Speculative Taxidermy

THIS IS NOT A HORSE225

TOWARD A GENEALOGY OF HUMAN/

ANIMAL RELATIONS IN ART

Although not conceived specifically as an art historical tool of analysis,
the Foucauldian concept of dispositif can be used to retrieve the intermin-
gling sets of power/knowledge relationships inscribed in works of art
where animal and man-made surfaces are juxtaposed.^14 The concept of
became pivotal to Foucault’s shift from archaeological to genealogical in-
quiry.^15 As a concept, its main role became that of providing a structure
upon which to map power/knowledge relationships at play in diverse
societal functionings. The dispositif thus enables the retrieval of “dis-
courses, institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, ad-
ministrative measures, scientific statements, philosophical moral and
philanthropic propositions.... The apparatus [dispositif] itself is the sys-
tem of relations that can be established between these elements.”^16 A focus
on the dispositif may enable the emergence of a posthumanist critique—
one that refuses the unproblematic metanarrativization of “inherently
good” domestication and companionship narratives.
As a piece of speculative taxidermy, in its challenging, fragmented,
tableau-objet materiality, It’s Hard to Make a Stand by artist Steve Bishop
constitutes a nonaffirmative body structured around the juxtaposition of
different man-made objects and preserved animal skin (fig. 7.1). The piece
can be seen to problematize Agrimiká’s original proposal through the in-
corporation of a life-size taxidermy mannequin of a horse—the kind that can
be purchased from one of many taxidermy suppliers—mounted on a pre-
carious and cheap-looking plinth. A shroud of cellophane covers the back
of the mannequin, while a fur coat is haphazardly draped over its head.
In this instance, the nonaffirmative determination to destabilize the
sovereignty of the viewer, the overall fragmentation proposed by the rep-
resentational trope, gestures toward systems of relations involving dis-
courses, practices, knowledge, and power. As discussed at length in chapters
3 and 4, optical realism constituted the main representational prerogative
of quattrocento painting. In the epistemic configuration of the classical age,
the clarity of optical realism bore a linguistic nature and was conceived as
the result of the totalizing forces of positivism: animals were rendered visible
in perfected forms, adjusted, purified, idealized, and ultimately objectified.
As seen in the previous chapter, speculative taxidermy can be understood