Degeneration and the taxonomic image

SAHT2224 tutorial paper, S2 2006


The idea of degeneracy, degenerates and degeneration was pervasive in European scientific and political culture from the Enlightenment onward. Photography was instrumental in the efforts of many nineteenth century scientists and doctors who attempted to identify and classify the processes of degeneration and physical differences of the degenerate body. Using photography meant that the medical and statistical taxonomic project centred on the degenerate (and later, the eugenically 'unfit') could claim greater fidelity to the truth of degeneracy than similar taxonomic projects attempted by physiognomy or phrenology, which were largely begun before the technology of photography became widespread. The realism of photography allied degenerate classification and description to less controversial taxonomic projects like botany and zoology. The standardisation of photographic images was meant to reinforce the notion of the objective scientific image, distancing it from the fiction or distortion of art. To achieve the look of a scientific image, however, often meant departing from the reality that the images tried to capture. Ironically, this was just as much a problem for the established visual taxonomic cultures of botany and zoology as for those who tried to chart the many faces of human degeneracy.

(Human) degeneration in natural history

The scientific notion of degeneracy in relation to mankind was primarily used to describe the existence of the different races of mankind. Climate was considered to be the defining factor – Europeans, inhabiting the best climate of fewest extremes, were thus the best of the races of man, while other races were often assumed to have degenerated in proportion to the harshness of the climate they were subject to (Eze, 1997). For taxonomy, the question was whether mankind as a whole was one species, or whether the different races were species in themselves. For most naturalists, this would have been a question of Creation. The French naturalist Buffon, however, formulated a secular concept of species that was influential both in his time and after, especially for those who sought a non-religious basis for their science (Farber, 1972). His conception of a species as a group of organisms that could interbreed to produce offspring was a major part of his philosophy of natural history, although the practical reality of this definition changed considerably over the years as Buffon discovered more and more animals capable of successfully interbreeding. First applied to humanity in 1764, then in 1766 logically extended to include other animals, Buffon postulated that a genus was an extended 'natural family', made up different but related forms, descended from an often extant “premier souche that through time had degenerated into several recognisable varieties... For example, the horse is considered the premier souche of the horse family, and the ass and zebra as recognisable degenerations,” (Farber, 1972; p.276). And while foreign climates might degenerate an animal, returning it to the original climate of the premier souche and carefully controlled breeding would bring the animal back to the original form.

Degeneration as a social and political concept

The political concepts and rhetoric of degeneration and regeneration were present for both the First and Third French republics, but managed to acquire almost opposite meanings. While the ambition of the eighteenth century revolutionaries was political regeneration and the rectification of the political, physical and moral natures of the French people (de Baecque, 1997), nineteenth century republicans weren't entirely sure that revolutions weren't the cause of degeneration (Pick, 1989). Cause and effect is also reversed between the First and Third republics – while in 1789 moral and political regeneration is believed to effect physical regeneration,

The least moral revolution occasions a physical upheaval... I imagine... two peoples in the same climate, one free and the other slaves; the men of the free nation will be physically larger, more handsome, more courageous; morally they will be virtuous and better... Make man free if you desire his happiness, if you wish to see him handsome, strong, and virtuous. (Pétion, February 1789, quoted in de Baecque, 1997; p.139)

by the 1870s physical regeneration is instead trumpeted as the solution to society's ills, almost an injunction to 'make man handsome, strong and virtuous if you wish to see him free'. But Third or First Republic, it was still the civilisation of antiquity that the French sought to emulate (de Baecque, 1997).

Signifiers of degeneration

Until the French defeat by the Prussians of 1870-1871, France's population decline was seen by the political establishment as a positive sign, that living standards were bound to improve for all (Quinlan, 1998). Immediately after the war the slowing population growth was recast as a symptom of the morbidity of the French race. The term 'degeneration' became widespread in French psychiatry while the concept informed a plethora of research, both scientific and cultural, between the 1870s and 1890s (Pick, 1989). While some were skeptical about the visibility of degeneracy, especially considering the failure of phrenology to reliably identify the criminal (Pick, 1989), people such as Charcot, Galton and Lombroso were each, as part of their own projects, engaged in charting the visible differences of the degenerate in an attempt to come up with a useful taxonomy of degeneration that would enable scientists, doctors or policemen to sort the dregs of humanity from the pure. While journals such as La Culture Physique documented the French race's return to the premier souche of the ancient Greeks, publications like Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière and Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière charted its degeneration. But while La Culture Physique could and did simply refer to the artistic tradition of ancient Greece for the context and legitimation of its images, those who produced images of degeneration needed to refer to science and taxonomy to convince their audiences of the truth of their depictions.

