BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
PRODID:-//Talks.cam//talks.cam.ac.uk//
X-WR-CALNAME:Talks.cam
BEGIN:VEVENT
SUMMARY:Romanticism\, aesthetics and violence in natural history - Pratik 
 Chakrabarti (University of Kent)
DTSTART:20130218T130000Z
DTEND:20130218T141500Z
UID:TALK42485@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:29667
DESCRIPTION:In recent years\, natural history has increasingly being seen 
 in romantic and exotic terms\, as the exploration of protean and curious k
 nowledge of nature. In doing so\, we risk the danger of returning to a 19t
 h century understanding of science as creative\, visually brilliant\, hist
 orically rich and intellectually stimulating epistemology. This paper seek
 s to get out of this Internalist bind by using violence as a conceptual to
 ol. Violence has provided important clues to the history of science and th
 is paper returns to violence in search for a new edge in writing the histo
 ry of nature.\n\nIt uses two different case studies\; first the practices 
 of poisoning and medical botany in the West Indian plantations in the eigh
 teenth century\, and second\, the study of snakes and venoms by British sc
 ientists in India in the nineteenth century at a same time when snakes wer
 e destroyed as part of colonial state policies. On the one hand\, this pap
 er shows how the social history of the plantations and of the transformati
 on of Indian wilderness translated into intellectual and aesthetic practic
 es. On the other\, it highlights the enmeshing of epistemological and phys
 ical violence\; a form of violence that took place simultaneous to and was
  engendered in the appropriation of nature and the making of natural histo
 rical knowledge.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
END:VEVENT
END:VCALENDAR