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CATEGORIES:Cabinet of Natural History
SUMMARY:Impressed upon the countenance: knowledge and visi
 bility in Lavaterian physiognomy - Stephanie O'Rou
 rke (Columbia University)
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20130429T130000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20130429T141500
UID:TALK44697AThttp://talks.cam.ac.uk
URL:http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/44697
DESCRIPTION:An English reader perusing the Henry Hunter transl
 ation of the  controversial and enormously popular
  treatise 'Essays on Physiognomy' in  \nthe 1790s 
 would have encountered something rather strange: a
  text that  disputes itself. This dissonance\, sta
 ged in illustrations\, footnotes\, and  \ncaptions
 \, concerns the problem of how to illustrate physi
 ognomic  knowledge\, a field predicated on the rep
 resentation of human truths on the  visible surfac
 e of the body. Crucially\, Lavater insisted that p
 hysiognomy  provided an avenue to scientific knowl
 edge because the interior nature of  things was 'i
 mpressed' upon the perceptible world. However\, Fu
 seli's  illustrations for Lavater's text\, 'impres
 sions' of a different order\,  appear to undermine
  and contradict this claim at every turn.\n\nThe c
 ompeting textual and visual layers of 'Essays on P
 hysiognomy' give  voice to a bitter dispute betwee
 n the Swiss minister Johann Caspar Lavater  and hi
 s compatriot\, the artist Henry Fuseli. I will arg
 ue that Fuseli and  Lavater's dispute over the rel
 ationship between copy and original\,  legibility 
 and visibility\, was also\, and more deeply\, a di
 spute about how  one knows things to be true\, abo
 ut the possibilities for and limitations  of perce
 iving and communicating knowledge of the natural w
 orld at the end of the eighteenth century. I will 
 suggest today that Fuseli's  illustrations registe
 r a deep instability in certain epistemological st
 ructures\, and signal their imminent collapse.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Department of History and Philoso
 phy of Science
CONTACT:
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