Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936 Author(S): Donna Haraway Source: Social Text, No

Home , Caught in a Moment, Mornings on Horseback, Teddy (cigarette), Teddy bear

Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908-1936 Author(s): Donna Haraway Source: Social Text, No. 11 (Winter, 1984-1985), pp. 20-64 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/466593 . Accessed: 10/04/2013 10:34

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This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TeddyBear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Gardenof Eden,New York City, 1908-1936 DONNA HARAWAY

"Natureteaches law and order and respectfor property. If these people cannot go to the country, thenthe Museum mustbring nature to the city."'

"I startedmy thoughtson the legend of Romulusand Remus who had been suckled by a wolfand foundedRome, but in thejungle I had mylittle Lord Greystokesuckled by an ape."2 I. The AkeleyAfrican Hall andthe Theodore Roosevelt Memorial in the Ameri- can Museumof Natural History: Experience In theheart of New York City stands Central Park--the urban garden designed by FrederickLaw Olmstedto heal the over-wroughtor decadentcity dweller witha prophylacticdose of nature. Immediately across from the park the Theodore RooseveltMemorial presides as the centralbuilding of the AmericanMuseum of NaturalHistory, a monumentalreproduction of the Gardenof Eden. In the Garden,Western Man may beginagain the firstjourney, the firstbirth from withinthe sanctuaryof nature.An institutionfounded just afterthe CivilWar anddedicated to populareducation and scientific research, the American Museum ofNatural History is theplace to undertakethis genesis, this regeneration. Passing throughthe Museum's Roosevelt Memorial atrium into the African Hall, opened in 1936,the ordinarycitizen may entera privilegedspace and time:the Age of Mammalsin the heartof Africa,scene of theorigin of our species.3A hope is implicitin everyarchitectural detail: in immediatevision of theorigin, perhaps the futurecan be fixed.By savingthe beginnings, the end can be achievedand the presentcan be transcended.African Hall offersa uniquecommunion with natureat itshighest and yet most vulnerable moment, the moment of the interface of theAge ofMammals with the Age ofMan. Thiscommunion is offeredthrough thesense of vision by the craft of taxidermy. Restorationof the origin, the task of genetic hygiene, is achievedin Carl Akeley's AfricanHall by an art thatbegan for him in the 1880swith the crudestuffing of P.T. Barnum'selephant, Jumbo, who had been rundown by a railroadtrain, theemblem of theIndustrial Revolution. The end of histask came in the1920s, withhis exquisitemounting of theGiant of Karisimbi,the lone silverback male gorillathat dominates the dioramadepicting the site of Akeley'sown gravein themountainous rain forest of the Congo, today's Zaire. So itcould inhabit Akeley's monumentto thepurity of nature,this gorilla was killedin 1921,the same year the Museumhosted the Second InternationalCongress of Eugenics.From the

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarchy 21 dead bodyof the primate, Akeley crafted something finer than the living organism; he achievedits true end, a newgenesis. Decadence-the threatof thecity, civilization,machine-was stayed in thepolitics of eugenicsand theart of taxidermy. And theMuseum fulfilled its scientific purpose of conservation,of preservation, of theproduction of permanence. Life was transfiguredin the principal civic arena of Westernpolitical theory-the natural body of man.4 Behindevery mounted animal, bronze sculpture, or photographlies a profusion of objectsand social interactionsamong people and otheranimals, which in the end can be recomposedto tell a biographyembracing major themes for 20th- centuryUnited States. But the recompositionproduces a storythat is reticent, even mute,about Africa. H.F. Osborn,president of theAmerican Museum from 1908-33,thought Akeley was Africa's biographer. This essay will argue that Akeley is America'sbiographer, or rathera biographerof partof North America. Akeley thoughtin AfricanHall the visitorwould experiencenature at its momentof highestperfection. He did not dreamthat he craftedthe meansto experience a historyof race, sex, and class in New York Citythat reached to Nairobi.He thoughthe was tellingthe unifiedtruth of naturalhistory. His storywill be recomposedto tella tale of thecommerce of powerand knowledgein whiteand malesupremacist monopoly capitalism, fondly named Teddy Bear Patriarchy.5 To enterthe Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, the visitor must pass by a James Earle Fraserequestrian statue of Teddy majesticallymounted as a fatherand protectorbetween two "primitive"men, an AmericanIndian and an African, bothstanding and dressedas "savages."The facadeof thememorial, funded by theState of NewYork and awardedto theAmerican Museum of Natural History on the basis of its competitiveapplication in 1923,is classical,with four Ionic columns54 feethigh topped by statuesof thegreat explorers Boone, Audubon, Lewis,and Clark.Reminiscent of coins,bas-relief seals of theUnited States and of the LibertyBell are stampedon the frontpanels. Inscribedacross the top are thewords TRUTH, KNOWLEDGE,VISION and thededication to Roosevelt as "a greatleader of theyouth of America,in energyand fortitudein the faith of ourfathers, in defenseof the rights of the people, in thelove and conservation of natureand of the best in lifeand in man."Youth, paternal solicitude, virile defenseof democracy,and intenseemotional connection to natureare the un- mistakeablethemes.6 The buildingpresents itself in manyvisible faces. It is at once a Greektemple, a bank,a scientificresearch institution, a popular museum, a neoclassicaltheatre. One is enteringa space thatsacralizes democracy, Protestant Christianity, adventure,science, and commerce.It is impossiblenot to feelentering this building thata dramawill be enactedinside. Experience in thispublic monument will be intenselypersonal; this structure is one of NorthAmerica's spaces forjoining theduality of self and community. Justinside the portals,the visitorenters the firstsacred space wheretransforma-

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tionof consciousnessand moralstate will begin.' The wallsare inscribedwith Roosevelt'swords under the headingsNature, Youth, Manhood, the State.The seekerbegins in Nature:"There are no wordsthat can tell the hiddenspirit of thewilderness, that can revealits mystery.... The nationbehaves well if it treats its naturalresources as assetswhich it mustturn over to the nextgeneration increasedand not impairedin value."Nature is mysteryand resource,a critical unionin thehistory of civilization.The visitor--necessarilya boy in moralstate, no matterwhat accidents of biologyor social gendermight have pertainedprior to theexcursion to themuseum- progressesthrough Youth: "I wantto see you game boys...andgentle and tender....Courage, hard work, self mastery, and in- telligenteffort are essentialto a successfullife." Youth mirrors Nature, its pair across the room.The nextstage is Manhood:"Only those are fitto live who do not fearto die and none are fitto die who have shrunkfrom the joy of life and theduty of life."Opposite is itsspiritual pair, the State: "Aggressive fighting forthe rightis the noblestsport the worldaffords.... If I mustchoose between righteousnessand peace, I choose righteousness."The wallsof the atriumare fullof muralsdepicting Roosevelt's life, the perfect illustration of his words.His lifeis inscribedin stonein a peculiarlyliteral way appropriate to thismuseum. Onesees the man hunting big game in Africa, conducting diplomacy in the Philippines and China,helping boy and girlscouts, receiving academic honors, and presiding overthe Panama Canal ("The landdivided, the world united"). Finally,in the atriumalso are the strikinglife-size bronze sculptures by Carl Akeleyof theNandi spearmen of East Africaon a lionhunt. These Africanmen and thelion they kill symbolize for Akeley the essence of the hunt, of what would laterbe named"man the hunter." In discussingthe lion spearers, Akeley always referredto themas men.In everyother circumstance he referredto adultmale Africansas boys.Roosevelt, the modernsportsman, and the "primitive"Nandi sharein the spiritualtruth of manhood.The noble sculpturesexpress Akeley's greatlove forRoosevelt, his friend and huntingcompanion in Africain 1910for thekilling of one ofthe elephants which Akeley mounted for the museum. Akeley saidhe wouldfollow Roosevelt anywhere because of his "sincerity and integrity."8 In themuseum shop in the atrium in the 1980s, one may purchase T.R.: Champion ofthe Strenuous Life, a photographicbiography of the 26th president. Every aspect of the fulfillmentof manhoodis depictedwithin, even death is labelled"The GreatAdventure." One learnsthat after his defeatin thepresidential campaign of 1912,Roosevelt undertook the explorationof the Amazoniantributary, the Riverof Doubt,under the auspices of theAmerican Museum of NaturalHistory and theBrazilian Government. It was a perfecttrip. The explorersnearly died, the riverhad neverbefore been seen by whitemen, and the greatstream, no longerdoubtful, was renamedRio Rooseveltby the Brazilian State. In thepicture biography,which includes a printof the adventurers paddling their primitive dugout canoe (one assumesbefore starvation and junglefever attenuated the ardorof

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarchy 23 thephotographer in thisdesolate land), the former president of a greatindustrial powerexplains his returnto thewilderness: "I had to go. It was mylast chance to be a boy."9 The joiningof lifeand deathin theseicons of Roosevelt'sjourneys and in the architectureofhis stony memorial announces the central moral truth of this museum. This is the effectivetruth of manhood,the stateconferred on the visitorwho successfullypasses through the trial of the museum. The bodycan be transcended. Thisis thelesson Simone de Beuavoirso painfullyremembered in TheSecond Sex; man is the sex whichrisks life and in so doing,achieves his existence.In the upsidedown worldof Teddy Bear Patriarchy,it is in the craftof killingthat lifeis constructed,not in the accidentof personal,material birth. Roosevelt is clearlythe perfectlocus geniiand patronsaint for the museumand its taskof regenerationof a miscellaneous,incoherent urban public threatened with genetic and social decadence,threatened with the prolific bodies of thenew immigrants, threatenedwith the failure of manhood.'0 The AkeleyAfrican Hall itselfis simultaneouslya very strange place and an ordinaryexperience for literally millions of NorthAmericans over more than five decades.The typesof display in thishall spread all overthe country, and eventhe world,partly due to thecraftspeople Akeley himself trained. In the1980s sacrilege is perhapsmore evident than liminal experience of nature. What is theexperience ofNew York street-wise kids wired to Walkmanradios and passing the Friday after- nooncocktail bar by the lion diorama? These are the kids who came to themuseum to see thehigh tech Nature-Max films. But soon, for those not physically wired into thecommunication system of thelate 20thcentury, another time begins to take form.The AfricanHall was meantto be a timemachine, and itis." The individual is enteringthe Age of Mammals.But one is enteringalone, each individualsoul, as partof no stableprior community and withoutconfidence in thesubstance of one's body,in orderto be receivedinto a saved community.One beginsin the threateningchaos of theindustrial city, part of a horde,but here one willcome to belong,to findsubstance. No matterhow manypeople crowdthe great hall, the experienceis of individualcommunion with nature. The sacramentwill be enactedfor each worshipper;here is no natureconstituted from statistical reality and a probabilitycalculus. This is not a randomworld, populated by late 20th- centurycyborgs, for whom the threatof decadenceis a nostalgicmemory of a dimorganic past, but the moment of origin where nature and culture,private and public,profane and sacredmeet-a momentof incarnationin the encounterof manand animal. The Hall is darkened,lit onlyfrom the displaycases whichline the sidesof thespacious room. In the centerof the Hall is a groupof elephantsso lifelike thata moment'sfantasy suffices for awakening a premonitionof their movement, perhapsan angrycharge at one's personalintrusion. The elephantsstand like a high altar in the nave of a great cathedral. That impressionis strengthenedby

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 24 Haraway one'sgrowing consciousness of thedioramas that line both sides of the Main Hall, as well as thesides of the spaciousgallery above. Lit fromwithin, the dioramas containdetailed and life-likegroups of largeAfrican mammals-game for the wealthyNew Yorkhunters who financed this experience; they are calledhabitat groupsand are theculmination of the taxidermist's art. Called by Akeley a "peep- hole intothe jungle,""2 each dioramapresents itself as a side altar,a stage,an unspoiledgarden in nature, a hearthfor home and family. As an altar,each diorama tellsa partof the story of salvation history; each has itsspecial emblems indicating particularvirtues. Above all, invitingthe visitorto sharein its revelation,wach tellsthe truth. Each offersa vision.Each is a windowonto knowledge. A dioramais eminentlya story,a partof naturalhistory. The storyis toldin thepages of nature,read by the naked eye. The animalsin thehabitat groups are capturedin a photographer'svision and a sculptor'svision. They are actorsin a moralityplay on thestage of nature, and the eye is thecritical organ. Each diorama containsa smallgroup of animalsin theforeground, in themidst of exactrepro- ductionsof plants,insects, rocks, soil. Paintingsreminiscent of Hollywoodmovie setart curve in back of the group and up to theceiling, creating a greatpanoramic visionof a sceneon theAfrican continent. Each paintingis minutelyappropriate to theparticular animals in theforeground. Among the 28 dioramasin theHall, all the majorgeographic areas of the Africancontinent and mostof the large mammalsare represented. Gradually,the viewer begins to articulatethe content of the story. Most groups are made up of onlya fewanimals, usually including a largeand vigilantmale, a femaleor two,and one baby.Perhaps there are some otheranimals-a male adolescentmaybe, never an aged or deformedbeast. The animalsin the group forma developmentalseries, such that the group can representthe essence of the speciesas a dynamic,living whole. The principlesof organicism(i.e., of thelaws of organicform) rule the composition.'" There is no need forthe multiplication of specimensbecause the series is a truebiography. Each animalis an organism, and thegroup is an organism.Each organismis a vitalmoment in thenarrative ofnatural history, condensing the flow of time into the harmony of developmental form.The groupsare peaceful, composed, illuminated--in "brightest Africa." Each groupforms a communitystructured by a naturaldivision of function;the whole animalin the wholegroup is nature'struth. The physiologicaldivision of labor thathas informedthe history of biology is embodiedin thesehabitat groups which tell of communitiesand families,peacefully and hierarchicallyordered. Sexual specializationof function-the organic bodily and social sexual division of labor- is unobtrusivelyubiquitous, unquestionable, right. The Africanbuffalo, the white and black rhinos,the lion,the zebra, the mountain nyala, the okapi,the lesser koodo all findtheir place in the differentiatedand developmentalharmony of nature.The racialdivision of labor,the familial progress from youthful native to adultwhite man, was announced at thesteps leading to thebuilding itself; Akeley's

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear PatriarchJy 25 originalplan forAfrican Hall includedbas-relief sculptures of all the"primitive" tribesof Africacomplementing the other stories of naturalwild life in theHall. Organichierarchies are embodied in every organ in the articulation of natural order in themuseum.14" Butthere is a curiousnote in the story; it begins to dominateas sceneafter scene drawsthe visitorinto itselfthrough the eyes of the animalsin the tableaux." Each dioramahas at least one animalthat catches the viewer'sgaze and holds it in communion.The animalis vigilant,ready to soundan alarmat theintrusion of man,but ready also to holdforever the gaze of meeting,the moment of truth, theoriginal encounter. The momentseems fragile, the animals about to disappear, the communionabout to break;the Hall threatensto dissolveinto the chaos of theAge ofMan. Butit does not.The gaze holds,and thewary animal heals those who will look. There is no impedimentto thisvision. There is no mediation, nothingbetween the viewer and theanimal. The glassfront of the diorama forbids thebody's entry, but the gaze inviteshis visualpenetration. The animalis frozen in a momentof supremelife, and man is transfixed.No merelyliving organism couldaccomplish this act. The specularcommerce between man and animal at the interfaceof two evolutionary ages is completed.The animalsin thedioramas have transcendedmortal life, and hold theirpose forever,with muscles tensed, noses aquiver,veins in the face and delicateankles and foldsin the suppleskin all prominent.No visitorto a merelyphysical Africa could see theseanimals. This is a spiritualvision made possible only by their death and literalre-presentation. Only thencould the essence of their life be present.Only then could the hygiene of nature curethe sick vision of civilized man. Taxidermy fulfills the fatal desire to represent, to be whole;it is a politicsof reproduction. There is one dioramathat stands out fromall theothers, the gorilla group. It is not simplythat this group is one of the fourlarge corner displays. There is somethingspecial in the paintingwith the steamingvolcano in the background and lake Kivu below,in thepose of theenigmatic large silver back risingabove thegroup in a chestbeating gesture of alarmand an unforgettablegaze in spite of thehandicap of glasseyes. Here thepainter's art was particularlysuccessful in conveyingthe sense of limitless vision, of a panoramawithout end around the focal lushgreen garden. This is thescene thatAkeley longed to returnto. It is where he died,feeling he was at homeas in no otherplace on earth.It is wherehe first killeda gorillaand feltthe enchantment of a perfectgarden. After his firstvisit in 1921,he wasmotivated to convincethe Belgian government to makeof this area the firstAfrican national park to ensurean absolutesanctuary for the gorilla in thefuture. But the viewer does notknow these things when he seesthe five animals in a naturalisticsetting. It is plainthat he is lookingat a naturalfamily of close humanrelatives, but that is notthe essence of thisdiorama. The viewersees that the elephants,the lion,the rhino,and the waterhole group--withits peaceful panoramaof all thegrassland species, includingthe carnivores, caught in a moment

