Hottentot+Venus

Doing the readings for class tomorrow numerous connections surfaced for me. By way of introduction to my thoughts see [|this]. In these essays on race and science I was keenly aware of the invisibility of body; in some con/texts, the body is considered the origins of systems of differential reproduction. That was before all this gen(om)e stuff. So when talking about [|19th century] race science, I want to talk about 19th century freak shows, 19th century world fairs, and 19th century [|museums]. I want to make very explicit the broader social, cultural, and economic context that generated race science. Hopefully by later I will be able to articulate this connection more clearly.

“The plenum of universal organic evolution, reaching from ape to modern European with all the races and sexes properly arrayed between, was filled with the bodies and measuring instruments proper to the life sciences. Craniometry and the examination of sexual/reproductive material both focused on the chief organs of mental and generative life, which were the keys to organic social efficiency. Brains were also sexual tissues, and reproductive organs were also mental structures. Furthermore, the face revealed what the brain and the gonad ordained; diagnostic photography showed as much. The evolution of language, the progress of technology, the perfection of the body, and the advance of social forms seemed to be aspects of the same fundamental human science.” (Haraway, 233)