Species & Spectacle

Workshop organized by Felicia McCarren (Paris IAS fellow / Tulane University), Elizabeth Claire (CNRS) and Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS), with the support of the Paris IAS, CRH, CRAL, Centre Alexandre Koyré, EHESS and CNRS.

Presentation

This workshop is driven by the overlap of scientific practices of observation, classification, and exhibition with spectacular modes of performance in European and colonial contexts.
By “species” we refer to the apprehension of diversity in the animal and plant world, in parallel with the development of biology.
By “spectacle” we refer to the stage as a mise-en-scène of contemporary medical, industrial, technological and philosophical understandings of bodily production and signification, but also more broadly to the concept of performance: for example, the spectacularization of exotic animals and plants, of exotic peoples, of science as spectacle.
In a context of the projection of natural types onto humans, the invention of social stereotypes identified as physiologies collides with national, ethnic and gendered parameters, to produce medical and social repercussions on the body politic. By exploring the historical notions of cultural contagion, categorization, consumption, degeneration, amalgamation and mimesis, hybridization and ecology, among other concepts, we intend to explore these parallel and connected historical performances in their elaboration of the “nature” of the human condition. By focusing on the notion of spectacle or performance, we open up the question of the commodification of the exotic, and enable an investigation of how performing bodies rehearsed, commented upon and resisted scientific categorization and mastery.

Program

Morning: Of Fauna

9:00-9:15   Introduction by way of a ‘Footnote’ on Dancing Monkeys
Elizabeth Claire (CNRS, CRH/CRAL)

9:15-10:00   Viscera on stage: performing human and animal anatomy in early modern western Europe
Rafael Mandressi (CNRS, CAK)

10:00-10:45   Théâtres du vivant / Life on stage, XVI^e-XVII^e siècles
Frédérique Aït-Touati (CNRS, CRAL)

10:45-11:15   Coffee Break

11:15-12:00   'The greatest Curiosity in the known world': Madame Chimpanzee in London Coffee Houses (1730s)
Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS, CRH)

12:00-12:45   'Everything that one sees or hears in this place is perfectly romantick': The Sensory Spectacle of Pacific Colonisation, c.1690-1790
Bruce Buchan (Invited Professor EHESS, School of Humanities, Griffith University)

12:45-14:15   Lunch Break

Afternoon: Of Fauna and Flora

14:15-15:00   Bodies on display: ethnoexhibitions, dehumanization and anthropological voyeurism (19^th-21^st century)
Guido Abbattista (Invited Professor EHESS, Università di Trieste)

15:00-15:45   Jeux phyto-érotiques et satyricon végétal : la flore et la forme (16^e et 17^e siècle)
Dominique Brancher (Universität Basel)

15:45-16:30   Planting Dance: ‘La Source’ (1866)
Felicia McCarren (IEA-Paris, Tulane University New Orleans)

16:30-17:00   Pause café

17:00-18:00   General discussion introduced by Antonella Romano (EHESS, Centre A. Koyré) and Sylvie Steinberg (EHESS, CRH)

18:00   Cocktail