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 26 Haraway outsidethe Fall-all thesehave been a kindof preparation,not so muchfor the gorillagroup, as forthe Giant of Karisimbi. This double for man stands in a unique personalindividuality, his fixed face molded forever from the death mask cast from hiscorpse by a taxidermistinthe Kivu Mountains. Here is naturalman, immediately known.His imagemay be purchasedon a picturepost card at the desk in the Rooseveltatrium. [Figure 1, publicationcourtesy of the AmericanMuseum of NaturalHistory. ] It wouldhave been inappropriateto meetthe gorilla anywhere else buton the mountain.Frankenstein and his monster had Mont Blanc for their encounter; Akeley and thegorilla first saw each otheron thelush volcanoes of centralAfrica. The glanceproved deadly for them both, just as theexchange between Victor Frankenstein andhis creature froze each of them into a dialecticof immolation. But Frankenstein tastedthe bitter failure of his fatherhood in his own and his creature's death; Akeley resurrectedhis creature and his authorship in both the sanctuary of Parc Albert and theAfrican Hall ofthe American Museum of Natural History. Mary Shelley's story maybe readas a dissectionof the deadly logic of birthing in patriarchy at thedawn ofthe age ofbiology; her tale is a nightmareabout the crushing failure of the project ofman. But the taxidermist labored to restore manhood at the interface of the Age of Mammalsand theAge of Man. Akeleyachieved the fulfillment of a sportsmanin TeddyBear Patriarchy--he died a fatherto thegame, and their sepulcher is named afterhim, the Akeley African Hall. The gorillawas thehighest quarry of Akeley's life as artist,scientist, and hunter, butwhy? He saidhimself (through his ghostwriter, the invisible Dorothy Greene- is sheever absent?), "To me thegorilla made a muchmore interesting quarry than lions,elephants, or anyother African game, for the gorilla is stillcomparatively unknown."''6But so was thecolobus monkey or anyof a longlist of animals. What qualitiesdid it take to makean animal"game"? One answeris similarityto man,the ultimatequarry, a worthyopponent. The idealquarry is the "other," the natural self. Thatis one reasonFrankenstein needed to hunt down his creature. The obscurityof thegorilla was deepenedand made sacredby thisquestion, the title of Akeley's chapterurging scientific research in the new Parc Albert, "Is thegorilla almost a man?" Hunter,scientist, and artist all soughtthe gorilla for his revelation about the nature andfuture of manhood. Akeley compared and contrasted his quest for the gorilla with theFrench-American's, Paul du Chaillu,the first white man to killa gorilla,in 1855, eightyears after it was "discovered." Du Chaillu'saccount of the encounter stands as theclassic portrayal of a depravedand vicious beast killed in the heroic, dangerous encounter.Akeley disbelieved du Chailluand told his own readers how many times du Chaillu'spublishers made him rewrite until the beast was fierce enough. Franken- steinplugged up hisears rather than listen to his awful son claim a gentleand peace lovingsoul. Akeleywas certainhe wouldfind a nobleand peacefulbeast; so he broughthis guns, cameras, and white women into the garden to hunt, wondering what distancemeasured courage in theface of a chargingalter-ego.

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Like du Chaillu,Akeley first came upon a signof the animal,a footprint,or in Akeley'scase a handprint,before meeting face to face. "I'll neverforget it. In thatmud hole were the marksof fourgreat knuckles where the gorilla had placedhis hand on theground. There is no othertrack like this in the world--there is no otherhand in theworld so large.....AsI lookedat thattrack I lostthe faith on whichI had broughtmy party to Africa.Instinctively I took my gun from the gunboy."" Later, Akeley told that the handprint, not the face, gave him his greatest thrill.In thehand the trace of kinship writ large and terriblestruck the craftsman. Butthen, on thefirst day out from camp in thegorilla country, Akeley did meet a gorillaface to face,the creaturehe had soughtfor decades, prevented from earliersuccess by maulingelephants, stingy millionaires, and worldwar. Within minutesof his first glimpse of the features of the face of an animalhe longedmore thananything to see,Akeley had killed him, not in the face of a charge,but through a denseforest screen within which the animalhid, rushed, and shookbranches. Surely,the taxidermist did notwant to risklosing his specimen, for perhaps there wouldbe no more.He knewthe Prince of Sweden was just then leaving Africa after havingshot fourteen of thegreat apes in thesame region.The animalsmust be waryof new hunters; collecting might be verydifficult. Whateverthe exact logic that ruled the first shot, precisely placed into the aorta, thetask that followed was arduousindeed-skinning the animal and transporting variousremains back to camp.The corpsehad nearlymiraculously lodged itself againstthe trunk of a treeabove a deep chasm.As a resultof Herculeanlabors, whichincluded casting the death mask picturedin Lions, Gorillas,and their Neighbors,l'Akeley was readyfor his nextgorilla hunt on thesecond day after shootingthe first ape. The pace he was settinghimself was grueling, dangerous for a manominously weakened by tropicalfevers. "But science is a jealous mistress and takeslittle account of a man'sfeelings.`"' The secondquest resulted in two missedmales, a dead female,and herfrightened baby speared by the porters and guides.Akeley and his partyhad killedor attemptedto killevery ape theyhad seensince arriving in thearea. On his thirdday out,Akeley took his camerasand orderedhis guides to lead towardeasier country. With a baby,female, and male, he could do a groupeven if he gotno morespecimens. Now it was time to hunt with the camera.20 "Almost before I knewit I wasturning the crank of the camera on twogorillas in full view with a beau- tifulsetting behind them. I do notthink at thetime I appreciatedthe fact that I was doinga thingthat had never been done before."2' But the photogenic baby and mother and theaccompanying small group of othergorillas had becomeboring after two hundredfeet of film, so Akeleyprovoked an actionshot by standing up. Thatwas interestingfor a bit."So finally,feeling that I hadabout all I couldexpect from that band,I pickedout one that I thoughtto be an immaturemale. I shotand killed it and found,much to myregret, that it was a female.As itturned out, however, she was such a splendidlarge specimen that the feeling of regret was considerablylessened."22

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Akeleycommented on hissatisfaction with the triumphs of hisgun and camera and decidedit was timeto ask therest of the partywaiting in a campbelow to come up to huntgorillas. He was gettingconsiderably sicker and fearedhe would not fulfillhis promiseto his friendsto give themgorilla. His wholepurpose in takingwhite women into gorilla country depended on meetingthis commitment: "As a naturalistinterested in preservingwild life, I was glad to do anythingthat mightmake killing animals less attractive."23 The bestthing to reducethe potency ofgame for heroic hunting is todemonstrate that inexperienced women could safely do thesame thing. Science had alreadypenetrated; women could follow. Two daysof huntingresulted in HerbertBradley's shooting a largesilver back, the one Akeleycompared to JackDempsey and mountedas the lone male of Karisimbiin AfricanHall. It was nowpossible to admitanother level of feeling: "As he lay at thebase of thetree, it tookall one's scientificardour to keepfrom feelinglike a murderer.He was a magnificentcreature with the face of an amiable giantwho woulddo no harmexcept perhaps in selfdefense or in defenseof his family."24If he had succeededin his abortedhunt, Victor Frankenstein could havespoken those lines. The photographin theAmerican Museum film archive of Carl Akeley,Herbert Bradley,and MaryHastings Bradley holding up thegorilla head and corpseto be recordedby the camerais an unforgettableimage [Figure 2]. The face of the dead giantlooks like Bosch's conception of pain,and thelower jaw hangsslack, heldup byAkeley's hand. The bodylooks bloated and utterly heavy. Mary Bradley gazes smilinglyat thefaces of themale hunters,her own eyesaverted from the camera.Akeley and Herbert Bradley look directly at thecamera in an unshuttered acceptanceof theiract. Two Africans,a youngboy and a youngman, perch in a treeabove thescene, one lookingat thecamera, one at thehunting party. The contrastof thisscene of deathwith the diorama framing the giant of Karisimbi mountedin New York is total;the animal came to lifeagain, this time immortal Akeleyfelt he was in themost beautiful spot on earth,and decidedthe scene of thedeath of Bradley'sgorilla must be paintedfor the gorilla group in African Hall.There was no moreneed to kill after another day's observation of a multi-male, multi-femalegroup; instead, the lastcapture was withthe camera. "So theguns wereput behindand thecamera pushed forward and we had theextreme satis- factionof seeing the band of gorillas disappear over the crest of the opposite ridge nonethe worse for having met with white men that morning. It was a wonderful finishto a wonderfulgorilla hunt."25 Once dominationis complete,conservation is urgent.But perhaps preservation comes too late. What followedwas the returnto the UnitedStates and activework for an absolutegorilla sanctuary providing facilities for scientific research. Akeley feared thegorilla would be drivento extinction before it was adequately known to science.26 His healthweakened but his spirit at itsheight, Akeley lived to returnto Kivuto preparepaintings and othermaterial for the gorilla group diorama. Between 1921

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarchy 29 and 1926,he mountedhis precious gorilla specimens, producing that extraordinary silverback whose gaze dominates African Hall. When he didreturn to Kivu in 1926, hewas so exhaustedfrom his exertions to reach his goal that he died on November 17, 1926,almost immediately after he andhis party arrived on theslopes of Mt. Mikena, "in theland of his dreams."27 Akeley'swas a literalscience dedicatedto the preventionof decadence,of biologicaldecay. His gravewas builtin theheart of the rain forest on thevolcano, where"all thefree wild things of the forest have perpetual sanctuary."28 Mary Jobe Akeleydirected the digging of an eightfoot vault in lava graveland rock.The hole was linedwith closely set woodenbeams. The coffinwas craftedon thesite out of solidnative mahogany and linedwith heavy galvanized steel salvaged from theboxes used to pack specimensto protectthem from insect and otherdamage. Then the coffinwas upholsteredwith camp blankets.A slab of cementten by twelvefeet and fiveinches thick was pouredon top of the graveand inscribed withthe name and dateof deathof thefather of thegame. The cementhad been carriedon porters'backs all theway from the nearest source in Kibale,Uganda. The menapparently ditched the first heavy load in theface of thedifficult trails; theywere sent back fora secondeffort. An eightfoot stockade fence was built aroundthe grave to deter buffalo and elephant from desecrating the site. "Dersheid, Raddatz,Bill and I workedfive days and fivenights to givehim the besthome we could build,and he was buriedas I thinkhe wouldhave likedwith a simple readingservice and a prayer."29The gravewas inviolate,and the reincarnation of the naturalself would be immortalin AfricanHall. In 1979,"grave robbers, Zairoisepoachers, violated the site and carried off [Akeley's] skeleton....," II. Carl E. Akeley(1864-1926), the Gun, the Camera, and theHunt for Truth: Biography

"Forthis untruthful picture Akeley substitutes a real gorilla."31

"Ofthe two I wasthe savage and the aggressor."32

Carl Akeley'sboss at the AmericanMuseum, H.F. Osborn,characterized the taxidermistas a sculptorand a biographerof Africanlife. Akeley sought to craft a truelife, a uniquelife. The lifeof Africabecame his life, his telos. But it is not possibleto tellhis life from a singlepoint of view.There is a polyphonyof stories, and theydo not harmonize.Each sourcefor telling the storyof Akeley'slife speaksin an authoritativemode, but the historian felt compelled to comparethe versions,and thento cast Akeley'sstory in an ironicmode, the registermost avoidedby hersubject. Akeley wanted to presentan immediatevision; I would like to dissectand make visiblelayer after layer of mediation.I wantto show thereader how the experience of the diorama grew from the safari in specific times and places, how the camera and the gun togetherare the conduitsfor the spiritual

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 30 Harawav commerceof manand nature,how biography is woveninto and froma socialand politicaltissue. I wantto show how the stunning animals of Akeley's achieved dream in AfricanHall are theproduct of particulartechnologies, i.e., thetechniques of effectingmeanings. Technologies are concretizedmoments of humanpossibility. Marxcalled them dead labor,needing the animation of living labor. True enough, His gravewas builtin theheart of the rain forest on thevolcano, but the relations of lifeand deathin technologiesof enforcedmeaning, or realistrepresentation, are notso straightforward,even for early 20th-century organic beings, much less forourselves, late 20th-century cyborgs, reading stories about the dead craftsman and theobsolete craft of resurrection.33

LIFE STORIES

Accordingto theavailable plots in U.S. history,it is necessarythat Carl Akeley was bornon a farmin New York State of poor, but vigorous old (white)American stock.The momentof his birth was also necessary,1864, near the end of the Civil War.The timewas an endand a beginningfor so muchin North America, including thehistory of biologyand thestructure of wealthand social class. His boyhood was spentin hardfarm labor, in whichhe learnedself-reliance and skillwith tools andmachines. From the beginning he passed long hours alone watching and hunting thewildlife of New York.By theage of 13,aroused by a borrowedbook on the subject,Akeley was committed to thevocation of taxidermy. His vocation'sbiblio- genesiswas also ordainedby the plot.At thatage (or age 16 in someversions), he had a businesscard printedup. No Yankee boycould miss the connection of life'spurpose with business, although young Carl scarcely believed he couldmake his livingat such a craft.He tooklessons in painting,so thathe mightprovide realisticbackgrounds for the birdshe ceaselesslymounted. From the beginning Akeley'slife had a singlefocus: the capturingand representationof the nature he saw.On thispoint all theversions of Akeley's life concur. Afterthe crops were in, at theage of 19,Akeley set offfrom his father'sfarm "to get a widerfield for my efforts."34 First he triedto get a job witha local painterand interiordecorator whose hobby was taxidermy,but this man, David Bruce,directed the young man to an institutionwhich changed his life--Ward's NaturalScience Establishment inRochester, where Akeley would spend four years and forma friendshippregnant with consequences for the nascentscience of ecologyas itcame to be practicedin museum exhibition. Ward's provided mounted specimensand naturalhistory collections for practically all themuseums in the nation.Several important men in the historyof biologyand museologyin the UnitedStates passed throughthis curious institution, including Akeley's friend, William Morton Wheeler. Wheeler completed his eminentcareer in entymology at Harvard,a founderof the science of animalecology (which he called ethology- thescience ofthe character of nature) and a mentorin thephilosophy of science and of societyto thegreat organicists and conservativesocial philosophersin Harvard's

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarchy 31 biologicaland medicalestablishment.35 Wheeler was thena youngMilwaukee naturaliststeeped in German"kultur" who begantutoring the rustic Akeley for entryinto Yale's SheffieldScientific School. However,11 hoursof taxidermyin theday and longhours of studyproved too much;so highereducation was post- poned,later permanently in orderto followthe truer vocation of readingnature's bookdirectly. Akeleywas sorelydisappointed at Ward'sbecause business imperatives allowed no roomfor improvement of the craftof taxidermy.He feltanimals were "up- holstered."He developedhis own skilland techniquein spiteof the lack of en- couragement,and the lack of money,and got a chance forpublic recognition whenP.T. Barnum'sfamous elephant was rundown by a locomotivein Canada in 1885.Barnum did notwant to foregothe fame and profitfrom continuing to displaythe giant (who had died tryingto save a babyelephant, we are told),so Akeleyand a companionwere dispatched to Canada fromRochester to save the situation.Six butchersfrom a nearbytown helped with the rapidly rotting carcass; and whatthe young Akeley learned about very large mammal taxidermy from this experiencelaid thefoundation for his later revolutionary innovations in producing light,strong, life-like pachyderms. The popularpress followed the monumental mounting,and theday Jumbo was launchedin hisown railroad car intohis post- mortemcareer, half the population of Rochesterwitnessed the resurrection. The irstbig period of trial was overfor the young taxidermist. In 1885,Wheeler had returnedto Milwaukeeto teach highschool and soon tookup a curatorshipin the Milwaukee Museum of Natural History. Wheeler urged hisfriend to follow,hoping to continuehis tutoring and to secureAkeley commis- sionsfor specimens from the museum. At this time, museums did not generally have theirown taxidermy departments, although the years around 1890 were a period of floweringof taxidermictechnique in Britainand the UnitedStates. Akeley openedhis business shop on theWheeler family property, and he andthe naturalist spentlong hours discussing natural history, finding themselves in agreementboth aboutmuseum display and about the character of nature. The mostimportant credo forthem both was theneed to developscientific knowledge of thewhole animal in the wholegroup in nature-i.e., theywere committedorganicists. Wheeler soon became directorof the Milwaukeemuseum and gave Akeleysignificant support.Akeley had conceivedthe idea forhabitat groups and wishedto mount a seriesillustrating the fur-bearing animals of Wisconsin.His completedmuskrat group(1889), minus the painted backgrounds, was probablythe first mammalian habitatgroup anywhere. As a resultof a recommendationfrom Wheeler, in 1894the British Museum invitedAkeley to practicehis tradein thatworld-famous institution. On theway to London,Akeley visited the Field Museum in Chicago,met Daniel Giraud Elliot and acceptedhis offer of preparingthe large collection of specimens the museum had boughtfrom Ward's. In 1896, Akeley made his firstcollecting expedition to

