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- Convenors:
-
Mark Harris
(University of St Andrews)
Nádia Farage (University of Campinas)
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- Stream:
- Evidence
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 31 March, -
Time zone: Europe/London
Short Abstract:
How did colonial administrations conceive of responsibility in the context of Southern colonial histories? How did the colonised conceive of the world that sustained them? By focusing on responsibility towards other species and environment, our ambition is to encompass dissident and critical voices.
Long Abstract:
The colonial histories of animals, plants and other forms of life remains an incipient area of research in historical anthropology. Indeed, the historical anthropology that has flourished since the 1980s has been successfully devoted to the struggles of socio-diversity, especially in the colonial histories of the South. Biodiversity has not received the same level of attention. As a rule, biodiversity was treated as "landscape" in historical narratives, the passive background against which the tragedy of colonial history had taken place. Nevertheless, recent studies are challenging the trend and pointing out that histories of biodiversity, species loss and environmental degradation, are tied up with the loss of sociodiversity, and are interwoven with the histories of colonial exploitation. This panel invites researchers seeking to revise Southern colonial histories in order to highlight the relevance of other species and/or inter-species relationships in the colonial process. How did colonial administration conceive of responsibility? How did the colonised conceive of theirs and the world which sustained them? Furthermore, focusing responsibility towards other species and environment, our will debate encompass critical and dissident voices. In particular, we would like to focus on the limits of evidence in answering these questions. What kinds of evidence are being used? Assessing environmental histories and the specific contribution anthropology can bring to such a review, the panel will welcome case studies of species' resistances or alliances which altered, if only for a brief time/space, the course of exploitation - be they flowing rivers, impenetrable forests, flies or uncontrollable wildlife.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 31 March, 2021, -Giulia Levai (UNICAMP)
Paper short abstract:
This paper intends to address a Brazilian short story (1917) and a true story that happened in London (1780s). As main characters two young men on the verge of death, aware that their bodies, regarded as scientific curiosities, shall undergo posthumous dissection to integrate anatomical collections
Paper long abstract:
This paper aims to address a Brazilian short story published in 1917 and a true story that occurred in London in the 1780s. Their main characters are two unfortunate young men who just realized they are about to die. One of them is nurse Paulino, recently admitted in the Hospital he used to work in, but now as a patient, after developing a strange and aggressive disease. The other is Charles Byrne, known as "Charles O'Brien, the Irish Giant”, a former celebrity, suffering from tuberculosis and alcoholism. Both are dreadfully aware that their bodies are regarded as scientific curiosities by local anatomists. In both cases, the posthumous destiny of scientific curiosities was to undergo dissection procedures and end up in anatomical collections.Placed as the living subject of a masterclass in Pathological Anatomy, nurse Paulino is haunted by his awareness of a medical code scribbled in his file, which stood for “Keep Corpse For Autopsy”, while Byrne lives his last months chased by the famous anatomist John Hunter, avid to integrate the giant’s skeleton to his personal Museum, among specimens of "exotic beasts". Wroth and terrified, they try to scape, doing everything they can to remain masters of their bodies, to rest in peace. Sadly, their agency is no match for the power of Men of Science’s wills, and they fail to overcome it. Filled with terror and pitié, both stories enlighten debates on the scientific “ownership” over corpses of the poor, the “monstrous” and the ungrieved ones.
Nádia Farage (University of Campinas)
Paper short abstract:
The paper explores the ways in which fictional texts – by D.Lessing (1963), L.B.Honwana (1964) and J.M.Coetzee (1999) – link betrayal and remorse in interspecies relationships to political dilemmas of colonialism and its legacy in Southern Africa.
Paper long abstract:
The paper takes up three fictional texts, which approach different time/spaces in Southern Africa, namely, the short stories "The story of two dogs" by Doris Lessing (1963), "We killed the mangy dog", by Luís Bernardo Honwana (Nós matamos o cão tinhoso, 1964) and the novel Disgrace, by J M Coetzee (1999). Although focusing on different cultural and historical setbacks, these texts share common ground – they all refer the dilemmas of colonialism and its legacy to the imagery of interspecies relationships, more specifically, to the relationships between humans and dogs. The paper intends to highlight the ways in which the fictional texts encode domesticity, betrayal and remorse – a “biteback”, according to felicitous ethymology – as perspectives through which to discuss biopower, class, gender , ethnic explotation and violence.
Omar Thomaz (University of Campinas)
Paper short abstract:
In this essay, based on reports written between 1974 and 1977, memoirs, press articles and a novel, we will try to describe the final days of the Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique with regard to the relations between people and animals.
Paper long abstract:
Lourenço Marques was considered, in the Portuguese late-colonial context, a kind of jewel of the colonial empire. Wide, tree-lined avenues on a beautiful hill on the edge of the Indian Ocean guaranteed an excellent quality of life for most of the population of European origin. The presence of Indians, Chinese and Greeks blended with African forced labor in a cosmopolitan and violent scenario. In its first decades of being allowed, hunting of large animals took place in areas very close to the city, which had an imposing Zoo and the view of the Elephant Reserve on the other side of the bay.
In this essay, based on reports written between 1974 and 1977, memoirs, press articles and a novel, we will try to describe the final days of the Portuguese colonialism in Mozambique with regard to the relations between people and animals. We shall see that in the months following April 25, 1974, one of the aspects that the escape of a significant part of the white population of the city assumed was the abandonment of dogs and cats, eventually murdered in the moments of heightened conflict between whites and blacks, in the same way as would happen to farm animals in the suburbs of the city. The animals in Zoo of the city that would be renamed Maputo in 1976 would suffer a progressive and tragic abandonment with the end of the colonial world that saw it first emerge. Finally, the elephant herds in the south of Maputo province would be victims of the tremendous civil war that ravaged the region a few years after the independence of the country.