Journal article
Natural Science under Partus Sequitur Ventrem
The Eighteenth century (Lubbock), Vol.63(3-4), pp.169-183
01 Sep 2022
Abstract
This article considers entomologist Maria Sibylla Merian's 1705 Suriname illustrated naturalist study, Metamorphosis insectorum Surinamensium, as a text about the brutality of reproductive politics under colonialism and slavery. In the eighteenth-century, the Caribbean was foundational within a global commercial system of knowledge production, in which the exchange of specimens, agricultural commodities, and curiosity collections produced capital, status, and prestige. European conceptions of the natural world were fundamentally shaped by capitalist models in which flora and fauna in the colonies were divested from the conditions of their classification and ordering. Across the sixty engraved plates printed in Metamorphosis, insect husbandry and breeding, the lifecycles of fauna, and ecological relations of heredity serve as a façade for the social and material conditions of slavery. Through close readings of Merian's engraved plates and transcribed narratives of free and enslaved African and Indigenous women, this article argues that the beauty of Merian's Suriname book, as well as its intricate production history, both obscures and furthers the text's underlying violence. Though it has been three hundred years since Merian's Metamorphosis was first published, the obscuring beauty of her illustrated work continues to haunt popular narratives of the history of science.
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Details
- Title
- Natural Science under Partus Sequitur Ventrem
- Creators
- Elizabeth Polcha - Drexel University, Center for Science, Technology, and Society
- Publication Details
- The Eighteenth century (Lubbock), Vol.63(3-4), pp.169-183
- Publisher
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Number of pages
- 17
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- English and Philosophy; Center for Science, Technology, and Society
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:001252689400002
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85194063673
- Other Identifier
- 991022053435104721