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Africa,to BritishSomaliland, a tripthat opened a wholenew world to him.This was the firstof fivesafaris to Africa,each escalatinghis senseof the purityof thecontinent's vanishing wild life and theconviction that the meaning of hislife was itspreservation through transforming taxidermy into an art.He was againin Africafor the Field Museum in 1905,with his explorer/adventurer/authorwife, Delia, to collectelephants in BritishEast Africa.On thistrip Akeley escaped with hislife after killing a leopardin hand-to-fangcombat. In ChicagoAkeley spent four years largely at his own expensepreparing the justlyfamous Four Seasons deer dioramas depicting typical scenes in everydetail. In 1908,at theinvitation of thenew president, H.F. Osborn,who was anxiousto markhis office with the discovery of majornew scientific laws and departuresin museumexhibition and publiceducation, Akeley moved to New York and the AmericanMuseum of NaturalHistory in hope of preparinga majorcollection of largeAfrican mammals. From 1909-11 Akeley and Delia collectedin BritishEast Africa,a tripmarked by a huntwith Theodore Roosevelt and his son Kermit, whowere collecting for the Washington National Museum. The safariwas brought to a limpingconclusion by Carl's beingmauled by an elephant,thus delaying fulfillmentof his dreamof collectinggorillas. His plan forthe African Hall took shapeby 1911 and ruled his behavior thereafter. He spentWorld War I as a civilian AssistantEngineer to theMechanical and DevicesSection of the Army. He is said tohave refused a commissionin order to keep his freedom to speak freely to anyone in thehierarchy. Duringthe war, his mechanical genius had full scope, resulting in several patents in hisname. The themeof Akeleythe inventor recurs constantly in hislife story. Includedin hisroster of inventions, several of which involved subsequent business development,were a motionpicture camera, a cementgun, and severalstages of newtaxidermic processes, particularly methods of making manikins to go underthe animalskins and methodsof making highly naturalistic foliage. Withthe close of war,Akeley focused all hisenergy on gettingbacking for the AfricanHall. He neededmore than a milliondollars. Lecture tours, articles and a book, and endlesspromotion brought him into touch with the majorwealthy sportsmenof thestate, but sufficient financial commitment eluded him. In 1921, financinghalf the expense himself, Akeley left for Africa again, this time accom- paniedby a marriedcouple, their 5 yearold daughter,their governess, and Akeley's adultniece whom he had promisedto takehunting in Africa.Akeley felt bringing womenand childrento huntgorillas was the definitiveproof of thistheme of brightestAfrica, where the animalswere noble in defenseof theirfamilies, but neverwantonly ferocious. On thistrip, he collectedfive gorillas, with the help of theBradleys, once againnearly died from jungle fevers, and returned to New York determinedto achieve permanent conservation for the gorillas in the Belgian Congo. In 1924he marriedthe explorer/adventurer/authorMary L. Jobe,who accom- paniedhim on his lastadventure, the Akeley-Eastman-Pomeroy African Hall Ex-

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TeddyBear Patriarchy 33 pedition,that collected for 10 dioramasof the GreatHall. GeorgeEastman, of EastmanKodak fortunes,and DanielPomeroy, the benefactors, accompanied the taxidermist-hunterto collect specimens for their bequests. Eastman, then 71 years old, wentwith his own physician and commandedhis own railroad train for part ofthe excursion. En routeto Africathe Akeleyswere received by the conservationistand war heroKing of Belgium,Albert. He was theson of theinfamous Leopold II, whose personalrapacious control of the Congo for profit was wrested away and given to he Belgiangovernment by other European powers in 1908.Leopold II hadfinanced HenryStanley's explorations of theCongo. Akeley is picturedin his biographies in the line of the greatexplorers from Stanley and Livingstone,but also as the manwho witnessed, and indeedhelped birth a newbright Africa. Albert, who had beenled to hisviews on nationalparks by a visitto Yosemite,confirmed plans for the Parc Albertand gave the Akeleysa commissionto preparetopographical mapsand descriptionsof thearea in cooperationwith the Belgian naturalist, Jean Derscheid.There was no roomfor a greatpark for the Belgiansin Europe,so naturallyone was establishedin theCongo, which was to includeprotection for thePygmies who lived within park boundaries. The parkwas to providesanctuary fornatural primitives, as well as to fosterscientific study by establishing permanent researchfacilities within park boundaries. After 10 monthsof collecting, Carl and MaryJobe set off for the Kivu forest and theheart of remaining unspoiled Africa. Theirpurpose this time was notto collectgorillas, but to observethe apes, collect plantsand obtainpaintings for the gorilla diorama. Carl Akeley died in November 1926,of fever a fewdays after arriving at thesite of his 1921 encampment, the most beautifulspot in all of Africafor him. His wifeand the othermembers of the expeditionburied him on Mt. Mikeno"in ground the hand of man can neveralter or profane."37

TAXIDERMY: FROM UPHOLSTERY TO EPIPHANY

"TransplantedAfrica stands before him-a resultof Akeley's dream."38

The visionCarl Akeley had seen was one of jungle peace. It was this that he needed topreserve permanently for the world. His quest to embody this vision alone justified to himselfhis hunting,turned it intoa tool of scienceand art,the scalpelthat revealedthe harmony of an organic,articulate world. Let us followAkeley briefly throughhis technicalcontributions to taxidermyin orderto graspmore fully the storieshe neededto tell about the biography of Africa, the life history of nature, i.e., thenatural history of life. Akeley and others have summarized many times in print how his laborstransformed taxidermy from the stuffingof animalsinto an art

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 34 Haraway capable of embodyingtruth, so thisrecapitulation will select only those themes essentialto mystory.39 It is a simpletale: Taxidermywas madeinto the servant of the"real." Akeley's vocation,and his achievement, was the production of an organizedcraft for eliciting unambiguousexperience of organic perfection. Literally, Akeley "typified" nature, made naturetrue to type.Taxidermy was aboutthe single story, about nature's unity,the unblemished type specimen. Taxidermy became the art most suited to the epistemologicaland aestheticstance of realism.The powerof thisstance is in itsmagical effects: what is so painfullyconstructed appears effortlessly, spon- taneouslyfound, discovered, simply there if one willonly look. Realism does not appearto be a pointof view,but appears as a "peepholeinto the jungle" where peace maybe witnessed.Epiphany comes as a gift,not as thefruit of meritand toil,soiled by thehand of man.Realistic art at itsmost deeply magical issues in revelation.This artrepays labor with transcendence. Small wonder that artistic realismand biological science were twin brothers in the founding of the civic order ofnature at theAmerican Museum of Natural History. Both were suckled by nature, as Romulusand Remus.It is also naturalthat taxidermy and biologydepend fundamentallyupon visionin a hierarchyof the senses;they are tools forthe construction,discovery of form. Akeley'seight years in Milwaukee from 1886 to 1894were crucial for his working out techniquesthat served him well therest of his life.The culminationof that periodwas a headof a maleVirginia deer he enteredin the first Sportsman's Show, heldin NewYork City in 1895.The judgein thatnational competition, in which Akeley'sentry placed first, was TheodoreRoosevelt, whom Akeley did notmeet untilthey befriended each otheron safariin Africain 1906.The head,entitled "The Challenge,"displayed a buck"in the full frenzy of hisvirility as he gavethe defiantroar of the rutting season - thecall tofierce combat."4 Jungle peace was not a passiveaffair, nor one unmarkedby gender. The head was done in a periodof experimentationleading to theproduction in Chicagoof four habitat groups of deer displayed in the four seasons. In craftingthose groupsover four years, Akeley worked out his manikin method, clay modeling, plaster casting,vegetation molding techniques, and early organized production system. He hiredwomen and men workers by the hour to turnout the thousands of individual leavesneeded to clothe the trees in the scenes. Background canvases were painted by CharlesAbel Corwin, from studies done in the Michigan Iron Mountains where the animalswere collected. Akeley patented his vegetation process, but gave rights for itsuse freeof charge to theField Museum in Chicago; he didnot patent his innova- tivemethods of producing light, strong papier-mache manikins from exact clay models andplaster casts, but allowed free world-wide use of his techniques. Cooperation in museumdevelopment was a fundamentalvalue for this taxidermist, who did not make muchmoney at his craft and whose inventions were a significantpart of his economic survival."Four Seasons" were installedin the Field Museum in 1902.41

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Akeleycontinued to makeimprovements inhis taxidermic technique throughout hislife, and he taughtseveral other key workers, including James Lipsitt Clark, who was theDirector of Arts, Preparation and Installationat theAmerican Museum in theyears after Akeley's death when African Hall was actuallyconstructed. While Akeleyworked long hours alone, it wouldbe a mistaketo imaginetaxidermy as he helpedto developits practice to be a solitaryart. Taxidermy requires a complex systemof coordinationand divisionof labor,beginning in the fieldduring thehunting of the animals and culminating inthe presentation of a finisheddiorama allowingsolitary, individual communion with nature. A minimumlist of workers onone of Akeley's projects must include fellow taxidermists, other collectors, artists, anatomists,and "accessorymen."42 Pictures of workin the taxidermystudios of theAmerican Museum show men (males, usually white) tanning hides, working on largeclay modelsof sizeablemammals (including elephants) or on plastercasts, assemblingskeleton and wood frames,consulting scale modelsof the planned display,doing carpentry, making vegetation, sketching, etc. Clark reportsthat duringthe years between 1926 and 1936when African Hall opened, still unfinished, thestaff of theproject usually employed about 45 men.Painting the backgrounds wasitself a majorartistic specialization, and the artists based their final panoramas on numerousstudies done at thesite of collection. In thefield, the entire operation restedon theorganization of thesafari, a complexsocial institutionwhere race, sexand class came together intensely. The safariwill be discussedmore fully below, butnow it is usefulto notethat skinning a largeanimal could employ 50 workers forseveral hours. Photographs, moving picture records, death masks of the animals, extensiveanatomical measurements, initial treatment of skins,and sketchesall occupiedthe fieldworkers. It wouldnot be an exaggerationto claim thatthe productionof a moderndiorama involved the workof hundredsof people in a social systemembracing the majorstructures of skilland authorityon a world- widescale. Howcan sucha systemproduce a unifiedbiography of nature? How is itpossible to referto Akeley~ AfricanHall whenit was constructedafter he died? On an ideologicallevel, the answer to thesesimple questions is connectedto theruling conceptionof organicism, an organichierarchy, conceived as nature'sprinciple of organization.Clark stressed the importance of "artistic composition" and described theprocess as a "recreation"of naturebased on theprinciples of organicform. This processrequired a base of "personalexperience," ideally in the formof presencein Africa,at thesite of theanimal's life and death.Technical crafts are alwaysimagined to be subordinatedby the ruling artistic idea, itself rooted authori- tativelyin nature'sown life."Such thingsmust be felt,must be absorbedand assimilated,and thenin turn,with understanding and enthusiasm, given out by the creator....Therefore, our groupsare veryoften conceived in thevery lair of the animals."43 The credosof realismand organicismare closelyconnected; both are syste- matizationsof organizationby a hierarchicaldivision of labor,perceived as natural and thereforeproductive of unity.Unity must be authoredin the Judeo-Christian mythsystem, and just as naturehas an Author,so does the organismor the realistic

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 36 Haraway diorama.In thismyth system, the author must be imaginedwith the aspects of mind, in relationto thebody which executes. Akeley was intenton avoidinglying in his work;his craft was to tellthe truth of nature.There was onlyone wayto achieve suchtruth-the rule of mind rooted in theclaim to experience.All thework must be doneby men who did their collecting and studies on the spot because "[o]therwise, theexhibit is a lie and it wouldbe nothingshort of a crimeto place it in one of theleading educational institutions ofthe country."44 A single mind infused collec- tiveexperience: "If an exhibitionhall is to approachits ideal, its plan must be that of a mastermind, while in actualityit is theproduct of thecorrelation of many mindsand hands."45Training a schoolof workerswas an absolutelyfundamental partof Akeley's practice of taxidermy; on hissuccess rested the possibility of telling thetruth. But above all, this sense of tellinga truestory rested on theselection of individualanimals, the formation of groups of typical specimens. Whatdoes itmean to claima dioramatells a unifiedstory, a biographyessential to nature?What was themeaning of "typical"for Akeley and hiscontemporaries in thebiological departments of theAmerican Museum of Natural History? What are the contentsof thesestories and whatmust one do to see thesecontents? To answerthese questions, we mustfollow Carl Akeleyinto the field and watch himselect an animalto mount.Akeley's concentration on findingthe typical specimen,group, or scenecannot be overemphasized.But how could he knowwhat was typical,or thatsuch a stateof being existed? This problem has been fundamental in thehistory of biology;one effortat solutionis embodiedin AfricanHall. Three huntsillustrate Akeley's meanings of typical. First,the concept includes the notion of perfection. The largebull giraffe in the waterhole group in AfricanHall was theobject of a huntover many days in 1921. Severalanimals were passed over because theywere too smallor not colored beautifullyenough. Remembering record trophies from late 19th-centuryhunters underminedsatisfaction with a modern,smaller specimen taken from the depleted herdsof vanishingAfrican nature. When at lastthe bull was spottedand takenas the resultof greatskill and daring,the minutedetails of its preservationand recreationwere lovingly described. Similarly,in 1910-11,the hunt for a largebull elephant provided the central drama ofthe safari for the entire two years. An animal with asymmetrical tusks was rejected, despitehis imposingsize. Character,as well as merephysical appearance, was importantin judging an animalto be perfect.Cowardice would disqualify the most lovelyand properlyproportioned beast. Ideally, the killing itself had to be accom- plishedas a sportsmanlikeact. Perfection was heightened ifthe hunt were a meeting ofequals. So therewas a hierarchyof game according to species:lions, elephants, and giraffesfar outranked wild asses or antelope.The gorillawas the supreme achievement,almost a definitionof perfectionin theheart of thegarden at the momentof origin. Perfection inhered in theanimal itself, but the fullest meanings of perfectioninhered in the meetingof animal and man, the momentof perfect

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TeddyBear Patriarchy 37 vision.Taxidermy was thecraft of rememberingthis perfect experience. Realism was a supremeachievement of the art of memory, a rhetorical achievement crucial to thefoundations of Western science.46 There is one otheressential quality for the typicalanimal in its perfectex- pression:it mustbe an adultmale. Akeley describes hunting many fine cows or lionesses,and he cared fortheir hides and otherdetails of reconstructionwith all his skill.But neverwas it necessaryto takeweeks and riskthe success of the entireenterprise to findthe perfect female. There existed an imageof an animal whichwas somehowthe gorilla or theelephant incarnate. That particular tone of perfectioncould only be heardin themale mode. It was a compoundof physical and spiritualquality judged truthfully by theartist-scientist in the fullnessof di- rectexperience. Perfection was markedby exact quantitativemeasurement, but evenmore by virile vitality known by the hunter-scientist from visual communion. Perfectionwas knownby naturalkinship; type, kind, and kinmutually defined each other. ButAkeley hunted for a seriesor a group,not just for individuals. How did he knowwhen to stopthe hunt? Two groupsgive his criterion of wholeness, the gorilla groupcollected in 1921and the original group of four elephants mounted by Akeley himselfafter the 1910-11 safari. At one pointin his hunt for specimens, Akeley shot a gorilla,believing it to be a female,but foundit to be a youngmale. He was disturbedbecause he wishedto killas fewanimals as possibleand he believedthe naturalfamily of the gorilla did not contain more than one male.When he latersaw a groupmade up of severalmales and females,he stoppedhis huntwith relief, confidentthat he could tellthe truth from his existingspecimens. Similarly, the photographof Akeley'soriginal group of fourelephants unmistakably shows a perfectfamily. The reproductivegroup had the epistemological and moral status of truthtellers. It was nature'sbiographical unit. Akeleywanted to be an artistand a scientist.He gaveup his early plan of obtaining a degreefrom Yale SheffieldScientific School and then of becoming a professional sculptor.Instead, he combinedart and science in taxidermy. Since that art required thathe also be a sculptor,he told some of his stories in bronzes as wellas indioramas. His criteriawere similar; Akeley had many stories to tell,but they all expressedthe samefundamental vision of a vanishing,threatened scene.47 In hisdetermination to sculpt"typical" Nandi lion spearmen, Akeley used as modelsextensive photographs, drawings,and "selected types of American negroes which he wasusing to make sure ofperfect figures."48 The varietyof nature had a purpose-to lead to discovery of the highesttype of each species of wild life, including human beings outside "civilization." Besidessculpture and taxidermy, Akeley perfected another narrative tool, photography.All of his story-tellinginstruments relied primarily on vision.Each tool was capable of tellinghis truth, but each caughtand heldslightly different mani- festationsof natural history. As a visualart, taxidermy occupied for Akeley a middle groundbetween sculpture and photography.In a sense,both sculpture and photo-

