The obvious and boring choice would have been to exhibit books and articles, plates from books, and painted portraits of scientists. But the problem with this is not only whether it would command our visual interest. This approach would represent the study of nature in a very particular way, re-enforcing the idea that scientific inquiry reduces to certain artefacts, to the products of scientific research. The article and the book represent only that last stage of inquiry where knowledge of nature and natural history arrives in the safe haven of a predominantly white and predominantly male academic setting. By focusing on that last stage, an exhibition would simply re-iterate the value system of that academic setting rather than provide a vivid representation of the many practices which contribute to the production of knowledge.
What are we to make of the fact, Jane therefore asks, that the white male authors of these books were taught by black slaves, that Indian guides took them through forests, that women painted the idyllic botanical background to their sublime scenes of natural drama? And how can we show that the various cosmologies of white, black, Indian males and females can all be considered as somewhat 'scientific,' somewhat ritualitisc, somewhat folkloristic?
Much of Jane's ingenious solution to those problems is on display at the McKissick museum's exhibit Knowing Nature - Natural History Study in a Multicultural South, 1560-1860. Suffice it to say that Jane found the curio-cabinet as a powerful central metaphor for the exhibition. On her representation, the study of nature is not organized by white male research agendas, nor is it organized by the embodied skills and rituals of natives. Instead, it is organized by the artefacts themselves which serve as nodes in a network of activities. There is corn, for example, and the various practices and activities that revolved around it. And then there is tobacco. Or the South Carolina Parakeet. Or toxic plants. The exhibit lets us discover varied responses to nature, how they diverge and intersect, how they culminate in books and plates, how they culminate in medical practices, or how they occasion festivals. I highly recommend the exhibition to anyone who hasn't seen it, both for its methodology and for its richly textured presentation.
Alfred Nordmann
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This page last updated September 15th, 1997. It is maintained by the Philosophy Department. © 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of South Carolina. Credits.