Speculative Taxidermy

INTRODUCTION23

viewer with a fragmented, abrasive visibility, resisting and simultaneously
displacing fixed cultural meanings.^37 Botchedness, therefore, was con-
structed as that which prevented man from possessing animals as ob-
jects, to metaphorically subjugate them in anthropocentric discourses
and to make them work as moral/ethical blocks in the definition of man’s
finitude. Baker identified six predominant recurring modalities charac-
terizing its aesthetics. The most common involved an awkward use of
mixed materials, the replacement of taxidermy animals with stuffed ani-
mal toys, the production of hybrid form, the staging of “messy confron-
tations,” the manipulation of taxidermy mounts, and an overall aesthetic
of tattiness.^38 But though the term worked well with artworks that had
nothing to do with the medium of taxidermy itself, the label “botched
taxidermy” seemed reductive when applied to actual taxidermy objects—
it just didn’t quite capture the pressing complexities proposed by the
materiality of the medium.
The concept of speculative taxidermy theorized in this book moves be-
yond botched taxidermy, providing a dedicated theoretical tool for articu-
lating the new range of artistic concerns that taxidermy has brought to the
fore. Speculative taxidermy is concerned with a more specific approach
and with a much narrower range of works of art in which visible animal
skin (or its representation) is critically adopted as a defining indexical re-
lationship between animal presence and the medium of representation
itself. Indexicality here is understood in C. S. Pierce’s conception of a sign
physically linked to its object by a strict relation, one that is inescapable
and necessary. More specifically, in Morgan Marcyliena’s conception,

indexicality incorporates all aspects of the social and political context

in order to construct referential systems of signs and symbolism—the

core ingredients for ambiguity and indirection. It is the muscle that reg-

ulates the language and discourse of speech communities, and it en-

forces its boundaries.... Through indexicality we manage to understand

what is being said within a contextual framework of the social, cultural,

local, political, imagined and artistic world within which communica-

tion occurs.^39

In this sense, indexicality can be understood to constitute the backbone
of a certain realism; it is validation, the authenticating element that sets