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 38 Haraway graphywere subordinate means to accomplishingthe final taxidermic scene. But fromanother point of view, photography represented the future and sculpturethe past.Let us followAkeley into his practiceof photographyin thecritical years suspendedbetween the manual touch of sculpture, which produced knowledge of lifein thefraternal discourses of organicist biology and realistart, and thevirtual touchof the camera, which has dominated our understanding ofnature since World WarII. The 19thcentury produced the masterpieces of animal bronzes inhabiting theworld's museums. Akeley's early 20th-century taxidermy, seemingly so solidand material,may be seen as a brieffrozen temporal section in theincarnation of art and science,before the camera technically could pervert his single dream into the polymorphousand absurdly intimate filmic reality we now take for granted.49 Critics accuseAkeley's taxidermy and the American Museum's expensive policy of building thegreat display halls in theyears before World War II ofbeing armature against thefuture, of having literally locked in stone one historicalmoment's way of seeing, whilecalling this vision the whole."0But Akeleywas a leader technicallyand spirituallyin theperfection of the camera's eye. Taxidermy was notarmed against thefilmic future, but froze one frameof a farmore intense visual communion to be consummatedin virtualimages. Akeley helped produce the armature-and arma- ment-thatwould advance into the future.

PHOTOGRAPHY: HUNTINGWITH THE CAMERA

"Gunshave metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be whatit had alwaysbeen-what people needed protection from. Now nature- tamed,endangered, mortal-needs to be protectedfrom people. When we are afraid,we shoot. Butwhen we are nostalgic,we takepictures."51

This essayhas repeatedlyclaimed Akeley and his peersfeared the disappearance of theirworld, of theirsocial worldin the new immigrationsafter 1890 and theresulting dissolution of the old imaginedhygienic, pre-industrial America. Civilizationappeared to be a disease in the formof technologicalprogress and the vast accumulationof wealthin the practiceof monopolycapitalism by the verywealthy sportsmen who were trustees of the museum and the backers of Akeley's AfricanHall. The leadersof theAmerican Museum were afraid for their health; thatis, their manhood was endangered.Theodore Roosevelt knew the prophylaxis forthis specific historical malaise: the true man is thetrue sportsman. Any human being,regardless of race, class, and gender,could spirituallyparticipate in the moralstatus of healthymanhood in democracy,even if only a few(anglo-saxon, male,heterosexual, protestant, physically robust, and economicallycomfortable) couldexpress manhood's highest forms. From about 1890 to the1930s, the Museum was a vast public education and research program for producing experience

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarchy 39 potentto inducethe state of manhood.The Museum,in turn,was theideological and materialproduct of the sporting life. As MaryJobe Akeley realized, "[the true sportsman]loves thegame as if he werethe father of it."52Akeley believed that in theend, the highest expression of sportsmanshipwas huntingwith the camera: "Moreover,according to any trueconception of sport--theuse of skill,daring, and endurancein overcomingdifficulties--camera hunting takes twice the man thatgun huntingtakes."'3 The truefather of the game loves naturewith the camera;it takestwice the man,and the childrenare in his perfectimage. The eye is infinitelymore potent than the gun. Both put a womanto shame-repro- ductively. At the timeof Akeley'sfirst collecting safari in 1896,cameras were a nearly uselessencumbrance, incapable of capturingthe goal of thehunt-life. Accord- ingto Akeley,the first notable camera hunters in Africaappeared around 1902.54 The earlybooks were based on stillphotographs; moving picture wild life photo- graphyowes muchto Akeley'sown camera and did not achieveanything be- forethe 1920s.On his 1910-11safari to east Africa,Akeley had the best available equipmentand triedto filmthe Nandi lion spearing.His failuredue to in- adequatecameras, described with great emotional intensity, led himduring the nextfive years to designthe Akeley camera, which was used extensivelyby the ArmySignal Corps duringWorld War I. Akeleyformed the AkeleyCamera Companyto develop his invention, which received its civilian christening by filming Man-o-Warwin the KentuckyDerby in 1920. The camera's innovativetele- photolens caught the Dempsey-Carpentier heavyweight battle. Awarded the John Price WetherhillMedal at the FranklinInstitute in 1926 for his invention, Akeleysucceeded that year in filmingto his satisfactionAfrican lion spearing, on the same safarion whichRochester's George Eastman, of Eastman-Kodak fortunes,was bothco-sponsor and hunter-collector.55Recall thatAkeley's first tasteof his owncamera in thefield was in 1921in theKivu forest.Within a few days,Akeley shot his firstgorillas with both gun and camera,in theexperiences he saw as theculmination of his life. The ambiguityof thegun and cameraruns throughout Akeley's work. He is a transitionalfigure from the Westernimage of darkestto lightestAfrica, from natureworthy of manlyfear to naturein needof motherlynurture. The woman/ scientist/motheroforphaned apes popularized by the National Geographic Society's magazineand filmsin the 1970swas stillhalf a centuryaway.56 With Akeley, manhoodtested itself against fear, even as thelust for the image of jungle peace heldthe finger on thegun long enough to takethe picture and evenas theintel- lectualand mythiccertainty grew that the savage beast in thejungle was human, in particular,industrial human. Even at the literallevel of physicalappearance, "[t]oone familiarwith the old typesof camerathe Akeley resembled a machine gunquite as muchas it resembleda camera."'7Akeley said he set out to design a camera "that you can aim...with about the same ease that you can point a

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 40 Haraway pistol.""5He enjoyedretelling the apocryphal story of seven Germans in World War I mistakenlysurrendering to one Americanin Francewhen they found themselves facedby an Akeley. "The fundamental difference between the Akeley motion-picture cameraand the othersis a panoramicdevice which enables one to swingit all about,much as one wouldswing a swivelgun, following the natural line of vision."59 Akeleysemi-joked in knowingpuns on the penetratingand deadlyinvasiveness of thecamera, naming one of his imagemachines "The Gorilla.""'The Gorilla' had taken300 feetof filmof the animalthat had neverheretofore been taken alive in its nativewilds by any camera....I was satisfied-moresatisfied than a manever should be-but I revelledin thefeeling."60 The taxidermist,certain of theessential peacefulness of thegorilla, wondered how close he shouldlet a chargingmale get beforeneglecting the camerafor the gun."I hope thatI shallhave the courageto allow an apparentlycharging gorillato come withina reasonabledistance before shooting. I hesitateto say just whatI considera reasonabledistance at the presentmoment. I shall feel verygratified if I can get a photographat twentyfeet. I shouldbe proudof mynerve if I wereable to showa photographof himat ten feet,but I do not expectto do thisunless I am at themoment a victimof suicidalmania."'' Akeley wrotethese words before he had everseen a wildgorilla. What was theboundary of courage;how muchdid natureor man need protecting?What if the gorilla nevercharged, even whenprovoked? What if the gorillawere a coward(or a female)?Who, preciselywas threatenedin the dramaof naturalhistory in the earlydecades of monopoly capitalism's presence in Africaand America? Awareof a disturbingpotential of thecamera, Akeley set himselfagainst fak- ing.He stuffedBarnum's Jumbo, but he wanted no partof the great circus magnate's cultivationof theAmerican popular art form, the hoax.62 But hoax luxuriatedin earlywild life photography (and anthropological photography). In particular, Akeley saw unscrupulousmen manipulate nature to tellthe story of a fierceand savage Africa;this was thestory which would sell in themotion picture emporia across America.Taxidermy had alwaysthreatened to lapsefrom art into deception, from lifeto upholstereddeath as a poorsportsman's trophy. Photography too was full ofphilistines who could debase the entire undertaking ofnature work, the Museum's termfor its educational work in the early decades of the 20th century. The Museum was forpublic entertainment (the point that kept its Presbyterian trustees resisting Sundayopening in the 1880sdespite that day's fine potential for educating the newCatholic immigrants, who worked a sixday week); but entertainment only had valueif it communicated the truth. Therefore, Akeley encouraged an association betweenthe American Museum and thewildlife photographers, Martin and Osa Johnson,who seemed willing and able to producepopular motion pictures telling thestory of jungle peace. Johnson claimed in his 1923 prospectus to the American Mu- seum,"The camera cannot be deceived... Itherefore, ithas] enormous scientific value."' Entertainmentwas complexlyinterwoven with science, art, hunting, and education.

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Barnum'shumbug tested the cleverness, the scientific acumen, of the observer in a republicwhere each citizencould find out thenakedness of theemperor and the shamof his rationality.This democracyof reasonwas alwaysa bit dangerous. Thereis a traditionof active participation in theeye of science in Americawhich makesthe storiesof naturealways ready to eruptinto popular politics. Natural historycan be-and has sometimesbeen-a meansfor millenial expectation and disorderlyaction. Akeley himself is an excellentexample of a self-mademan who madeuse of the mythic resources of the independent man's honest vision, the appeal to experience,the testimonyof one's own eyes.He saw theGiant of Karisimbi. The camera,an eminentlydemocratic machine, has beencrucial to thecrafting of storiesin biology; but its control has always eluded the professional and the moralist, theofficial scientist. But in MartinJohnson, Akeley hoped he had theman who wouldtame specular entertainment for the social uplift promised by science. In 1906Martin Johnson shipped out with Jack London on theSnark for a twoyear voyageof the South Seas. The Snarkwas the photographer's Beagle. Its name could hardlyhave been better chosen for the ship that carried the two adventurers whose booksand films complemented Tarzan for recording the dilemma of manhood in the early20th century. Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark contains the lines that captureJohnson's and London's-andAkeley's--Darwinian revelation: In one momentI've see whathas hithertobeen Enveloped in absolute mystery, And withoutextra charge I willgive you at large A lesson in NaturalHistory.4 From1908 to 1913Johnson ran five motion picture houses in Kansas. In thesame periodand after,he and Osa travelledin thestill mysterious and potentplaces, filming"native life": Melanesia, Polynesia, Malekula, Borneo, Kenya Colony. In 1922Martin and Osa soughtCarl Akeley'sopinion of theirjust completedfilm TrailingAfrican Wild Animals. Akeley was delighted, and the result was the museum's settingup a specialcorporation to fundthe Johnsons on a fiveyear film safari in Africa.The Johnsons'plans included making two short films, including one on "AfricanBabies." "It willshow elephant babies, lion babies, zebra babies, giraffe babies,and blackbabies...showing the play of wild animals and thematernal care thatis so strangeand interesting a feature of wildlife."'6 The humanlife of Africa was repeatedlyconsigned to theAge of Mammals, prior to theAge of Man. That was its onlyclaim to protection,and of coursethe ultimate justification for domination. Herewas a recordof jungle peace. The Johnsonsplanned a biganimal feature film as thecapstone of the safari. The museumlauded both the commercial and educationalvalues; Osborn commented thatthe "double message of such photography is,first, that it brings the aesthetic and ethicalinfluence of naturewithin the reach of millionsof people...second,it spreadsthe idea thatour generation has no rightto destroywhat future generations

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 42 Haraway mayenjoy."66 It wasperfect that the Johnson film safari overlapped with the Akeley- Eastman-Pomeroyexpedition. The Akeleysspent several days helping the Johnsons filmlion spearing in Tanganyika, finally capturing on filmthis endangered apotheo- sisof primitive manhood. Johnson was confident that their approach of combining truthand beauty without hoax would ultimately be commerciallysuperior, as wellas scientificallyaccurate. "[T]here is no limitto themoney it can make....Mypast training,my knowledge of showmanship, mixed with the scientific knowledge I have absorbedlately, and the wonderful photographic equipment...make me certain that thisBig Feature is going to be thebiggest money maker ever placed on the market, as thereis no doubtit willbe the last big AfricaFeature made, and it willbe so spectacularthat there will be nodanger of another film of like nature competing with it.For these reasons it will produce an incomeas longas welive."67 Africa had always promisedgold. The "nakedeye" science advocated by the American Museum was perfect for the camera,ultimately so superior to the gun for the possession, production, preservation, consumption,surveillance, appreciation, and controlof nature.The ideologyof realismessential to Akeley's aesthetic was part of his effort to touch, to see, to bridge theyawning gaps in the endangered self. To makean exactimage is toinsure against disappearance,to cannibalize life until it is safely and permanently a specular image, a ghost.It arresteddecay. That is whynature photography is so beautifuland so religious-andsuch a powerfulhint of an apocalypticfuture. Akeley's aesthetic combinedthe instrumental and contemplative into a photographictechnology pro- vidinga transfusionfor a steadilydepleted sense of reality. The imageand the real mutuallydefine each other, as all ofreality in late capitalist culture lusts to become an imagefor its own security. Reality is assured, insured, by the image, and there is no limitto the amount of money that can be made.The camerais superior to the gun for thecontrol of time; and Akeley's dioramas with their photographic vision, sculptor's touch,and taxidermicsolidity were about the end of time.68

III. TellingStories

The syntheticstory told above has threemajor sources and severalminor ones. Tellingthe lifesynthetically masks the tonesand versionswhich emerge from listeningto thesesources. The singlebiography, the ideological achieved unity of AfricanHall, can be broughtto theedge of an imaginedheteroglossic novel which hasnot yet been written. A polyphonicnatural history waits for its sustaining social history.In orderto probemore deeply into the tissue of meanings and mediations makingthe specific structure of experience possible for the viewer of the dioramas of AfricanHall-and of the Giant of Karisimbi-I wouldlike to tease apartthe sourcesfor one majorevent of Akeley'slife, the elephant mauling in BritishEast Africain 1910.This eventcan functionas a germfor expanding my story of the structureand functionof biographyin theconstruction of a 20th-centuryprimate

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarchy 43 order,with its specific and polymorphous hierarchies of race, sex and class. With an ear forthe tones of audience, historical moment, social interests and intentionsof authors,and the material-physical appearance of sources, I wouldlike to consider in greaterdetail the question of storytelling. In particular,whose stories appear and disappearin theweb of social practicesthat constitute Teddy Bear Patriarchy? Questionsof authorized writing enforced by publishing practices and oflabor that neverissues in acknowledgedauthorship (never father of thegame) make up my story.69 AUTHORS AND VERSIONS