Taxonomies of degeneration

Some images of the body record attempts – always failed, always hopeless – not to alter the body, but to show it as it is: neither cut, nor injured, nor tortured, nor even passionate, but rather simply there. The body becomes a fact, an object, or even a specimen, that can express itself merely by being seen. (Elkins, 1999; p.155, emphasis in original)

That an essentialist taxonomy can discovered and applied to nature as a true and accurate reflection of nature's laws is a fantasy. The various assumptions about the world we live in are remarkable persistent; the same ideas crop up again and again, clothed in different theory. Where a Buffonian scholar might attribute the difference between races as the effect of climate, the Darwinian or Lamarckian might argue that non-whites represent a lower stage of human development – either way, the racial hierarchy itself remains unchanged. Allen (1983) suggests that very little study of taxonomy and natural history has been attempted in part due to the lack of theory that it has produced. I would argue that a large part of taxonomy has been the application of theory from other areas, for example philosophy, religion or even politics. Some theories, for example Darwin's theory of evolution, can even be assimilated wholesale into taxonomy without any change or addition to the practice taxonomy itself (Dean, 1979). The purpose and method of taxonomy persist, but new interpretations of meaning become possible.
Figures 1, 2, 3 and 4 could all be called examples of specimens. Specimens are not real, they are invented, but good specimens are and remain useful for practical purposes. The specimen is the embodiment or (more usually) visual existence of that which Mary Winsor calls “the method of exemplars” (2002). Whether used to lessen the burden of identification or description, this method was successfully used in both botany (with the Linnaean system) and zoology (for example, Cuvier's classification of fishes and other vertebrates) (Winsor, 2002). Knowing what a good exemplar looked like in order to construct (or select, or both) a good image was the task of the expert, the doctor or scientist, not the artist - “producing images of this type required more skills than merely observing and documenting nature,” (Nickelsen, 2005; p.7). By the same token, using exemplars also required skill and experience – exemplars were meant to be practical objects, not essential definitions, and the ability of the viewer to recognise immediately the natural group of things to which the exemplar related was a key assumption that their existence was based on. Constructing good exemplars also often meant departing from the reality of the specimen the taxonomist wished to depict in order to show it better as a model – in botany this could mean distortion of the relative sizes of parts of the plant, or showing two different structures of a plant present together in the picture that would never have been present simultaneously in reality, but which were essential for the purposes of taxonomic identification (Nickelsen, 2005). This unreality would not have been obvious to non-botanists, and certainly was not the subject of discussion or debate within botany.

The visual representation of specimens in accordance with the requirements of botanists and taxonomists led to a distinct style and set of conventions in botanical illustration (fig. 1), which then filtered down to other types of taxonomic images (fig. 2), especially those of the Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière and Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière (fig. 3). I believe the use of this style was essential for Jean-Martin Charcot's project at the Salpêtrière, both to associate his productions with the productions of plant and animal taxonomy and to distance it from the discredited theories and images of physiognomy and phrenology. Lavatar's Essays on Physiognomy contained a huge jumble of styles and techniques, from line drawings to engravings, in the styles caricatures, medallions and busts. In contrast, the iconographies of the Salpêtrière relied almost exclusively on photographic images. The blank walls of the hospital or its photographic studio do not anchor the subject to its surroundings, but for reference a measure or other comparative object (in fig. 3, the subjects brother) are placed within the frame. But the inclusions of these points of reference do not imply statistical exactitude – Charcot's exemplars are for the use of practitioners, those who work with the sick and degenerate and will be able to instinctively draw knowledge from these images to apply to their own practice and experience. It is a memory aid – the real manifestation of the pathologies that are documented by the photographs lies in the clinical descriptions that accompany them, in the theory and text. In this way as well the use of exemplars parallels their use in botany*.

Statistical exactitude was the domain of Francis Galton, but his methods were somewhat different to Charcot's. Instead of an exemplar, Galton wished to discover an average (or ideally, the essence) of the classes of people he dealt with, such as consumptive, criminal or healthy individuals (fig. 4) (Sekula, 1992). His method of composite photography was arguably hit-and-miss with respect to the characterisations it produced, but he believed the theory behind it to be sound. Galton's method is interesting because it is through this photography that he expected to be able to discover the common traits of various degenerates, rather than having already consciously conceived an exemplar or set of common features. Instead of drawing the authority of these images from the styles and methodological precedents of other kinds of taxonomy, like botany or zoology, Galton invents a method entirely his own, but still scientifically valid through his application of mathematics and the technical use of photography, and taxonomically valid in that the categories he used were well established in the public consciousness, if not accepted scientific 'natural families'. By comparison, Charcot and Paul Richer attempted to legitimate their concept of hysteria and disease through the historical evidence, publishing two books, one describing The Demoniacs in Art (1887) and another on The Deformed and Diseased in Art (1889). By pointing out the cultural precedents of diseases in art, they could simultaneously show the accuracy of their diagnoses and reinforce the notion that their system of disease classification had a firm basis in history and reality (Guillain, 1959).

