Speculative Taxidermy

8PROLOGUE but incorporated in a state of carnal immanence—one that connects the representation networks of biopower relations t ...

PROLOGUE9 bodies, beauty, and grace did not develop in accordance with the canon of classical ballet. Her posing as a specimen ...

10PROLOGUE recognize themselves immortalized in paintings. Renaissance realism was therefore defined by an erotic appeal shaped ...

PROLOGUE11 The materiality of objects in contemporary art, including taxidermy, should therefore not be understood as a site of ...

By the madness which interrupts it, a work of art opens a void, a mo- ment of silence, a question without answer, provokes a bre ...

INTRODUCTION13 THE RETURN OF TAXIDERMY The events that took place on the night of February 1, 2008, on Paris’s Rue du Bac would ...

14INTRODUCTION spread from the entomological cabinets and in a few hours had destroyed 90 percent of the collection. Louis Albe ...

INTRODUCTION15 viving specimens to raise funds for the shop’s refurbishment.^5 Over- night, taxidermy regained its cool. The ce ...

16INTRODUCTION BEYOND POSTCOLONIAL CRITIQUE The images from Deyrolle’s fire brought me to reconsider certain notions of figurat ...

INTRODUCTION17 theories, and by contextualizing it through a variety of lenses ranging from the biopolitical to the posthuman a ...

18INTRODUCTION token, this book does not argue that a certain use of taxidermy in con- temporary art might directly impact the ...

INTRODUCTION19 taxonomic ordering, taxidermy functioned as the still and silent token of the exotic and marvelous life-forms in ...

20INTRODUCTION metaphorical overlaps between shooting with a camera and shooting with a gun, Haraway configures the natural his ...

INTRODUCTION21 might be useful to at least outline three substantially different and recur- ring approaches to the medium: the ...

22INTRODUCTION However, as will be seen in the following chapters, these three ap- proaches to taxidermy in contemporary art of ...

INTRODUCTION23 viewer with a fragmented, abrasive visibility, resisting and simultaneously displacing fixed cultural meanings.^ ...

24INTRODUCTION such realistic register. In this context, indexicality is the tipping point that mobilizes semantic apparatuses ...

INTRODUCTION25 fixed, constant qualities—objects that can be easily categorized in taxon- omies of stereotypical genres. Althou ...

26INTRODUCTION SOME NOTES ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL FRAMEWORK OF THIS BOOK This book originates from the frustration caused by the c ...

INTRODUCTION27 work of art could require the crafting of a new methodological approach, or at least might instill a desire to w ...