"She didn'twrite it. She wroteit but she shouldn'thave. She wroteit, but look whatshe wroteabout."70 CarlAkeley's book, In BrightestAfrica, appears on thesurface to be writtenby Carl Akeley.But we learnfrom Mary Jobe Akeley, a prolificauthor, that the taxidermist"hated to wielda pen."71She elaboratesthat the publishers, Doubleday andPage (themen, not the company), were enthralled by Carl's stories told in their homesat dinnerand so "determinedto extracta bookfrom him." So one evening afterdinner Arthur W. Page"stationed a stenographer behind a screen,and without Carl'sknowledge, she recorded everything he saidwhile the guests lingered before thefire." The editingof this material is thenascribed to Doubleday and Page, but the authoris namedas Carl.The stenographeris an unnamedhand. These notes gave riseto articles in a journalcalled World's Work, but a bookwas still not forthcoming fromthe taxidermist.Then Akeleydiscovered a newspaperaccount of his Kivu journeythat he greatly liked; the piece had been written by Dorothy S. Greenewhile she workedfor the director of the AmericanMuseum. Akeley hired her as his secretary,to recordhis stories while he talkedwith other explorers or scientistsor lecturedto raisefunds for African Hall. "She unobtrusivelyjotted down material whichcould be usedin a book."72Who wrote In BrightestAfrica? In theanswer to thatquestion resides a worldof motivated history of the relation of mind and body in Westernauthorship. The physicalappearance of thebooks is itselfan eloquentstory. The stampof approvalfrom men like H.F. Osbornin the dignifiedprefaces, the presenceof handsomephotographs, a publishinghouse thatcatered to wealthyhunters: all composethe authority of the books. The frontspiecesare likeOrthodox icons; the entirestory can be read fromthem. In Lions, Gorillasand theirNeighbors, the book preparedfor young people, the frontspiece shows an elderlyCarl Akeley in his studio gazingintently into the eyes of the plaster death mask of the first gorilla he eversaw. Maturityin theencounter with nature is announced.The WildernessLives Again, thebiography that resurrected Carl through his wife's vicarious authorship, displays in thefront a youngCarl, arm and handbandaged heavily, standing outside a tent beside a dead leopard suspendedby her hind legs. The captionreads: "Carl Akeley,

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 44 Haraway whenstill in his twenties, choked this wounded infuriated leopard to deathwith his nakedhands as itattacked him with intent to kill." Letus turn to Carl Akeley's story of his encounter with the elephant which mauled him.The taleoccurs in a chapterof Akeley'sbook called"Elephant Friends and Foes." Severalmoral lessons pervade the chapter,prominently those of human ignoranceof thegreat animals--partly because hunters are onlyafter ivory and trophies,so thattheir knowledge is onlyof tracking and killing,not of the animals' lives-and ofAkeley's difference because of his special closeness to natureembod- ied inthe magnificent elephants. On thissafari, Akeley witnessed two elephants help a woundedcomrade escape fromthe scene of slaughter,inspiring one of the taxidermist'sbronzes. But also inthis chapter, the reader sees an earthyAkeley, not abovemaking a tableto seat eight people out of elephant ears from a specimenwhich nearlykilled him and Delia, despiteeach of themshooting into his head about13 times.In thischapter, the taxidermist ishunting as an equalwith his wife. He doesnot hidestories which might seem a bitseedy or full of personal bravado; yet his "natural nobility"pervaded all theseanecdotes, particularly for an audienceof potential donorsto AfricanHall, who might quite likely find themselves shooting big game in Africa. His nearfatal encounter with an elephantoccurred when Akeley had goneoff withoutDelia to get photographs,taking "four days' rations, gun boys,porters, cameramen, and so forth-about fifteenmen in all."73 He wastracking an elephant whosetrail was veryfresh, when he suddenlybecame aware that the animal was bearingdown on himdirectly:

I have no knowledgeof how the warningcame....I only know that as I picked up mygun and wheeled about I triedto shove the safetycatch forward.It refusedto budge.....Mynext mental recordis of a tuskright at mychest. I grabbedit with my left hand, the other one withmy right hand, and swingingin betweenthem went to the groundon myback. This swingingin betweenthe tusks was purelyautomatic. It was the resultof manya timeon the trailsimagining myself caught by an elephant'srush and planningwhat to do, and a veryprofitable planning too; forI am convinced thatif a man imaginessuch a crisisand plans whathe would do, he will,when the occasion occurs, automaticallydo what he planned....He drove his tusksinto the groundon eitherside of me.... When he surgeddown on me, his big tusksevidently struck something in the groundthat stopped them....He seemsto havethought me dead forhe leftme - bysome good fortunenot stepping on me- and chargedoff after the boys.74

Akeleyfollows this cool descriptionfull of counselabout planning for life's big momentswith remarks about what elephants are reputed to do inother charges and withremarks about the behavior of his party. "I nevergot much information out of the boys as to whatdid happen,for they were not proudof theirpart in the adventure....It is reasonableto assumethat they had scatteredthrough [the area whichthe elephant thoroughly trampled] like a coveyof quail...."75 Akeleytells that he lay unconscious and untouched for hours because his men felt he was dead,and theycame from groups which refused ever to toucha dead man.

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Whenhe cameto, he shoutedand got attention. He relatesthat word had been sent to Mrs.Akeley at basecamp, who valiantly mounted a rescueparty in the middle of thenight against the wishes of herguides (because of thedangers of nighttravel throughthe bush), whom she pursued into their huts to forcetheir cooperation. She sentword to thenearest government post to dispatcha doctor,and arrivedat the sceneof the injury by dawn. Akeley attributed his recovery to her prompt arrival, but moreto the subsequentspeedy arrival of a neophyteScottish doctor, who sped throughthe jungleto help the injuredman partlyout of his ignoranceof the foolishnessof hurryingto helpanyone mauled by an elephant-suchmen simply didn'tsurvive to payfor one's haste.The moreseasoned government official, the chiefmedical officer, arrived considerably later. The remainderof thechapter recounts Akeley's chat withother old handsin Africaabout their experiences surviving elephant attacks. The toneis reasoned, scientific,focused on the behaviorand characterof thoseinteresting aspects of elephantbehavior. The constant moral of the chapter emerges again in the conclusion:

But althoughthe elephant is a terriblefighter in hisown defense when attacked by man, that is nothis chiefcharacteristic. The thingsthat stick in mymind are his sagacity,his versatility,and a certain comradeshipwhich I have nevernoticed to thesame degreein otheranimals.... I like to thinkback to theday I saw thegroup of babyelephants playing with a greatball of baked dirt....I think,too, of the extraordinaryfact that I have neverheard or seen Africanelephants fighting each other.They have no enemybut man and are at peace amongstthemselves. It is myfriend the elephantthat I hope to perpetuate in the central goup in Roosevelt AfricanHall.... In this, which we hope will be an everlastingmonument to theAfrica that was, the Africathat is fastdisappearing, I hope to place the elephanton a pedestal in the centreof the hall- the rightfulplace forthe firstamong them.76 Akeley'sinterests are constantly in the perpetuation, conservation, and dignity of naturein which man is theenemy, the intruder, the dealer of death. His own exploits inthe hunt stand in ironic juxtaposition only if the reader refuses to discern their true meaning--thetales of a pureman whose danger in pursuitof a noblecause brings himinto communion with the beasts he kills,with nature. This nature is a worthy brotherof man, a worthyfoil for his manhood. Akeley's elephant is profoundly male, singular,and representativeof the possibilityof nobility.The maulingwas an excitingtale, with parts for many actors, including Delia, butthe brush with death and thedetails of rescueare toldwith the cool humorof a manready for his end dealtby such a noblefriend and brother,his bestenemy, the object of hisscien- tificcuriosity. The putativebehavior of the "boys"underlines the confrontation betweenwhite manhood and thenoble beast. Casual and institutionalracism only heightensthe experience of thelife story of thesingle adult man. The actionin Akeley'sstories focuses on thecenter of thestage, on themeeting of thesingular manand animal.The entourageis inaudible,invisible, except for comic relief and anecdotesabout native life. In Akeley'srendering, empowered by class and race, whitewoman stands without much comment in a similarmoral position as white man-a hunter,an adult.

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MaryL. JobeAkeley published her biography of herhusband, The Wilderness LivesAgain, in 1940, four years after the Akeley African Hall opened to the public, his dreamassured. Her purposewas no longerto raisemoney and tellstories to other hunters,but to promoteconservation and fulfillher life's purpose-accomplishing herhusband's life work. Her biography of Carl should be takenliterally. She presents herselfas theinspired scribe for her husband's story. Through her vicarious author- shipand throughAfrican Hall and theParc Albert,not only the Wilderness,but Akeleyhimself, whose meaning was the wilderness, lives again. Mary L. Jobehad not alwayslived for a husband.In theyears before her marriage she had completedno fewerthan ten expeditions to explore British Columbian wilderness. She recounts the sceneat Carl'sdeath when she accepted his commission for her, that she would live thereaftertofulfill his work. The entirebook is suffusedwith her joy in this task. Her self-constructionas the other is breathtakinginits ecstasy. The storyof the elephant maulingundergoes interesting emendations to facilitateher accomplishment. One mustread this book with attention because Carl's words from his field diaries and publicationsare quotedat greatlength with no typographicaldifferentiation from therest of the text. At no pointdoes thewife give a sourcefor the husband's words; theymay be fromconversation, lectures, anywhere. It does notmatter, because the twoare one flesh.The storiesof Carl and Mary Jobe blend imperceptibly- until the readerstarts comparing other versions of the "same" incidents, even the ones written apparentlyin thedirect words of the true, if absent, author-husband. The keyemendation is an absence.The entirebiography of Carl Akeley by Mary JobeAkeley does not mentionthe name or presenceof Delia. Her role in the rescueis takenby the Kikuyuman WimbiaGikungu, called Bill,Akeley's gun bearerand nativecompanion on severalsafaris. Bill is creditedwith rousing the recalcitrantguides and notifying the government post, thus bringing on theScotsman posthaste.77The longquotation from Carl in whichthe whole story is toldsimply lacksmention of his previous wife. MaryJobe tells a sequel to themauling not in Akeley'spublished stories, and apparentlytaken from his field diaries or lectures. Because it is notuncommon for a manto losehis nerve after an elephantmauling and decline to hunt elephants again, it was necessaryfor Akeley to faceelephants as soon as possible.Again, the first thingto noticeis an absence.-Itis neverquestioned that such courage should be regained.But the actual story does not ennoble Akeley. He trackedan elephantbefore hewas really healthy, needing his "boys" to carry a chairon thetrail for him to sit on as hetired, and the elephant was wounded from unsportsmanlike hasty shots and not foundbefore it died. Akeley's nobility is savedin thisstory by noting his humility: "The boyshelped me backto camp.I feltperfectly certain that we wouldfind him dead in themorning. The wholething had beenstupid and unsportsmanlike."7" Beforeleaving Mary Jobe Akeley's version for Delia Akeley'stale, one more aspectof the Canadian Northwest explorer deserves note. She is picturedas Carl's companionand soulmate, but not really as hisco-adventurer and buddyhunter-

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarch), 47 withone exception.Mary Jobe fired two shots in Africa,and killeda magnificent malelion: "an hour later we came upon a fineold lion, a splendidbeast, Carl said, and goodenough for me to shoot. And so I shot....Thelion measured nine feet six inches fromtop to tip,carried a darkand splendid mane; and because of its size, age, and ruggedpersonality, Carl consideredit a valuablespecimen; but I was chieflycon- cernedthat I fulfilledCarl's expectations and had killed the lion cleanly and without assistance."79Mary Jobe's authority as a biographerdoes notdepend on herbeing a hunter,but there is no questionthat her status was enhanced by this most desirable transformingexperience. In thisact, her moralstatus approached that of the sportsman,a critical condition for communion with nature in the life of the Ameri- can Museumof Natural History. Delia Akeleypictures herself as a joyousand unrepentant hunter, but her husband has somewarts, at leastby the publication of Jungle Portraits in 1930.It is hardto believeher stories;she simplydoes not have the authorialmoral status of the artist/hunter/scientist,CarlAkeley, or his socially sure second wife, who met easily withkings and commanded his safari for a majorscientific institution after his death. Thereare somevery interesting presences in Delia's taleswhich help highlight the kindof biography African Hall was to tell,and thekind that was to be suppressed. Experiencein AfricanHall leads to transcendance,to the perfecttype, to the heightenedmoment beyond mere life. First, let us lookat Delia'sstory of the rescue. Billappears in Delia's story, and he behaves well. But her own heroism in confronting thesuperstitions ofthe "boys" and in savingher endangered husband is, of course, the centraltale in the chapter"Jungle Rescue": "Examiningand cleansingMr. Akeley'swounds were my first consideration... .The factthat his wounds were cared forso promptlyprevented infection, and without doubt saved his life....The follow- ingday Dr. Phillips,a youngScottish medical missionary, arrived."" But whydid Delia tellthis story at all, aside froman easilyimagined pain at developmentsin her family life and a desireto set her role on record?Whatever her personalmotivation, Delia hada biographicalpurpose quite at odds with the official histories;she was intent on showingmediations in the form of fallible people behind theexperience of natural history museums. In theopening lines of "Jungle Rescue" Delia considersat somelength issues of sickness and injuryfor the early collectors and explorers;she remarkspointedly on insects,weariness, and failure.All thisis contrastedwith the experience provided the current (1930) traveler, the tourist, or indeed,even the museum visitor. She does havean interestin picturing the devoted andunremarked wife of the single-minded explorers who kept camp in the jungle and houseat home. Her purpose in telling the reader that she managed Carl's safaris, that therewere very material mediations in thequest for manhood and naturaltruth, is patent.And thenthere is herpique at all theattention for her scientist-husband: "The thrillingstory of the accident and his miraculous escape from a frightfuldeath has been told manytimes by himselffrom the lectureplatform. But a personal accountof my equally thrilling night journey to hisrescue through one ofthe densest,

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 48 Haraway elephant-infestedforests on theAfrican continent is notnearly so wellknown."8' It is hardto conjurethe picture of Carl Akeley talking about elephant-infested forests! Thisis notthe wife who devotes herself to his authorship of wilderness. Indeed, she repeatedlyrefers to darkestAfrica throughout the book. Thereare otherinstances of Delia's insistingon herglory at theexpense of the officialnobility of her husband. The readerof Delia's bookdiscovers Carl Akeley frequentlysick in histent, an invaliddangerously close to deathwhose courageous wifehunts not only for food for the camp, but also for scientific specimens so thathe mayhasten out of this dangerous continent before it claims him. One learnsagain thatin theelephant hunt following the mauling, Carl was searchingto restorehis endangered"morale." His wife was his companion in what is portrayed as a dangerous huntterminating in a thrillingkill marked by a dangerouscharge. Delia tellsthe storyso thatone cannot know who fired the fatal shot, but "fatigue and a desireto be sureof his shot made Mr. Akeley slow in getting his gun in position."82 She includes in herchapter an extraordinaryphotograph of a dashingCarl Akeley smoking a pipe and loungingon topof the body of a largefallen elephant; her caption reads, "Carl Akeleyand thefirst elephant he shotafter settling the question of his morale." She concludesher narrative, "Although years have passedsince that morning when I stoodwith my invalid husband on theedge of the vast bush-covered swamp looking foran elephantin the fog, I cansee itall as clearlyas ifit happened yesterday....[ I]t is thisvision which comes to mymind when I thinkof the monumentalgroup of elephantswhich Mr. Akeley and I riskedso muchto obtain for the New York Natural HistoryMuseum.'"83 But huntingin the Museum'sarchive for that photograph of Akeleylounging astridehis kill reveals something curious, and perhapsmore revealing than Delia's compromisingand compromisedstory. Delia was lyingabout that elephant, as the photoswhich accompany hers in the archive demonstrate. But the lie reveals another truth.The photosin the archive suggest a versionof reality, a biographyof Africa, whichthe Museum and its official representataives never wanted displayed in their Hallsor educational publications. A reader will not find that particular photograph of Akeleyin any other publication than Delia's, and even in the 1980s, archive staff are saidto be leeryof allowing republication of this particular photograph. The images fromthe photo archive upstairs haunt the mind's eye as theviewer stands before the elephantgroup in AfricanHall. It is clearthat this particular elephant with the lounging Carl could not have been killedon theoccasion Delia described.The cast of accompanyingcharacters is wrong.Another picture clearly taken on thesame occasion shows the white hunter, theScotsman Richard John Cunninghame, hired by Akeley in 1909to teach him how to huntelephants, lounging with Delia on thesame carcass. The museumarchive labelsthe photo "Mrs. Akeley's first elephant." It is hardnot to orderthe separate photosin the folder into a series,hard not to tella story.So thenext snapshot shows theseparated and still slightly bloody tusks of the elephant held in a gothicarch over

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarchy 49 a pleased,informal Delia. She is standingconfidently under the arch,each arm reachingout to graspa curveof the elephantine structure. But the real support for theivory is elsewhere.Cut offat theedge of thepicture are fourblack arms; the handscome from the framing peripheral space to encircle the tusks arching over the triumphantwhite woman. The museumarchive labels this photo "Mrs. Akeley's ivory."The nextand last photographshows a smilingCunninghame holding the heartof thedeceased elephant and touchingMrs. Akeley's forehead with the cut edgeof the animal's aorta. She stands with her head bowed under the ivory arch, now supportedby a single,solemn African man. The museum'sspare comment reads, "The Christening."[Figure 3] Thisthen is also an imageof an origin,a sacrament,a mark on thesoul signing a spiritualtransformation effected by the act offirst killing. It is a sacredmoment in thelife of the hunter, a rebirth in the blood of the sacrifice, of conquered nature. This elephantstands a fixedwitness in the Akeley African Hall to this image of an intimate touchshown by thecamera's eye, which here captured an iconicmoment where race, sex, and naturemet forthe Westernhunter. In thisgarden, the camera captureda retellingof a Christianstory of origins, a secularized Christian sacrament in a baptismof blood from the victim whose death brought spiritual adulthood, i.e., thestatus of hunter, the status of the fully human being who is reborn in risking life, in killing.Versions of this story recur again and againin thehistory of American approachesto thesciences of animal life, especially primate life. One versionis the biographyof white manhood in Africa told in Akeley African Hall. WithDelia, the storyis nearparody; with Carl it is nearepiphany. His wasauthorized to achievea fusionof science and art. Delia, by far the more prolific author, who neither had nor was a ghostwriter,was erased-bydivorce and byduplicity.

