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Short abstract:

This paper concerns how an intentional and strategic "politics of disarticulation" made "bodies without history" in the face of resistance and protest by kin and (descendant) communities in 18-19th c. anatomical collections, with implications for contemporary valuations of human remains in museums.

Long abstract:

Historical anatomical collections are increasingly subject to calls to empower descendant communities to decide the fate of ancestral remains, or to calls to honor known or presumed wishes of deceased individuals regarding their bodies. However, records of human remains in publications, catalogues, and museum documentation are often missing, sparse, or vague – although exceptional cases contain detailed information on the identity of those whose remains were collected and how they got there. I argue that some disparities in documentation of historical anatomical collections in the late 18th and 19th centuries in the U.S.A., U.K., and northern continental Europe are traces of a “politics of disarticulation”, processes actively and strategically detaching dead bodies from identities and social relations. Here I document the intentional concealment or distortion by anatomical collectors of the identities of the remains they collected in the face of resistance or protest from the deceased’s kin or community, manifest both in “anatomy riots” proximate to medical schools and in acts of resistance by Indigenous communities to colonial graverobbing. The cases examined here demonstrate how power relations influenced what information anatomical collectors recorded and published, urging a critical and contextual reading of documentation of anatomical collections, and showing how the documentary anonymity of these remains is by design. I will conclude with reflections on how this history of the ethical and political stakes of disarticulating identities from bodies in anatomical collections bears upon present calls for reevaluating the status of human remains in museum and university collections.