I've been away, and pondering on this notion of natural history (since I'm writing a thesis on Adorno's take on it). A new found fascination for animal classification and the natural world as object of study is burgeoning, though these pictures don't really reflect that as they are still very romantic and I'm not sure they pull off any convincing scientific objectivity. Wow, without even trying the dualism/opposition is set up! It's not a dualism that I'm interested in - the affirmation of an opposition between subjective and scientific ways of seeing the natural world. It's the entwinement of the two that is interesting, triggering thoughts on culture/nature as one and semiotics.
I'm thinking to keep and collect the references to NH and animals... see what they grow into. Reading Afterall today, I was enjoying this article by Francis McKee on Minerva Cuevas: Anarchy in the Hive, with its introductory discussion of a cultural tradition of anthropomorphism being replaced by science, which does of course mean that science has retained something of the function of the old anthropomorphism to society, whatever that was.
I wonder if Adorno ever read Gilbert White's "Natural History of Selborne" (1796)?
ReplyDeleteMmm. I suspect not. To Adorno, the ascent of science since the enlightenment is part of the increasing nominalism and rationalism of society: the need to rationalize the relations of things as being of empirical and scientific study and not according to a more ancient order. That which gets named in this new order is what we have decided is worth being named - the politics of proper names...
ReplyDeleteI however, am very interested to read White. Thanks.