SAFARI: A LIFE OF AFRICA

"Now withfew exceptions our Kivu savages,lower in the scale of intelligencethan any others I had seen in Equatorial Africa,proved kindlymen....How deeply theirsympathy affected me! As I thinkof them, I am remindedof the only playmate and companion of my early childhood, a colliedog....".

The GreatHalls of the American Museum of Natural History simply would not exist withoutthe labor of Africans (or South Americans or the Irish and Negroes in North America).The Akeleyswould be thefirst to acknowledgethis fact; but they would alwaysclaim the principle of organization came from the white safari managers, the scientist-collectorand his camp managing wife, the elements of mind overseeing the principleof execution. From the safari of 1895,dependent upon foot travel and the strongbacks of "natives," to themotor safaris of the 1920s, the everyday survival of Euro-Americansinthe field depended upon the knowledge, good sense, hard work, and enforcedsubordination of people thewhite folk insisted on seeingas perpetual

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 50 Haraway childrenor even as wildlife.If a blackperson accomplished some exceptional feat of intelligenceor daring,the explanation was thathe or she (thoughno examplesof such a womanappear in thetexts examined in thisessay) was inspired,literally moved,by the spiritof themaster. As MaryJobe put it in herunself-conscious colonialvoice, "It was as if the spiritof his masterhad descendedupon him, activatinghim to transcendenteffort."85 This explanation was all themore powerful ifthe body of themaster was literally,physically far removed, by death or trans- Atlanticresidence. Aristotle was as presentin the safari as he wasin the taxidermic studiosin New York or in thephysiological bodies of organisms.Labor was not authorizedas action,as mind,or as form. Both Carl and MaryJobe Akeley's books provideimportant insight into the organizationof thesafari over the thirty year span of Akeley'shunting life. The photographsof usuallysolemn African people in a semi-circlearound the core of whitepersonnel, with the cars, cameras, and abundant baggage in the background, are eloquentabout race, sex, and colonialism. The chaptersdiscuss the problems of cooks,the tasks of a headman,the profusion of languages which no white person on thejourney spoke, numbers of porters (about thirty for most of the 1926 trip, many morein 1895)and problems in keeping them, the contradictory cooperation of local Africanleaders (often called "sultans"),the difficultyof providingwhite people coffeeand brandyin an unspoiledwilderness, the hierarchy of pay scales and food rationsfor safari personnel, the behavior of gunbearers, and thepunishment for perceivedmisdeeds. The chapters portray a social organism, properly ordered by the principlesof organicform: hierarchical division of laborcalled cooperationand coordination.The safariwas an iconof the whole enterprise in its logic of mind and body,in itsscientific marking of the body for functional efficiency.86 The Africans wereinscribed with their role by the Western construction ofrace; they were literally writteninto the script of the story of life--and written out of authorship.87 Veryfew of the black personnel appear with individual biographies in thesafari literature,but there are exceptions,object lessons or typelife histories. Africans wereimagined as either"spoiled" or "unspoiled,"like the naturethey signified. Spoilednature could not relieve decadence, the malaise of the imperialist and city dweller,but only presented evidence of decay's contagion, the germ of civilization, theinfection which was obliterating the Age of Mammals. And with the end of that timecame the end of the essence of manhood, hunting. But unspoiled Africans, like theKivu forest itself, were solid evidence of the resources for restoring manhood in the healthyactivity of sportsmanlike hunting. It isworth studying one of these individual biographiesto gleana hintof some of the complexity of the relation of master and servantin the pursuit of science on thesafari. The lifestory is toldfrom the point of viewof the white person; Wimbia Gikungu, the Kikuyu known as Billwho joined Carl Akeleyin British East Africa in 1905 at thirteen years of age, did not write my sources. He was notthe author of his body, but he was theAkeley's favorite "native." Billbegan as an assistantto Delia Akeley'stent boy, but is portrayedas rapidlylearn-

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Teddy Bear Patriarchy 51 ingeverything there was to know about the safari through his unflagging industry and desireto please. He wassaid to have extraordinary intelligence and spirit, but suffered chronicdifficulty with some authority and from inability to save his earnings. "He has an independencethat frequently gets him into trouble. He does notlike to take ordersfrom any one of his own color."m He servedwith Akeley safaris in 1905, 1909-11, and1926, increasing in authority and power over the years until there was no African whomCarl Akeleyrespected more for his trail knowledge and judgment.Akeley speaksof him sometimes as a man,but usually as a boy,like all other male Africans. Bill got intosome kindof troubleserving on the Rooseveltsafari, having been recommendedby Akeley. Roosevelt dismissed him and had him blacklisted. None- theless,Akeley immediately rehired him, assuming he had had some largely innocent (i.e.,not directed against a whiteperson) eruption of his distaste for authority.89 Akeleydescribes three occasions on whichhe "punished"Gikungu; these epi- sodes are condensedmanifestations of Akeley's assumed paternal role. Once Bill refusedto givethe keys for Carl's trunk to otherwhite people when they asked, "sayingthat he musthave an orderfrom his own Bwana. It wascheek, and he hadto be punished;the punishment was not severe, but coming from me itwent hard with himand I had to givehim a fatherlytalk to preventhis running away."" Four years later,the Kikuyu shot at an elephanthe believedwas chargingAkeley without the latter'sseeing it. Akeley had seen the animal, but did not know his "gun boy" did not know.Akeley spontaneously slapped Ginkungu "because he had broken one of the first rulesof the game, which is thata blackboy must never shoot without orders, unless hismaster is downand at themercy of a beast."Akeley realized his mistake, and "myapologies were prompt and as humbleas thedignity of a whiteman would permit."91 The Africancould not be permittedto hunt independently with a gunin the presence ofa whiteman. The entirelogic of restoring threatened white manhood depended on thatrule. Hunting was magic; Bill's well-meaning (and well-placed) shot was pollution, a usurpationof maturity. Finally, Akeley had Ginkungu put in jail duringthe 1909-11 safariwhen "Bill" actively declined to submitwhen Carl "found it necessary to take himin hand for mild punishment" for another refusal of a whiteman's orders about baggage.92The Africancaught up withthe safari weeks later after spending two weeksin jail. The whiteman's paternal solicitude could be quitea problem. Repeatedly,Akeley relied on Ginkungu'sabilities and knowledge.Always, his performancewas attributedto hisloyalty for the master. Collecting the ivory of a woundedelephant, organizing the rescue after the elephant mauling, assisting Mary JobeAkeley about Carl's thesedeeds were the manifestations ofsubordinate death-- love.There is no hintthat Ginkugu might have had other motives--perhaps includ- inga non-subservientpity for a whitewidow in the rain forest, pleasure in his superb skills,complex political dealings with other African groups, or even a superiorhatred forhis masters.Attributing intentions to "Bill"is withoutshadow of doubt;the Africanplayed his role in thesafari script as thenever quite tamed, permanently good boy. Bill was believed to be visible;other Africans largely remained invisible.

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The willedblindness of thewhite lover of natureremained characteristic of the scientistswho went to theGarden to studyprimates, to studyorigins, until cracks beganto showin thisconsciousness around 1970.

IV. The AmericanMuseum of Natural History and theSocial Construction of ScientificKnowledge: Institution

"Speak to the Earthand It Shall Teach Thee."'93 "Everyspecimen is a permanentfact."94

From1890 to 1930,the "Nature Movement" was at itsheight in the United States. Ambivalenceabout "civilization" is an old themein U.S. history,and thisambiva- lence was neverhigher than after the Civil War, and duringthe early decades of monopolycapital formation.95 Civilization, obviously, refers to a complexpattern of dominationof people and everybody (everything) else, often ascribed to technology-- fantasizedas "theMachine." Nature is sucha potentsymbol of innocencepartly because"she" is imagined to be withouttechnology, tobe theobject of vision, and so a sourceof both health and purity. Man is notin nature partly because he is notseen, is notthe spectacle. A constitutivemeaning of masculine gender for us is to be the unseen,the eye (I), theauthor. Indeed that is partof the structure of experience in themuseum, one ofthe reasons one has,willy nilly, the moral status of a youngboy undergoinginitiation through visual experience. Is anyonesurprised that psycholo- gistsfind 20th-century U.S. boysexcel in dissectingvisual fields? The museumis a visualtechnology. It worksthrough desire for communion, not separation, and one of itsproducts is gender.Who needsinfancy in thenuclear family when we have rebirthin theritual spaces of Teddy Bear Patriarchy? Obviously,this essay is premisedon theinversion of a causalrelation of technol- ogyto thesocial relations of domination:the social relations of domination,I am arguing,are frozeninto the hardware and logics of technology. Nature is, in "fact," constructedas a technologythrough social praxis.And dioramasare meaning- machines.Machines are timeslices intothe social organismsthat made them. Machinesare mapsof power,arrested moments of social relationsthat in turn threatento governthe living.The ownersof the greatmachines of monopoly capital-the so-calledmeans of production--were,with excellent reason, at the forefrontof naturework-because it was one ofthe means of production of race, genderand class.For them, "naked eye science"could give direct vision of social peace and progressdespite the appearancesof class war and decadence.They requireda science"instaurating" jungle peace, with its promise of restored manhood, completewith a transcendentethic of hunting; and so theybought it. This scientificdiscourse on originswas notcheap; and theservants of science, humanand animal,were not tame. The relationsof knowledgeand powerat the AmericanMuseum of Natural History are notcaught by telling a taleof thegreat

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capitalistsin thesky conspiring to obscurethe truth. Quite the opposite, the tale mustbe ofcommitted Progressives struggling to dispeldarkness through research, educationand reform.The greatcapitalists were not in the sky;they were in the field,armed with the Gospel of Wealth.96They were also oftenarmed with an elephantgun and an Akeleycamera.97 This entireessay has been aboutthe "social constructionof knowledge."There is no boundarybetween the "inside" and "outside"of science,such thatin one universesocial relationsappear, but in theother the history of ideas proceeds.Sciences are wovenof social relations throughouttheir tissues. The conceptof social relationsmust include the entire complexof interactions among people, as individualsand in groups of various sizes; objects,including books, buildings, and rocks;and animals,including apes and elephants.9" Butin thissection of Teddy Bear Patriarchy,I want to exploreone bandin the spectrumof socialrelations- the philanthropic activities of men in theAmerican Museumof NaturalHistory which fostered exhibition (including public education andscientific collecting), conservation, and eugenics. These activities are theoptic tectumof nakedeye science,i.e., theneural organs of integrationand interpre- tation.This essay has movedfrom the immediacy of experience, through the medi- ationsof biographyand storytelling; we now mustlook at a synthesisof social construction." Butfirst a wordon decadence,the threat against which exhibition, conservation, andeugenics were all directedas coordinatedmedical interventions, as prophylaxis foran endangeredbody politic. The museumwas a medicaltechnology, a hygienic intervention,and the pathologywas a potentiallyfatal organic sickness of the individualand collectivebody. Decadence was a venerealdisease proper to the organsof social and personalreproduction: sex, race, and class.From the point of viewof TeddyBear Patriarchy,race suicidewas a clinicalmanifestation whose mechanismwas thedifferential reproductive rates of anglo-saxonvs. "non-white" immigrantwomen. Class war,a pathologicalantagonism of functionallyrelated groupsin society, seemed imminent. A burning question in the last decades of the 19th centuryconcerned the energetic economy of middle class women undertaking higher education:was their health, reproductive capacity and nutritive function, imperiled; werethey unsexed by diverting the limited store of organic energy to theirheads at crucialorganic moments? Nature was threatened by the machine in the garden; the properinterface ofthe Age of Man and the Age of Mammals could perhaps preserve the potencyof the vision of nature and so restorethe energy of man. These are strange concernsfor the cyborgs of the late 20th century, whose preoccupation with stress and itsbaroque technicist, code-implicated pathologies makes decadence seem quaint. Infectionand decay have been incorporated into coding errors signified by acronyms- AIDS. Butfor white, middle class Americans before World War II decadencemattered. Lungdisease (remember Teddy Roosevelt's asthma and alcoholicbrother, not to mentionAmerica's version of Magic Mountain), sexual disease (what was not a sexual

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 54 Haraway disease,when leprosy, masturbation, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman's need to write allqualified?), and social disease (like strikes and feminism) all disclosed ontologically andepistemologically similar disorders of the relations of nature and culture. Deca- dencethreatened in twointerconnected ways, both related to functioningenergy- limitedproductive systems. The machine(remember the iconic power of therail- road)and itsfierce artificiality threatened to consumeand exhaustman. And the sexualeconomy of man seemed vulnerable on theone hand to exhaustion and on the otherto submergence in unruly and primitive excess. The trusteesand officers of the museumwere charged with the task of promoting public health in these circumstances.

EXHIBITION

The AmericanMuseum of Natural History was (and is) a "private"institution, as privatecould only be definedin the U.S. InEurope the natural history museums were organsof the state, intimately connected to the fates of national politics."? Kennedy's historyof theAmerican Museum stresses how intimately connected the develop- mentof all theU.S. naturalhistory museums was with the origins of the great class of capitalistsafter the Civil War. The socialfate of that class was also thefate of the museum;its rearrangements and weaknesses in the 1930s were reproduced in crises in themuseum, ideologically and organizationally. Philanthropy from the hands of theRockefellers was mediatedby a verycomplex machinery for the allocation of fundsand determinationof worthyrecipients. The AmericanMuseum was not bufferedin thatway from intimate reliance on thepersonal beneficence of a few wealthymen. The AmericanMuseum is a particularlytransparent window for spying on thewealthy in theirideal incarnation, for they made dioramas of themselves. The greatscientific collecting expeditions from the American Museum began in 1888and stretched to the 1930s. By 1910, they had resulted in gaining for the museum a majorscientific reputation in selected fields, especially paleontology, ornithology, and mammalogy.The museumin 1910boasted nine scientific departments and twenty-fivescientists. Anthropology also benefitted,and the largest collecting expe- ditionever mounted by the museum was the 1890s Jesup North Pacific Expedition so importantto FranzBoas's career.'0' The sponsorsof the museum liked a sciencethat storedfacts safely; they liked the public popularity of thenew exhibitions. Many peopleamong the white, protestant middle and upperclasses in theUnited States werecommitted to nature,camping, and the outdoor life; Teddy Roosevelt embodied theirpolitics and theirethos. Theodore Roosevelt's father was one of the incorporatorsof themuseum in 1868.His son, Kermit,was a trusteeduring the buildingof African Hall. Others in that cohort of trustees were J.P. Morgan, William K. Vanderbilt,Henry W. Sage,H.F. Osborn,Daniel Pomeroy, E. RolandHarriman, ChildsFrick, John D. RockefellerIII, and MadisonGrant. These are leadersof

This content downloaded from 164.41.223.39 on Wed, 10 Apr 2013 10:34:23 AM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions TeddyBear Patriarchy 55 movementsfor eugenics, conservation, and therational management of capitalist society.They are patronsof science. The firstGreat Hall of dioramaswas FrankChapman's Hall ofNorth American Birds,opened in 1903.Akeley was hiredto enhancethe museum's ability to pre- pare the fascinatingAfrican game, especially elephants; and he conceivedthe AfricanHall idea on his firstcollecting trip for the AmericanMuseum. Osborn hopedfor-and got-a NorthAmerican and AsianMammal Hall afterthe African one. The youngertrustees in the 1920sformed an AfricanBig Game Club that invitedwealthy sportsmen to join incontributing specimens and moneyto African Hall. The 1920swere prosperous for these men, and theygave generously. Thirty to fortyexpeditions in someyears were mounted in the 1920sto getthe unknown factsof nature.There were over one hundredexpeditions in the fieldfor the AmericanMuseum in thatdecade. 02 Therewas also a significantexpansion of themuseum's educational endeavors. Overone millionchildren per year in NewYork were looking at "naturecabinets" put togetherby themuseum. Radio talks,magazine articles, and bookscovered the museum'spopular activities, which appeared in manyways to be a science forthe people,like thatof the NationalGeographic, which taught republican Americanstheir responsibilities in empireafter 1898. Significantly, both Natural History,the museum'spublication, and NationalGeographic relied heavily on photographs."03There was a big buildingprogram from 1909 to 1929; and the AnnualReport of theMuseum for 1921 quoted the estimate by itsdirector that 2,452,662(any significant decimal places?!) people were reached by the museum andits education extension program, including the nature cabinets and food exhibits circulatingthrough the city public health department. Osbornsummarized the fond hopes of educatorslike himself in his claimthat childrenwho pass through the museum's halls "become more reverent, more truth- ful,and moreinterested in thesimple and naturallaws of theirbeing and better citizensof the futurethrough each visit."He maintainedalso thatthe book of nature,written only in facts,was proofagainst the failing of otherbooks: "The Frenchand Russiananarchies were based in books and in oratoryin defiance of everylaw of nature."'"Osborn went beyond pious hopes and constructeda Hall ofthe Age ofMan to makethe moral lessons of racial hierarchy and progress explicit,lest theybe missedin gazingat elephants.105He counteredthose who criticizedthe Halls and educationalwork as too expensive,requiring too much timethat would be betterspent on scienceitself. "The exhibitsin theseHalls have been criticizedonly by thosewho speakwithout knowledge. They all tend to demonstratethe slow upward ascent and struggleof man from the lower to the higherstages, physically, morally, intellectually, and spiritually.Reverently and carefullyexamined, they put man upwardstowards a higherand betterfuture and awayfrom the purely animal stage of life."'"This is the Gospel of Wealth, reverentlyexamined.

