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SUMMARY:Colonial classification - Khadija Carroll La (Department of Histor
 y and Philosophy of Science)
DTSTART:20120510T153000Z
DTEND:20120510T170000Z
UID:TALK37593@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Karin Ekholm
DESCRIPTION:Indigenous environmental knowledge and language was recorded i
 n the field records of natural historians and the artists they employed. T
 hese indigenous classifications remain in those expedition notes as they w
 ere excluded from dominant scientific systems when the information returne
 d to European metropolitan centres. This paper retrieves and interprets id
 eas of this kind\, from natural historical collections gathered in southea
 stern Australia in the 19th century.\n\nPresenting the photographic encycl
 opedia _Australien in 142 Photographischen Abbildungen_\, I argue that its
  author's career (Wilhelm von Blandowski\, 1822–1878) failed precisely b
 ecause he tried to foreground Aboriginal classification in comparative and
  metropolitan\, as well as particularly Australian\, contexts. For instanc
 e\, Blandowski illustrated new types of fish in 1857 based on indigenous t
 axonomies guided by maturation stages rather than species. The Philosophic
 al Society subsequently censored Blandowski\; he was sacked from his posit
 ions as the first director of Museum Victoria and the first Government Zoo
 logist of Victoria\, and died aged 56 in a psychiatric asylum in Bunzlau. 
 I contextualize his findings as efforts to document and mobilize indigenou
 s models within the politics of colonial classification and theorize his p
 articular brand of troubled humanism\, antiquarian imagery\, and Romantic 
 _Naturphilosophie_ in the wake of the Humboldts.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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