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An Afterword on Afterlife
- University of Virginia Press
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Geoffr ey N. Sw in ney An Afterword on Afterlife W ildlife occurs within ecosystems, while the afterlives accounted for in this book are enacted in and through (human) social systems. In the museum, it is the visitor who breathes new life into objects, and, in the case of representations of once-living organisms, that “new life” is what we have classed as its afterlife. The preceding essays recount particular kinds of narratives and thereby produce and define particular kinds of afterlives—principally sequels to some measure of celebrity status acquired by an individual animal, or imposed upon it, while it was alive. These are the animals that gain entry to celebrity listings such as the Animals’ Who’s Who.1 Further, the essays focus mainly on afterlives conducted through elaborate material reconstructions exhibited in the front-of-house spaces of museums. In this afterword, I consider further the broad themes, transitions, and meanings which pervade and structure this volume, but I seek also to extend the parameters beyond those addressed in the preceding essays. I suggest that the museum menagerie is animated and vitalized through a broader range of afterlives , that these are not restricted to vertebrates, not necessarily associated with celebrity, and extend through a variety of spaces of the museum, and beyond. To expand the concept of afterlives of museum zoological specimens, I develop two interrelated strands, both substantially concerned with matters of practice. The first addresses the ways in which animals are (epistemically ) reconstructed in the museum menagerie. It focuses on the creation of identity and individuality, including celebrity identities, and on the spaces of 220 | geoffrey n. swinney the museum which the menagerie occupies. The second strand of discussion considers further the transition from carcass to specimen, and centers on the technologies of preservation and material reconstruction. The Menagerie on Display The afterlives explored in the preceding essays have generally been those enactedbyaremnantoftheanimal ’sbody,preservedandfashionedintoamodel, which through its pose connotes that particular individual animal in life: either its external appearance or its (re)articulated internal skeletal structure. Such models are themselves reliquaries, each fashioned into the appearance of some aspect of the celebrated individual that it memorializes. Of course, not all celebrity afterlives are a sequel to a celebrated life; a few animals acquired celebrity only in afterlife. Hannah Paddon notes the example of the giraffe which was shot and mounted as a hunting trophy—a fine representative of its species—and which gained an individualized identity, its mascot status, and the name Gerald, only once placed on display in the Royal Albert Memorial Museum, Exeter, United Kingdom. Exceptions such as Gerald notwithstanding, while they were alive, most of the animals considered in this volume enjoyed (or endured) a close, and often protracted, association with people. Most did not share domestic space, but rather passed at least part of their lives as a component of a zoo, a circus , or a menagerie. In captivity, each of the animals became an adjunct to human society rather than being a member of a herd, flock, or pod. Anthropomorphized , each was adopted as more than merely a representative of its species—expressed in language by the use of “he” or “she,” “who” or “whom,” rather than “it” and “which,” and most especially by the bestowal of individual identity, often through the allocation of a human-type name. As Richard Sabin recounts in “The Thames Whale,” even the short-lived appearance of a northern bottlenosed whale (Hyperoodon ampullatus) in the River Thames in the center of London prompted the British press to bestow upon it a variety of names including Prince of Whales, Pete the Pilot, Whaley, Willy, and Wally, and to situate it within popular culture by reference to “Celebrity Big Blubber.”2 Similarly, most of the other animals discussed in this volume were adopted by the media and the popular culture of their day, thereby gaining celebrated status—itself a form of “cultural memory that speaks beyond individual experience.”3 Preservation and (re)presentation of some conspicuous [54.198.45.0] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 00:14 GMT) An Afterword on Afterlife | 221 fragments of the body, modeled to mimic the external appearance or the internal structure of the living animal, provided a means for the animal’s celebrity to transcend death, thereby affording new forms of engagement in human society. Even in their premortem existence, these animals were appropriated and reconstructed in our image. They were anthropomorphized and fashioned to embody human emotions and values...