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PROPHYLAXIS

Twoother undertakings inthis period at the American Museum require comment: eugenicsand conservation. They were closely linked in philosophy and in personnel at themuseum, and theytied in closely with exhibition and research. For example, the notoriousauthor of The Passingof the GreatRace, MadisionGrant, was a successfulcorporation lawyer, a trusteeof the American Museum, an organizerof supportfor the NorthAmerican Hall, a co-founderof the CaliforniaSave-the- RedwoodsLeague, activist for making Mt. McKinley and adjacent lands a national park,and the powerful secretary of the New York Zoological Society. His preserva- tionof natureand germplasm all seemedthe same sort of work.Grant was nota quackor an extremist.He representeda band of Progressive opinion, one terrified ofthe consequences of unregulated monopoly capitalism, including failure to regu- late theimportation of non-white(which included Jewish and southernEuropean) workingclasses who invariably had moreprolific women than the "old American stock."The roleof themuseum in establishingParc Albertin theBelgian Congo has alreadybeen noted.Powerful men in the Americanscientific establishment wereinvolved in thatsignificant venture in internationalscientific cooperation: JohnC. Merriamof theCarnegie Institution of Washington,George Vincent of theRockefeller Foundation, Osborn at theAmerican Museum. The firstsignificant userof thesanctuary would be sentby thefounder of primatologyin America, RobertYerkes, for a studyof the psychobiologyof wildgorillas. Yerkes was a leaderin themovements for social hygiene,the category in whicheugenics and conservationalso fit.It was all in theservice of science. The Second InternationalCongress of Eugenicswas held at the American Museumof Natural History in 1921while Akeley was in the field collecting gorillas and initiatingplans for Parc Albert.Osborn, an ardenteugenicist, believed that itwas "[pjerhapsthe most important scientific meeting ever held in theMuseum." All the leadingU.S. universitiesand stateinstitutions sent representatives, and therewere many eminent foreign delegates. The proceedingswere collected in a volumeplainly titled "Eugenics in Family,Race, and State."The Congresshad a specialfruit savored by Osborn. "The section of the exhibit bearing on immigration was thensent to Washingtonby theCommittee on Immigrationof theCongress, membersof which made several visits to theMuseum to study the exhibit. The press was at firstinclined to treatthe work of theCongress lightly...but as thesound and patrioticseries of addressesand paperson heredity,the Family, the Race and theState succeeded one another,the influence of theCongress grew and found itsway into news and editorialcolumns of theentire press of theUnited States." Immigrationrestriction laws, to protectthe Race, theonly race needinga capital letter,from "submergence by the influxof otherraces,"'0' were passed by the UnitedStates Congress in 1923.

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The 1930swere a hiatusfor the Museum.Not onlydid the Depressionlead to reducedcontributions, but basic ideologiesand politicsshifted, making the formationsdiscussed in thisessay less relevantto the Americanruling classes, althoughthe Museum remained popular with New York's people way beyond the 1930sand eugenicssterilization laws have remainedon the booksinto the late 20thcentury. The changeswere not abrupt; but even the racial doctrines so openly championedby the Museumwere publiclycriticized in the 1940s,though not untilthen. Conservation was pursuedwith different political and spiritualjustifi- cations.A differentbiology was beingborn, more in thehands of the Rockefeller Foundationand in a differentsocial womb. The issuewould be molecularbiology and otherforms of post-organismic cyborg biology. The threatof decadence gave way to thecatastrophes of theobsolescence of man (and of all organicnature) and the disease of stress,realities announced vigorously after World War II. Differentforms of capitalistpatriarchy and racismwould emerge, embodied as alwaysin a retoolednature. Decadence is a diseaseof organisms;obsolescence and stressare conditionsof technologicalsystems. Hygiene would give way to systemsengineering as thebasis of medical, religious, political, and scientificstory tellingpractices. To summarizethe themes of TeddyBear Patriarchy,let us comparethe three publicactivities of the Museum, all dedicatedto preservinga threatened manhood. Theywere exhibition, eugenics, and conservation.Exhibition has beendescribed hereat greatestlength; it was a practiceto producepermanence, to arrestdecay. Eugenicswas a movementto preservehereditary stock, to assureracial purity, to preventrace suicide. Conservation was a policyto preserveresources, not only for industry,but also formoral formation, for the achievement of manhood. All three activitieswere a prescriptionto cureor preventdecadence, the dread disease of imperialist,capitalist, and white culture. All threeactivities were considered forms ofeducation and forms of science; they were also very close to religious practice and certainlyshared qualities, as wellas professionalinterest, of medical practice. These threeactivities were all aboutpreservation, purity, social order,health, and the transcendenceof death, personal and collective. They attempted to insure preservation withoutfixation and paralysis,in the face of extraordinarychange in the relationsof sex, race, and class. The leadersof theAmerican Museum of NaturalHistory would insist that they weretrying to knowand to savenature, reality. And the real was one. The explicit ontologywas holism,organicism. There was also an aestheticappropriate to exhibition,conservation, and eugenics from 1890 to 1930:realism. But in the1920s thesurrealists knew that behind the day lay the night of sexual terror, disembodiment, failureof order; in short,castration and impotenceof theseminal body which had spokenall theimportant words for centuries, the great white father, the white hunter in theheart of Africa.'"8 And the strongest evidence presented in thisessay for the correctnessof theirjudgment has been a literalreading of the realist,organicist

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The staffin the archivesof the AmericanMuseum of NaturalHistory have earned a special thanks for courtesyand competence. Friendsand colleagues who have generouslycommented on draftsof Teddy Bear include the membersof the 1984 FeministTheory seminar of the Historyof Consciousness Board at the Universityof CaliforniaSanta Cruz, and JimClifford, Barbara Epstein,Sandra Harding, Val Hartouni,Nancy Hartsock,Rusten Hogness, JayeMiller, Dorothy Stein, and AdrienneZihlman. Robert Filomeno helped withlibrary research at a crucial time. Wendy Graham of Social Text was a wonderfuleditor. Alexander, Sojourner, and Moses were unfailinglyimpatient.

NOTES 1. HenryFairfield Osborn, Report to the Trustees,American Museum of NaturalHistory, May, 1908, and in JohnMichael Kennedy.Philanthropy and Science in New York City: The AmericanMuseum of NaturalHistory, 1868-1968, Yale UniversityPh.D., 1968, Univ. Microfilms,Inc., 69-13,347 (hereafter Kennedy).The AmericanMuseum is hereafterAMNH. 2. Edgar Rice Burroughsin IrwinPorges, Edgar Rice Burroughs:The Man WhoCreated Tarzan(Provo, Utah: BrighamYoung Univ., 1975),p. 129. 3. Osbornbelieved Homo sapiensarose in Asia and importantMuseum expeditions into the Gobi desert in the 1920swere mounted in an attemptto provethis position. However, Africa still had special meaning as thecore of primitivenature, and so as originin thesense of potentialrestoration, a reservoirof original conditionswhere "true primitives"survived. Africa was not establishedas the scene of the original emergenceof our species untilwell after the 1930s.For a creativeschizo-analysis of Africaas thelocus for the inscriptionof capitalistdesire in history,see William Pietz (Pitzer College), "The Phonographin Africa: InternationalPhonocentrism from Stanley to Sarnoff,"paper fromthe Second International Theoryand Text Conference,Southampton, England, 1983. 4. The bodyas generativepolitical construction has been a majortheme in feministtheory. See Nancy Hartsock,Money, Sex, and Power (NY: Longman,1982); Valerie Hartouni(History of Consciousness UCSC) in ms. on Greek and Roman versionsof citizenshipin genderedbodies; D.J. Haraway,"Animal Sociology and a Natural Economy of the Body Politic," Signs 4 (1978): 21-60; and for reflectionson meaningsof citizenship in thisessay, Social Research,Winter 1974, essays from the New School forSocial Research "Conferenceon the Meaningof Citizenship."Lacanian feministtheory has probablybeen the mostcreative and the mostproblematic exploration of "woman's" body as not citizen,not author,e.g., Helene Cixous,"The Laugh ofthe Medusa," in Elaine Marksand Isabelle de Courtivron,eds. New French Feminisms(Amherst: Univ. of MassachusettsPress, 1980). 5. The Deauvereaux or Hotel Colorado in Glenwood Springs,CO, containsa plaque withone versionof the originof the Teddy Bear, emblem of Theodore Roosevelt: T.R. returnedempty-handed from a huntingtrip to the hotel,and so a hotelmaid createda littlestuffed bear and gave it to him.Word spread, and the Bear was manufacturedin Germanyshortly thereafter. Another version has T.R. sparingthe life ofa bear cub, withthe stuffed version commemorating his kindness. It is a pleasureto compose an essayin feministtheory on the subject of stuffedanimals.

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6. Visual communion,a formof erotic fusion connected with themes of heroic action, especially death, is builtinto modern scientific ideologies. Its role in masculinistepistemology in science,with its politics of rebirth,is at least as crucial as ideologiesof separationand objectivism.Feminist theory so farhas paid more attentionto gendered subject/objectsplitting and not enough to love in specular domination's constructionof natureand hersisters. See EvelynFox Keller,Gender and Science (New Haven: Yale UP, forthcoming),Carolyn Merchant, Death ofNature (NY: Harperand Row, 1980),and Sandra Hardingand Merrill Hintikka,eds., Discovering Reality: FeministPerspectives on Epistemology,Metaphysics, Methodolgyand Philosophyof Science (Dordrecht:Reidel, 1983),esp. E.F. Keller and C.R. Grontkowski, "The Mind's Eye." 7. I am indebtedto WillaimPietz's 1983UCSC slidelecture on theChicago FieldMuseum for an analysis of museumsas scenes of ritualtransformation. 8. Carl E. Akeley,In BrightestAfrica (NY: Doubleday, Page, & Co., 1923),p. 162. HereafterIBA. 9. WilliamDavison Johnson, T.R.: Championof the Strenuous Life (NY: TheodoreRoosevelt Association, 1958), p. 138, 126-27; David McCullough, Morningson Horseback (NY:Touchstone of Simon and Schuster,1981); T. Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt's America, Farida Wiley, ed. (Devin, 1955); P.R. Cutright,Theodore Roosevelt the Naturalist (NY: Harperand Row, 1956). For thetheme of travel and the modernWestern self, esp. for the penetrationof Brazil, Claude Levi-Strauss,Tristes Tropiques, and Daniel Defert,"The collectionof the World: Accountsof Voyages fromthe Sixteenthto the Eighteenth Centuries,"Dialectical Anthropology7 (1982): 11-20.Travel as science and as heroicquest interdigitate. 10. It is hardlyirrelevant to thesymbolism of fearof the new immigrantsthat it is womenwho had all the frighteningbabies. It is also hardlyirrelevant to thelives of thewomen who had to respondto therealities of immigrantlife in a racistsociety. Linda Gordon, Woman's Body, Woman's Right(NY: Grossman, 1976); James Reed, From Private Vice to Public Virtue(NY: Basic Books, 1978); Carole McCann, "Politics of BirthControl and FeministPolitical Options in the 1920s,"ms., Historyof Consciousness, UCSC; JohnHigham, Strangers in the Land (Greenwood reprintof 1963ed.) Roosevelt popularizedthe term"race suicide" in a 1905 speech. 11. The constructionof nature,the primitive, the other through an allochronicdiscourse that works by temporaldistancing is explored in JohannesFabian, Time and the Other (NY: Columbia UP, 1983). "[G]eopolitics has its ideological foundationin chronopolitics."p. 144. "Woman" is also constructed outside sharedor coeval time,as well as outside historicaltime. 12. Akeley to Osborn,29 March 1911,in Kennedy,p. 186. The change fromAfrican Hall's dioramas to theradically decontextualized boutique displays of morerecent AMNH practiceis at leastevidence for relaxed anxietyabout decadence. 13. JamesClark, "The Image of Africa,"in The CompleteBook of AfricanHall (NY: AMNH, 1936), p. 69-73 forprinciples of composition;special issues on AfricanHall, The Mentor,January 1926, and Natural History,January 1936. See also Handasyde Buchanan, Nature into Art: A Treasuryof Great NaturalHistory Books (Gloucester,MA: Smith,1980); Donald Lowe, The HistoryofBourgeois Perception (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982) forexcellent discussion of the productionof the transcendentalsubject fromthe structuredrelations of humaneye/eye-subject/technical apparatus. 14. MalvinaHoffman's bronzes of Africanmen and womenin thishall, as wellas herheads ofAfricans at the entranceto the hall, are extraordinarytestimony to a craftedhuman beautyin Akeley's templeof nature.They hardlytell a storyof naturalprimitives. On Osborn's failedeffort to enlistHoffman in his projects,see CharlottePorter (Smithsonian), "The Rise to Parnassus:Henry Fairfield Osborn and theHall of the Age of Man," unpublishedms. JoshuaTaylor, "Malvina Hoffman,"American Art and Antiques 2 (July/Aug.1979): 96-103. 15. I am indebtedto James Clifford's sharp eye forthis perception. He and I read thedioramas together in New York City in March, 1982. For a methodof readingevolutionary texts as narrative,see Misia L. Landau, The Anthropogenic:Paleontological Writingas a Genre of Literature,Yale Univ. Ph.D. dissertation,1981, and "Human Evolutionas Narrative,"American Scientist 72 (May/June1984): 262-68. 16. IBA, 190.

