by identifying taxidermy as a “secular art for portraying the physical sizes and shapes of animals” (Ibid., 25).
- 10.
Aloi, Natural History.
- 11.
Turner, “‘Stuffed’ Animals,” 8.
- 12.
Obreht, Tiger’s Wife, 242.
- 13.
Morris, History, 359; Star, “Craft vs. Commodity.”
- 14.
Cheatham, “Sign the Wire,” 27.
- 15.
Fore, “Life Unworthy,” 82.
- 16.
Adair, “Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises.”
- 17.
Humphries, American Horror, 85.
- 18.
Alban, “Human Skin.”
- 19.
Haraway, Primate Visions.
- 20.
Niesel, “Horror.”
- 21.
Mosse, Taxidermist’s, 14; Morris, History, 210.
- 22.
Mosse, Taxidermist’s, 15.
- 23.
Ibid., 213.
- 24.
Ibid., 216.
- 25.
Baker, Postmodern Animal, 29.
- 26.
Barnes, Flaubert’s Parrot, 7.
- 27.
Scholtmeijer, “What is Human?,” 132.
- 28.
Baker, Postmodern Animal, 32.
- 29.
Jameson, Postmodernism, 195.
- 30.
Quoted in Scholtmeijer, “What is Human?,” 130.
- 31.
Barnes, Flaubert´s Parrot, 216.
- 32.
Poliquin, Breathless, 34.
- 33.
Morris, History.
- 34.
Grill, The World, 181.
- 35.
“Ballet d’action” is the technical term for a ballet with a plot.
- 36.
Firla, “In Search of.”
- 37.
Read, Angelo Soliman, 47.
- 38.
Read charts this changing perception of Soliman’s agency through the sequence of biographies published by Monika Firla in 1993, 1996, 2001, and 2003 (see Firla, “Viennese African,” 19–20).
- 39.
Orzóy, “Stuffed Barbarian.”
- 40.
Bailey, “Personal.”
- 41.
Bailey, “Third World.”
- 42.
Ibid.
- 43.
O’Mahony, “Edinburgh’s.”
- 44.
Bailey, “Third World.”
- 45.
Wakeham, Taxidermic, 25. Fanon’s description of a “corporeal” that gives way to “racial epidermal schemas” informs how more recent theoretical projects like those of Wakeham along with Alexander Weheliye work, according to the latter, to “tackle notions of the human as it interfaces with gender, coloniality, slavery, racialization, and political violence without mapping these questions onto a mutually exclusive struggle between either the free-flowing terra nullis of the universally applicable or the terra cognitus of the ethnographically detained” in Weheliye, Habeas Viscous, 24.
- 46.
Poliquin, Breathless, 34.
- 47.
The meanings of taxidermic trophies are elaborated as “always specific to a time, a place, an animal, a hunter, a collector, a gallery visitor” in Rothfels, “Trophies,” 136.
Works Cited
Adair, W. “Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises: The Dog in the Window and Other War Allusions.” Hemingway Review 34.1 (2014): 76–81.
Alban, D. “Books Bound in Human Skin: Lampshade Myth?” Harvard Law Record (2005). http://hlrecord.org/2005/11/books-bound-in-human-skin-lampshade-myth/. Accessed November 11, 2005.
Alberti, Samuel J.M.M. “Introduction: The Dead Ark.” In The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie, edited by Samuel J.M.M. Alberti, 1–16. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
Aloi, G. Speculative Taxidermy: Natural History, Animal Surfaces, and Art in the Anthropocene. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.
Bailey, B. “Personal Communication.” 20 February 2016.
———. “Third World Bun Fight: Exhibit B.” http://thirdworldbunfight.co.za/exhibit-b/. Accessed September 15, 2017.
Baker, S. The Postmodern Animal. London: Reaktion Books, 2000.
Barnes, J. Flaubert’s Parrot. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1984.
Cheatham, G. “‘Sign the Wire with Love’: The Morality of Surplus in The Sun Also Rises.” Hemingway Review 11.2 (1992): 25–30.
