Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Retrospective Theses and Dissertations Dissertations 2002 "No mere travelogue": material-semiotic bodies/ texts in science, safari, and spectacle Lisa M. Hermsen Iowa State University Follow this and additional works at: https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd Part of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, Rhetoric and Composition Commons, and the Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons Recommended Citation Hermsen, Lisa M., ""No mere travelogue": material-semiotic bodies/texts in science, safari, and spectacle " (2002). Retrospective Theses and Dissertations. 999. https://lib.dr.iastate.edu/rtd/999 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Iowa State University Capstones, Theses and Dissertations at Iowa State University Digital Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Retrospective Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Iowa State University Digital Repository. 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Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand corner and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 "No mere travelogue": Material-semiotic bodies/texts in science, safari, and spectacle by Lisa M. Hermsen A dissertation submitted to the graduate faculty in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Major: Rhetoric and Professional Communication Program of Study Committee: Carl G. Hemdl, Major Professor Karen Kessel Charlotte Thralls Laura Winkiel Dorothy Winsor Iowa State University Ames, Iowa 2002 Copyright © Lisa M. Hermsen, 2002. All rights reserved. UMI Number: 3061834 UMT UMI Microform 3061834 Copyright 2002 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 ii Graduate College Iowa State University This is to certify that the doctoral dissertation of Lisa M. Hermsen meets the dissertation requirements of Iowa State University Signature was redacted for privacy. Major Professor Signature was redacted for privacy. For the Major Program iii TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT vi PREFACE v INTRODUCTION The True Adventures of Osa on Safari: 1 Rhetoric of Science, Safari, and/or, neither/nor Spectacle CHAPTER 1 Simba: 44 At the Boundary of Science CHAPTER 2 I Married Adventure: 102 An Object on the Boundary CHAPTER 3 Congorilla: 150 Of a Networked Collective CONCLUSION 182 WORKS CITED 209 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 218 iv ABSTRACT Where and how might we alternatively understand science as representation and figure rhetoric as material—and thus trace the ways meaning comes to be constructed in scientific and rhetorical practices, in particular historic moments, for the benefit of some and at the cost of Others? This exploration is situated in a study of anthropology as a social science, emerging as a discipline in the early part of the twentieth century. It treats Osa Johnson's travelogue/ethnography, I Married Adventure, and Martin and Osa Johnsons' ethnocinematic films Simba and Congorilla, in what Thomas Gicryn describes as "boundary work" across science, safari, and spectacle. The Johnsons' texts work here as what Susan Leigh Star terms "boundary objects," the history of which traces the rhetorical and cultural work involved in anthropology as science and ethnography as scientific method Mary Louise Pratt and James Clifford have shown us how to think about the rhetorical tropes of travel writing as apparatuses for global scientific expedition. And Donna Haraway has argued for understanding science as a "material semiotic" cultural event The notions of disciplinary tropes and the extended material- semiotic cultural events allow me to trace what Bruno Latour terms "quasi-objects" along networks, as they work to purify always, already- contaminated boundaries. In sum, I explore the overlapping discourses of science and travel, as these interweave in the uncontainable boundaries of pre-disciplinary anthropology, and thus enact other material boundaries and borders between the civilized and primitive, familiar and strange, American and African. V PREFACE Osa and Martin Johnson dressed in riding breeches, laced boots, and pith helmets. A dead man slung on a pole -"Long Pig," the caption said. Babies with pointed heads wound round and round with string; black, naked women with necks wound round and round with wire like the necks of light bulbs. Their breasts were horrifying. I read it straight through I was too shy to stop. And then I looked at the cover the yellow margins, the date. I -we- were falling, our eyes glued to the cover of the National Geographic, February, 1918. (Elizabeth Bishop, 1971, "In the Waiting Room") vi The dissertation examines the written and visual ethnographic work of Osa and Martin Johnson, popular early twentieth century explorers and adventurers. I situate this examination in a study of anthropology as a social science, emerging as a discipline in the early part of the twentieth century. I concentrate on Osa Johnson's text, 1Married Adventure, and on Martin and Osa Johnsons' films Simba and Congorilla, as objects whose history traces the conceptual, rhetorical, and cultural work of anthropology as science and ethnography as scientific method I focus, in particular, on the life of Osa Johnson, an early 20th century scientist, adventurer, and entertainer by reading her text, I Married Adventure, as it circulated across the domains of scientific exploration, safari expedition, and spectacular travel. The dissertation challenges those readings of the Johnsons' work that too easily dismiss this work as "nonscience." I argue here that such readings leave much of the Johnsons' scientific credibility and consequent social relevance unexplained. My central claim is that the Johnsons' work, far from being expelled from the realm of science, was actually pushed into it and was advanced in its context as at least a quasi-legitimate science. Moreover, I argue that this text resists any strict distinction between professional science and its popularization. Studies of science by sociologists, historians, philosophers, and rhetoricians have spent much time and energy attempting to identify principles of demarcation that would define the essence of what really makes science science: who is a scientist? what is scientific? where is science? However, it seems now that such attempts have failed because no such principles for demarcation seem available. That is, insofar as attempts have been devoted to discover an epistemological and ahistorical essence of science that could be demarcated by certain common properties, the attempts have been doomed because there is no epistemological or ahistorical essence to be found. And yet, even though there arc no vii essential principles that demarcate science from non-science, science retains a certain epistemic and ahistorical privilege. More recent work in the studies of science have posited that science emerges at this epistemic privilege in a nonepistemic way. The argument posits that the demarcation of science from nonsciencc is contingent and local, mapped by a variety of conceptual, rhetorical, and social practices of disciplinarity. Throughout this dissertation, I draw upon the concept of "boundary" as it has been brought to bear in contemporary theorizing in studies of science to make sense of a variety of cultural practices and productions in those spaces where difference becomes manifest Specifically, in the dissertation, I borrow Thomas F. Gieryn's concept of "boundary work," Susan Leigh Star's concept of "boundary object," and Bruno Latour's concept of "network" and "circulatory reference." In the dissertation, I draw on these helpful theoretical and analytical tools: 1) Thomas F. Gieryn has introduced the rhetorical strategies for "boundary work" that separates science from non-science in local and episodic contexts. 2) Susan Leigh Star has created the concept of "boundary object" to talk about objects which inhabit several intersecting worlds and thus serve as "obligatory passage points" across those spaces in which lines of demarcation separating science from non-science are simultaneously ordered and disordered, contested and accepted. 3) Bruno Latour offers a network system of "circulatory reference" through which "quasi-objects" move and are dependent upon both coordination among multiple network participants and on die maintenance ofthat coordination over