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SUMMARY:Death\, decay\, rot and ashes: the 'discovery' of the corpse flowe
 r and the politics of loss in colonial botany - Elaine Ayers (New York Uni
 versity)
DTSTART:20201019T120000Z
DTEND:20201019T130000Z
UID:TALK152341@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Joanne Green
DESCRIPTION:During the summer of 1818 in the mountains of Sumatra\, Britis
 h naturalist Joseph Arnold found himself face to face with what would be c
 alled the 'prodigy of the vegetable world': the giant corpse flower\, late
 r named _Rafflesia arnoldii_. Despite his team's attempts at collecting an
 d preserving this flower\, whose size\, smell\, and unusual characteristic
 s upended blurred the lines between plant and animal\, the specimen quickl
 y rotted into a pulpy mess\, resisting all attempts at 'normal' practices 
 of preservation. Within two months\, Joseph Arnold was dead. Indeed\, such
  narratives of loss haunt narratives of the 'discovery' of the corpse flow
 er by colonial naturalists – men perished\, collections went up in flame
 s or were consumed by ants\, specimens rotted\, and\, through it all\, the
  'monstrous' plant remained\, resistant to all attempts of scientific cont
 rol. Tracing the history of this plant in its Sumatran rainforest home\, t
 his paper unravels constructions of political and affective loss in tropic
 al colonial botany\, arguing for the prevalence and centrality of decay in
  natural history collecting and collections.
LOCATION:Zoom
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