Desmond, J. “Postmortem Exhibitions: Taxidermied Animals and Plastinated Corpses in the Theaters of the Dead.” Configurations 16.3 (2008): 347–377.
Fanon, F. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Press, 2008.
Firla, M. “In Search of the Viennese African, Angelo Soliman (ca. 1721–96): From Educator of a Hereditary Prince to Stuffed Exhibit.” Tinabantu 2.1 (2004): 72–90. http://m.delphiforums.com/cltalk/messages/811/26. Accessed September 15, 2017.
Fore, D. “Life Unworthy of Life? Masculinity, Disability, and Guilt in The Sun Also Rises.” Hemingway Review 26.2 (2007): 74–88.
Grill, G. The World as Reality in Robert Musil’s The Man Without Qualities. Rochester: Camden House, 2012.
Haraway, D. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, 1990.
Humphries, R. The American Horror Film: An Introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2002.
Jameson, F. Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism. Durham: Duke University Press, 1991.
Morris, P. A History of Taxidermy: Art, Science, and Bad Taste. Ascot: MPM, 2012.
Mosse, K. The Taxidermist’s Daughter. London: Orion, 2014.
Niesel, J. “The Horror of Everyday Life: Taxidermy, Aesthetics and Consumption in Horror Films.” Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture 2.4 (1994): 61–80.
Obreht, T. The Tiger’s Wife. New York: Random House, 2011.
O’Mahony, J. “Edinburgh’s Most Controversial Show: Exhibit B, a Human Zoo.” The Guardian, August 11, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2014/aug/11/-sp-exhibit-b-human-zoo-edinburgh-festivals-most-controversial. Accessed September 15, 2017.
Orzóy, A. “The Stuffed Barbarian/Kitömött Barbár.” Literaturhaus Europa, 2015. http://www.literaturhauseuropa.eu/en/observatory/blog/thestuffed-barbarian-kitomott-barbar. Accessed September 15, 2017.
Poliquin, R. The Breathless Zoo. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
———. “The Matter and Meaning of Museum Taxidermy.” Museum and Society 6.2 (2008): 123–134.
Read, E.E. Angelo Soliman Then and Now: A Historical and Psychoanalytical Interpretation of Soliman Depictions in Modern German Literature. Master’s thesis, University of Tennessee, 2006.
Rothfels, N. “Trophies and Taxidermy.” In Gorgeous Beasts: Animal Bodies in Historical Perspective, edited by Joan Landes, Paula Young Lee, and Paul Youngquist, 117–136. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012.
Scholtmeijer, M. “What Is ‘Human’? Metaphysics and Zoontology in Flaubert and Kafka.” In Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History, edited by Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior, 127–143. New York: Routledge, 1997.
Star, S.L. “Craft vs. Commodity, Mess vs. Transcendence: How the Right Tool Became the Wrong One in the Case of Taxidermy and Natural History.” In The Right Tools for the Job, edited by Adele E. Clarke and Joan H. Fujimura, 257–286. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992.
Swinney, G. “An Afterword on Afterlife.” In The Afterlives of Animals: A Museum Menagerie, edited by Samuel J.M.M. Alberti, 219–233. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
Thorsen, L.E. Elephants Are Not Picked from Trees: Animal Biographies in Gothenberg Natural History Museum. Aarhaus: Aarhaus University Press, 2014.
Turner, S. “Relocating ‘Stuffed’ Animals: Photographic Remediation of Natural History Taxidermy.” Humanimalia 4.2 (2013): 1–32.
Wakeham, P. Taxidermic Signs: Reconstructing Aboriginality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Weheliye, A. Habeas Viscous: Racializing Assemblages, Biopolitics, and Black Feminist Theory. Durham: Duke University Press, 2014.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
McHugh, S. (2018). Taxidermy’s Literary Biographies. In: Krebber, A., Roscher, M. (eds) Animal Biography. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98288-5_8
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98288-5_8
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-98287-8
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-98288-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)