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17. IBA, 203. 18. Carl E. Akeleyand MaryL. JobeAkeley, Lions, Gorillas,and theirNeighbors(NY: Dodd and Mead, 1922),hereafter LGN. 19. IBA, 211. The jealous mistresstrope is a ubiquitouselement of the heterosexistgender anxieties pervadingscientists' writing about theirendeavors. See esp. Keller, Genderand Science. 20. WilliamNesbit, How to Huntwith the Camera (NY: Dutton,1926); G.A. Guggisberg,Early Wildlife Photographers(NY: Talpinger,1977); Colin Allison, The TrophyHunters (Harrisburg, PA: Stackpole, 1981); J.L. Cloudsley-Thompson,Animal Twilight:Man and Game in EasternAfrica (Dufour, 1967). 21. IBA, 221. 22. IBA, 222. 23. IBA, 226. Forthe white woman's account of this trip, see MaryHastings Bradley, On theGorilla Trail (NY: Appelton,1922). 24. IBA, 230. 25. IBA, 235. 26. IBA, 248. Scientificknowledge cancelled death; onlydeath beforeknowledge was final,an abortive act in the naturalhistory of progress. 27. MaryL. JobeAkeley, CarlAkeley's Africa (NY: Dodd and Mead, 1929),chpt. XV. HereafterCAA. 28. Mary Lee Jobe Akeley, The WildernessLives Again. Carl Akelev and the Great Adventure(NY: Dodd and Mead, 1940),p. 341. HereafterWLA. 29. CAA, 189-90. 30. Dian Fossey,Gorillas in the Midst (Boston: Houghton-Mifflin,1983), p. 3. 31. Osborn in IBA, xii. 32. IBA, 216. 33. Cyborgsare cyberneticorganisms whose birthshould be soughtin social realityand science fiction fromthe 1950s. For considerationsof cyborg existence,see D.J. Haraway, "Manifestofor Cyborg Feminists,"Socialist Review, forthcoming.For insighton the fictionsof cyborgs,see Katie King (Hist. Con. UCSC), "The Pleasuresof Repetitionand the Limitsof Identificationin FeministScience Fiction: Reimaginationsof the Body after the Cyborg"; for a theoryof masculinist cyborg replication, Zoe Sofoulis (Hist. Con. UCSC), "JupiterSpace," papers deliveredat the CaliforniaAmerican Studies Association meetings,1984. 34. IBA, 1. 35. CynthiaRussett, The Concept ofEquilibrium in AmericanSocial Thought(New Haven: Yale UP, 1966); Mary Alice Evans and Howard EnsignEvans, WilliamMorton Wheeler,Biologist (Cambridge: HarvardUP, 1970); WilliamMorton Wheeler, Essays in PhilosophicalBiology (Cambridge: Harvard UP). Fororganicism in thehistory of ecology and primatology,see D.J.Haraway, "Signs of Dominance: Froma Physiologyto a Cyberneticsof PrimateSociety," Studies in Historyof Biology6 (1983): 129-219. 36. WLA, chpt. III; IBA, chpt. 1. 37. WLA, 340. 38. Clark, CompleteBook of AfricanHall, p. 73. 39. IBA, II and X; WLA, VI and X; Clark. 40. WLA, 38. 41. Virtuallysimultaneously in New York, Frank Chapman of the Departmentof Mammalogyand Ornithologywas workingon NorthAmerican bird habitat groups, which were installedfor the public in a largehall in 1903,one of the firstevidences of a generouspolicy by thetrustees from about 1890 to 1930. Fromthe mid 1880s,British Museum workersinnovated methods for mounting birds, including making extremelylife-like vegetation. The AmericanMuseum founded its own departmentof taxidermyin 1885 and hiredtwo London taxidermists,the brotherand sisterHenry Minturn and Mrs. E.S. Mogridge,to teach howto mountthe groups. Joel Asaph Abel, Head ofMammalology and Ornithology,was able to hire FrankChapman in 1887; Chapman is a major figurein the historyof Americanornithology and had an importantrole to playin theinitiation of field primatology in the 1930s.Bird groups done at theAmerican

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Museumfrom about 1886on werevery popular with the public and inducedmajor changes in thefortunes of the museum."Wealthy sportsmen, in particular,began to give to the museum."This turningpoint is criticalin thehistory of theconservation movement in theUnited States, which will be discussedfurther below. Significantlybecause of the scientificactivity of the staffof the Departmentof Mammalogyand Ornithology,the scientific reputation of the American Museum improved dramatically in thelast years of the 19thcentury. Kennedy, pp. 97-104;Frank M. Chapman: Autobiographyof a BirdLover (NY: 1933); pamphletof Chicago Field ColumbiaMuseum, 1902, "The FourSeasons"; "The Workof Carl E. Akeleyin the Field Museum of NaturalHistory" (Chicago: Field Museum, 1927). 42. The termis MaryJobe Akeley's,WLA, 217. 43. Clark,71. 44. IBA, 265. 45. IBA, 261. 46. Fabian, chpt. 4, "The Otherand the Eye," in Time and the Other. 47. IBA, chpt. X. 48. MartinJohnson, "Camera Safaris,"in CompleteBook of AfricanHall, p. 47. 49. See JaneGoodall inAmong the WildChimpanzees (National Geographic society film, 1984); David Attenborough,Life On Earth(Boston and Toronto: Little,Brown & Co., 1979)and BBC TV seriesof the same name; and forastonishing pictures of humanmother, baby, and wild elephantintimacy, Iain and Oria Douglas-Hamilton,Among the Elephants(NY: Viking,1975). 50. Kennedy,p. 204. 51. Susan Sontag,On Photography(NY: Delta, 1977),p. 15. 52. CAA, 116. 53.IBA, 155. 54. IBA, chpt.VIII; EdwardNorth Burton, Two African Trips, 1902; C.G. Schillings,With Flashlight and Rifle,1905; A. RadclyffeDugmore, Camera Adventuresin the AfricanWilds, 1910. 55. CAA, 127-30;WLA, 115. 56. Jane Goodall, "My Life among the Wild Chimpanzees,"National Geographic,August 1963, pp. 272-308;Dian Fossey,"Making Friends with Mountain Gorillas," National Geographic,January 1970, pp. 48-67;Birute Galdikas-Brindamour, "Orangutans, Indonesia's 'People of theForest,"' National Geographic, October 1975,pp. 444-473,and "Livingwith the Great Orange Apes," National Geographic, June 1980, pp. 830-853. 57. IBA, 166. 58. IBA, 166. 59. IBA, 167. 60. IBA, 223-24.Akeley recognized the utility of hiscamera to anthropologists,who could (and would) use the telephotofeature "in makingmotion pictures of nativesof uncivilizedcountries without their knowledge."IBA, 166.The photoarchive of theAmerican Museum of NaturalHistory is a wonderfuland disturbingsource of early anthropological photography. These imagesshould be systematicallycompared withthe contemporarysafari material. 61. IBA, 197. 62. NeilHarris, Humbug: TheArt ofP. T. Barnum(Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1973); HermanMelville, The ConfidenceMan, firstpublished 1857. The differencebetween Barnum in thedemocratic tradition of hoax and Walt Disney's proliferationsof simulationmatters. Jean Baudrillard,Simulations (NY: Semiotext(e),1983), pp. 23-26; Louis Marin, Utopique,jeux d'espaces; Richard Schickel, The Disney Version(NY: Simon and Schuster,1968). 63. October,1923, prospectus, AMNH archives;Martin Johnson, "Camera Safaris,"The CompleteBook ofAfrican Hall, 1936; CAA, 129; July26, 1923,Akeley memorandum on MartinJohnson Film Expedition and additional materialfrom 1923 AMNH archive,microfilm 1114a and 1114b. See MartinJohnson, Throughthe South Seas withJack London (Dodd and Mead); CannibalLand (HoughtonMifflin); Trailing African WildAnimals (Century);and the filmsSimba, made on the Eastman-Pomeroyexpedition, and TrailingAfrican Wild Animals.

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64. Lewis Carroll,"The Huntingof theSnark," in Alice in Wonderland,Norton Critical Edition, p. 225. 65. October 1923,prospectus to the AMNH, archivesmicrofilim 1114a. 66. October 1923,Osborn endorsement,AMNH archivemicrofilm 1114a. 67. MartinJohnson, July 26, 1923,prospectus draft, microfilm 11 14a. The expectationthat a filmmade in the middle 1920swould be the last wild lifeextravaganza is breathtakingin retrospect.But thisserious hope is a wonderfulstatement of the beliefthat nature did exist in essentiallyone formand could be capturedin one vision,if only the technologyof theeye were adequate. The filmmade by theJohnsons was "Simba." 68. Much ofthis paragraph is a responseto Sontag,On Photography.On thefears and need formirrors of the Americanmythical self-made man, see J.G. Barker-Benfield,The Horrorsof theHalf Known Life (NY: Harper and Row, 1976) and Susan Griffin,Woman and Nature(NY: Harperand Row, 1978). 69. The principalsources for this section are correspondance,annual reports, photographic archives, and artefactsin the AMNH: IBA; MaryJobe Akeley's biography of her husband,WLA; MaryJobe and Carl Akeley'sarticles in The World'sWork; LGN; and Delia Akeley'sadventure book, Jungle Portraits (NY: Macmillan, 1930). Delia is Delia Denning,Delia Akeley,Delia A. Howe. See N.Y. Times,23 May, 1970, p. 23. The buoyantracism in thebooks and articlesof thiscontemporary of MargaretMead makesMary Jobe and Carl look cautious. 70. Joanna Russ, How to Suppress Women's Writing(Austin: Texas UP, 1983), p. 76. For a superb discussion of the world in which Delia and Mary Jobe worked, see Margaret W. Rossiter, Women Scientistsin America: Strugglesand Strategiesto 1940 (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins UP, 1982). 71. WLA, 222. 72. WLA, 223. 73. IBA, 45. 74. IBA, 48-49. 75. IBA, 49. 76. IBA, 54-55. 77. WLA, IX. 78. WLA, 126. 79. WLA, 303. 80. JP,249. 81. JP,233. 82. JP,93. 83. JP,90, 95. 84. CAA, 200. 85. CAA, 199. 86. The literatureexamining functionalism in scientificdiscourse is large,but criticalto thisessay are: AlfredSohn Rethel,Intellectual and Manual Labor (London: Macmillan,1978); Bob Young, "Science Is Social Relations,"Radical Science Journal5 (1977): 65-129; HilaryRose, "Hand, Brain,and Heart: A FeministEpistemology for the NaturalSciences," Signs9 (1983):73-90. 87. CAA, V; WLA, XV; IBA, VII. 88. IBA, 143. 89. IBA, 144. 90. IBA, 134."Father to thegame" obviously included the highest game of all inthe history of colonialism - the submissionof man. 91. WLA, 132. 92. IBA, 144. 93. Job 12:8, engravedon a plaque at the entranceto the Earth HistoryHall, AMNH. 94. H.F. Osborn,54th Annual Reportto the Trustees,p. 2, AMNH archives. 95. Leo Marx, The Machine in the Garden (London, Oxford,NY: OxfordUP, 1964); RoderickNash, Wildernessand the American Mind, 3rd rev. ed. (New Haven: Yale UP, 1982); RoderickNash, "The

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Exportingand Importingof Nature:Nature-Appreciation as a Commodity1850-1980," Perspectives in AmericanHistory XII (1979): 517-60. 96.Andrew Carnegie, "The Gospelof Wealth," North American Review, 1889; G. WilliamDomhoff, Who Rules America? (NJ: Prentice-Hall,1967); Waldemar A. Nielson, The Big Foundations (NY: ColumbiaUP, 1972);Gabriel Kolko, The Triumphof Conservatism(NY: Free Press,1977); James Weinstein,The CorporateIdeal in theLiberal State, 1900-18(Boston: Beacon, 1969); RobertWiebe, The Searchfor Order, 1877-1920 (NY: Hilland Wang, 1966); Richard Hofstadter, Age of Reform (NY: Knopf, 1955);E. RichardBrown, Rockefeller Medicine Men (Berkeley:U Calif.Press, 1978); Paul Starr,The Social Transformationof AmericanMedicine, esp. chpts.3-6 (NY: Basic, 1982); AlexandraOleson and JohnVoss, eds., The Organizationof Knowledge in Modern America, 1860-1920(Baltimore: Johns HopkinsUP, 1979). 97.One capitalistin thefield with Akeley was GeorgeEastman, an objectlesson in themonopoly capitalist'sgreater fear of decadence than of death. I amclaiming that realism is an aestheticsproper to anxietyabout decadence, but what kind of realism is celebrated in a literaturedescribing a septagenarian Eastmangetting a close-up photograph at 20 feetof a chargingrhino, directing his white hunter when to shootthe gun, while his personal physician looks on? "With this adventure Mr. Eastman began to enjoy Africathoroughly..." WLA, 270. 98. BrunoLatour, Les microbes.Guerre etpaix suivide irreductions(Paris: Metailie,1984), pp. 171-265; BrunoLatour and Steve Woolgar,Laboratory Life: The Social Constructionof ScientificFacts (Beverly Hillsand London:Sage, 1979),esp. on inscriptiondevices and "phenomenotechnique";Karin Knorr- Cetinaand Michael Mulkay, eds., Science Observed (Beverly Hills, London, New Delhi: Sage, 1983). 99. In additionto materialalready cited (esp. Kennedy and AMNHarchives), major sources for this sectioninclude: 1) On decadenceand the crisis of white manhood: F. ScottFitzgerald, The Great Gatsby (1925);Henry Adams, The Educationof HenryAdams (privately printed 1907); Ernest Hemingway, GreenHills of Africa (1935). 2) On thehistory of conservation: Roderick Nash, ed., Environment and the Americans: Problemsand Priorities(Melbourne, Florida: Kreiger,1979) and American Environment: Readings in the Historyof Conservation,2nd ed. (Reading,MA: Addison-Wesley,1976); Samuel Hays, Conservation and the Gospel of Efficiency: The Progressive Conservation Movement, 1890-1920 (Cambridge:Harvard UP, 1959).3) On eugenics,race doctrines, and immigration:John Higham, Send These to Me: Jewsand otherImmigrants in UrbanAmerica (NY: Atheneum,1975); John Haller, Outcasts fromEvolution (Urbana: Illinois UP, 1971);Allan Chase, Legacy of Malthus (NY: Knopf,1977); Kenneth Ludmerer,Genetics and AmericanSociety (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1972);Donald Pickens, Eugenics and the Progressives(Nashville: VanderbiltUP, 1968); S.J. Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (NY: Norton,1981); Stephan L. Chorover,From Genesis to Genocide(Cambridge: MIT Press,1979); HamiltonCravens, Triumph ofEvolution: American Scientists and theHeredity-Environment Controversy, 1900-41(Philadelphia: Univ. Of PennsylvaniaPress, 1978). Complex concerns about sex, sexuality, hygiene,decadence, birth control are crucial to the production of sex research in the early decades of the 20thcentury in lifeand social sciences. Women scientists played a keyrole in generating this research. Rosalind Rosenberg,Beyond Separate Spheres: IntellectualRoots of Modern Feminism(New Haven: Yale UP, 1982).The incitementtodiscourse has been instrumental, tosay the least, in the construction of "selfconsciousness" and selfdescription of womenas a socialgroup. See CatharineA. MacKinnon, "Feminism,Marxism, Method, and the State: An Agenda for Theory," Signs 7, no. 3 (1982).The issueis closelyconnected to the "being" of woman as spectacleand the need for a feministtheory of experience. Smallwonder that film theory is becomingone of the richest sites of feminist theory. Teresa de Lauretis, Alice Doesn 't: Feminism,Semiotics, and Cinema (Bloomington:Indiana UP, 1984) and AnnetteKuhn, Women's Pictures: Feminismand Cinema (London, Boston, Melbourne, Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul,1982). 100.Camille Limoges and hiscollaborators at L'Institutd'histoire et de sociopolitiquedes sciences, Universitede Montreal,provide the most complete analysis of the Paris natural history museums from the early19th century. Gerald Holton and William A. Blanpied,eds., Science and Its Public: The Changing Relation(Dordrecht: Reidel, 1976).

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101.Kennedy, 141ff. Osborn presided over considerable disbursements tothe Department ofAnthropology, despitehis own opinion that anthropology was largely "the gossip of natives." Osborn was more inclined to favorthe skeletons of dinosaurs and mammals, and he is responsiblefor building one of the world's finest paleontologycollections. H.F. Osborn,Fifty-two Years of Research, Observation,and Publication(NY: AMNH,1930). 102.Kennedy, 192. 103. PhilipPauly, American Quarterly,1982. 104.Osborn, "The American Museum and Citizenship," 53rd Annual Report, 1922, p. 2. AMNHarchives. 105.Osborn, The Hall ofthe Age ofMan, AMNH Guide Leaflet Series, no. 52. 106.Osborn, "Citizenship," 54th Annual Report, p.2. 107.Osborn, 53rd Annual Report, 1921, pp. 31-32. Ethel Tobach of the AMNH helped me interpret and findmaterial on socialnetworks, eugenics, racism, and sexism at theMuseum. The organizingmeetings forthe Galton Society were held in Osborn's home. 108.Joseph Conrad, esp. Heart of Darkness, is crucial to this aspect of my story, especially for exploring complexitiesoflanguage and desire. See alsoFredric Jameson, "Romance and Reification: Plot Construc- tionand IdeologicalClosure in Joseph Conrad," The Political Unconscious (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1981).

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Figure1. The Giantof Karisimbi.

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Figure2. Gorillashot by H.E. Bradley. MCIs op, Invi

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Figure3. The Christening.

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