{"title":"Exhibiting Extinction: Martha and the Monument, Two Modes of Remembering Nature","authors":"Kelly Enright","doi":"10.5130/csr.v25i1.6404","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Whether stuffed remains in a museum case, inscribed tombstone, or stone wall perched on a cliff, memorials to extinct animals are timestamps representing human-animal relationships at particular moments in time. This essay analyzes the rhetoric and imagery of historical extinctions as seen in these memorials to understand the ways people struggled to understand the loss. Through examination of memorials to extinct species in U.S. museums, parks, and zoos my research has revealed a continuous struggle to identify the personhood of animals, define human-animal interactions, and locate human responsibility for environmental change. \n \nWhile each memorial mimics remembrance practices used for humans and human events, they differ in their acknowledgement of the individuality and the agency of its extinction which, in turn, often denies agency to the animal. Steeped as they are in Romantic-era notions of wildness, these memorials can be read as parables of environmentalism, but in their conceptualization of the animal, they instruct us in the varieties of human-animal interactions and representations within the environmental movement at different times and places, making them more complex spaces than their simplicity suggests. While memorials present only a slice of the story, the memories they create and reinforce become part of the cultural ways of dealing with extinction that is often more popular and more poignant than historical narratives documenting their declines. At its core, my research adds to the literature on constructions of Nature in American culture by connecting 19th-century declension narratives with 20th-century extinctions, and problematizes the American ideology of abundance.","PeriodicalId":51871,"journal":{"name":"Cultural Studies Review","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.0000,"publicationDate":"2019-09-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Cultural Studies Review","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.5130/csr.v25i1.6404","RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":null,"ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q3","JCRName":"Social Sciences","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Whether stuffed remains in a museum case, inscribed tombstone, or stone wall perched on a cliff, memorials to extinct animals are timestamps representing human-animal relationships at particular moments in time. This essay analyzes the rhetoric and imagery of historical extinctions as seen in these memorials to understand the ways people struggled to understand the loss. Through examination of memorials to extinct species in U.S. museums, parks, and zoos my research has revealed a continuous struggle to identify the personhood of animals, define human-animal interactions, and locate human responsibility for environmental change.
While each memorial mimics remembrance practices used for humans and human events, they differ in their acknowledgement of the individuality and the agency of its extinction which, in turn, often denies agency to the animal. Steeped as they are in Romantic-era notions of wildness, these memorials can be read as parables of environmentalism, but in their conceptualization of the animal, they instruct us in the varieties of human-animal interactions and representations within the environmental movement at different times and places, making them more complex spaces than their simplicity suggests. While memorials present only a slice of the story, the memories they create and reinforce become part of the cultural ways of dealing with extinction that is often more popular and more poignant than historical narratives documenting their declines. At its core, my research adds to the literature on constructions of Nature in American culture by connecting 19th-century declension narratives with 20th-century extinctions, and problematizes the American ideology of abundance.
期刊介绍:
Cultural Studies Review is a peer-reviewed journal devoted to the publication and circulation of quality thinking in cultural studies—in particular work that draws out new kinds of politics, as they emerge in diverse sites. We are interested in writing that shapes new relationships between social groups, cultural practices and forms of knowledge and which provides some account of the questions motivating its production. We welcome work from any discipline that meets these aims. Aware that new thinking in cultural studies may produce a new poetics we have a dedicated new writing section to encourage the publication of works of critical innovation, political intervention and creative textuality.