26INTRODUCTIONSOME NOTES ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL
FRAMEWORK OF THIS BOOKThis book originates from the frustration caused by the contextual sim-
plifications of postcolonial approaches to taxidermy illustrated earlier and
the lack of serious efforts on behalf of art historians to situate taxidermy
as the manifestation of previous artistic discourses and practices. To be
clear: the appearance of taxidermy in contemporary art is not simply
a postmodernist “trick of the hat,” and it can neither be reduced to the
symptom of a wrongness between human and animal situated outside
artistic discourses nor be grafted onto philosophical ones. It is for this
reason that, to start, this book embarks on an ambitious and multidisci-
plinary genealogical recovery of multiple taxidermy pasts, intersecting
material practices, parallel discursive formations, shared archives, and
representative modalities.
That said, one of the most important challenges involved in writing
about or with contemporary art involves the ability to switch among the
increasing number of theoretical lenses at our disposal. When writing
about animals, or specifically about taxidermy within an animal studies
framework, certain disciplinary parameters appear to be intrinsically
bound to ethical approaches. Keeping animals at the forefront of aca-
demic arguments while configuring their presence within multidisci-
plinary fields is not an easy task.
Over time, I have come to identify two types of discipline-specific
blindness related to thinking and writing about art. Studying visual cul-
ture has made me aware that history of art can easily bury works of art
under a carefully layered tapestry of biographical and comparative data.
This operation ultimately fails to prioritize the very important connec-
tions that can be drawn between the art object and its role in today’s
discourses. It reduces the art object to historical evidence. On the other
hand, history of art has made me aware that visual culture can be equally,
but differently, blind. The reliance on philosophical texts as the ultimate
key to access and problematize works of art can be guilty of using art as
a pretext. Sometimes, in visual culture, the work of art figures as the
soundboard for concepts that too quickly forget the work itself. In truth,
I would argue that because of each work’s originality and idiosyncratic
relationship to materiality, performativity, and conceptualism, every