To conclude: the identification and classification of degenerate individuals was an important part of the intellectual basis of the discourse of degeneration that pervaded France and the rest of Europe during the 1800s. With the rise of eugenics it became important to be able to distinguish the 'fit' from the 'unfit'. Various people made projects out of describing and distinguishing degeneracy in scientific terms. An important part of their success came from using scientific style or techniques or both. The adoption of photography as the preferred method of creating images was probably both practical and strategic – it meant that the new typologies of the body that were being created were not so easily confused with the discredited disciplines of physiognomy and phrenology, and also gave these images an extra claim to reality and truth.

References


Allen, D E (1983) 'Life sciences: natural history', in Information Sources in the History of Science and Medicine, ed. P. Corsi and P. Weindling. Butterworth Scientific, London. pp.349-360.

de Baecque, A, trans. Mendell, C (1997) The Body Politic: Corporeal Metaphor in Revolutionary France, 1770-1800. Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Dean, J (1979) 'Controversy over classification: a case study from the history of botany', in Natural Order, ed. B. Barnes and S. Shapin. Sage Publications, London. pp.211-230.

Elkins, J (1999) Pictures of the Body. Stanford University Press, Stanford.

Eze, E C (ed.) (1997) Race and the Enlightenment. Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge MA.

Farber, P L (1972) 'Buffon and the concept of species'. Journal of the History of Biology. 5 (2):259-284.

Guillain, G, trans. Bailey, P (1959) J.-M. Charcot: His Life-His Work. Paul B. Hoeber, New York.

Nickelsen, K (2005) 'Draughtsmen, botanists and nature: constructing eighteenth-century botanical illustrations'. Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 37:1-25.

Pick, D (1989) Faces of Degeneration. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

Quinlan, S (1998) 'The racial imagery of degeneration and depopulation: Georges Vacher de Lapouge and “Anthroposociology” in fin-de-siècle France'. History of European Ideas. 24 (6):393-413.

Sekula, A (1992) 'The body and the archive', in The Contest of Meaning: Critical Histories of Photography, ed. R. Bolton. The MIT Press. pp. 343-389.

Winsor, M P (2002) 'Non-essentialist methods in pre-Darwinian taxonomy'. Biology and Philosophy. 18:387-400.


Fig. 1. Pierre-Joseph Redouté, Rosa rubrifolia (1817-1824)
Source: http://www.rosarian.com/graphics/images/redoute/rosa_rubrifolia.jpg (accessed 10/8/06)


Fig. 2. 'Mammals', plate 53 from Cuvier's Animal Kingdom

Source: http://platemark.com/images/products/187.jpg (accessed 10/8/06)



Fig. 3. Gigantism.

Source: Nouvelle Iconographie de la Salpêtrière, reproduced in Brauer, F (2005) 'Dangerous doubles: degenerate and regenerate photography in the eugenic imagination', in Image and Imagination, ed. M. Langford. McGill-Queen's University Press, Montreal. pp. 91-103 (fig. 4.3, p.98)


Fig. 4. Criminal composites

Source: Pearson, The Life, Letters and Labours of Francis Galton, reproduced in Pick, D (1989) Faces of Degeneration. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. (fig. 10, p. 164)


1764 Winckelman's “History of Art Among the Ancients” published
1764 Buffon's theory of the 'natural family' and 'premier souche' applied to humans
1766 – 1788 French revolutionary rhetoric of degeneration and regeneration (de Baecque, 1997)
1776 Blumenbach's “Natural Varieties of Mankind”
c. 1770 Lavatar's physiognomy fragments published
c. 1806 Germany's defeat by Napoleon – Jahn and the German physical regeneration effort
1800 – 1810 Gall's phrenology books published
c. 1853 Belgian Quetelet establishes academic statistical societies
1857 Morel's “Treatise” on degeneration published
1859 Darwin's “Origin of Species” published
1862 Charcot starts career at Salpetriere
c.1870 French defeat in Franco-Prussian War
c. 1876 French regeneration effort
1875 Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière starts publication
1883 Galton's “Inquiries into Human Faculty” with composite photography and term “eugenics” published

* cf. Winsor, 2002; p.393. “A competent botanist was expected to hold in his memory all the Linnaean genera, which did not mean that he had to remember all the species that had ever been described, but that he had to be so familiar with one exemplary species for each genus, that upon seeing an unfamiliar plant, he would recognize which genus it probably belonged to.” Likewise, a doctor is expected to remember all the kinds of diseases, but not necessarily the clinical descriptions of every illness.