Speculative Taxidermy

A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICON91

nineteenth century is the result of the emergence of this very metaphysics
of presence that largely drove natural history to catalog the indexical in-
stead of the referential. Secularization depended on the empirical, and the
empirical required the death of the object of study.
The discourses and practices of botanical research strongly influenced
zoology and the illustration of animals, setting the semantic perimeters of
epistemic spatializations and, most importantly, outlining its iconographi-
cal standards. This influence is confirmed by Ulisse Aldrovandi’s citation
of Cibo’s influence on his own work in Catalogus Virorum qui mea studia
adjuvarunt.^56 Aldrovandi incorporated Cibo’s approach by developing a
strong interest in the epistemic value of illustration and consistently ad-
vocating the importance of color in the painting of specimens ad vivum
(from life). Aldrovandi claimed that “there is nothing on earth that seems
to me to give more pleasure and utility to man than painting, and above all
painting of natural things: because it is through these things, painted by
an excellent painter, that we acquire knowledge of foreign species, although
they are born in distant lands.”^57 Furthermore, he specified that painting
played a key epistemic role because “it could imitate products of nature
al vivo.”^58 Aldrovandi’s impression of the ability of painting to replace the
animal object was also expressed by Gesner in his own collection. It is
reported that Gesner sometimes settled for drawings and paintings because
of the prohibitive costs of exotics.^59 This overlap of material specimen and
specimen illustration will become central to the closing section of this
chapter. But for the time being, it is important to note that the aesthetic
intermingling that characterized the structuring of epistemic constructions
in botanical and zoological studies also proposed an ontological alignment
between animals and plants. This, I argue, constitutes a vastly underscru-
tinized aspect of the processes of animal objectification.

TOWARD A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICON:

THE BIRTH OF THE SOVEREIGN AND THE

DEATH OF THE ANIMAL

The relationship between seeing and saying, and the consequent dynamics
involved in the power/knowledge relationships that shaped the discursive
formation of natural history, have been linked already in this chapter to the