102A NATURAL HISTORY PANOPTICONfor God’s judgment? Quite cunningly, encapsulating the need to make
sense of human existence through the materiality of the nonhuman, the
absence/presence and utter unrepresentability of God is inscribed in the
top section of each scala naturae, where an empty shelf emblematically
represents the limitation of man’s epistemic modalities.
Sitting above the central cabinet in line with the skeleton’s skull is a
taxidermy magpie. Dion has frequently placed a single object on top of
his cabinets to somewhat anchor the multiplicity of subtexts that can be
produced by the viewer. Among birds, the magpie has carved a special
place in popular culture because of its alleged collector tendencies. Its
intrinsic, inquisitive nature seems to suggest an interrogation of the
conceptual underpinning of representation from the perspective of an
animal capable of an aesthetic discernment that surpasses utilitarian-
ism. Thus positioned, the taxidermy magpie becomes an ambiguously
flickering symbol suspended between the scientific specimen and the
popular culture’s conception of it. Its commodified taxidermy status
simultaneously conveys our desire to construct nature, the epistemic limita-
tions involved in such a process, and the strictures a “magpie approach” to
constructing nature imposes upon it. Therefore, centrally positioned, apart
from and superseding the objects inside the cabinets, the taxidermy mag-
pie simultaneously anchors the contents of all three cabinets within the
discourses of collecting, a presumed naturalization of such practice in
humans (a tendency we share with other animals) and the inherent and
irrepressible idiosyncrasies that characterize one’s own interpretation of
the world: after all, magpie collecting takes place outside the epistemic
structures of human knowledge. Literally as well as metaphorically above
all, the displayed theft—the implied crime signified by the presence of the
bird—comments on the modalities of acquisition that characterized
much of scientific taxonomy. Despite the noble pursuit of truth and
knowledge that on the surface drove the organization of objects in cabi-
nets, the magpie ventriloquizes the essence of a cultural entitlement
linked to a naturalized conception of superiority that objectified the non-
human and often justified collecting practices by unethical means.^97