Saturday 30 March 2013

Comparison: Conquest


Comparing the shrunken heads of the Shuar people with the taxidermied animals of the colonial peak of the British Empire, one can identify a number of conceptual similarities, as well as oppositions. Superficially, the two practices seem rather distanced, one being modification of human remains by Indigenous groups in South America, the other being modification of animal remains by European colonizers and large-game hunters. A number of themes arise with the practices of both that provide intriguing insight into the ways human groups all over the globe subordinate others and how such assertion is symbolized through material means.



Focusing on the visual product of each practice, one sees a stark difference between the shrunken heads and the taxidermied animals. Both the Shuar and the colonial taxidermists would initially dismember the individual; only the head would be used by the Shuar, however, its contents removed and the skin stuffed and treated to preserve. Visual evidence of the eyes and lips being sewn shut would remain. The outcome would be a warped, unrealistic figure with little resemblance to the individual alive. Realism in depiction was not intended with this practice, whereas it is central to taxidermy. While the animal would be disarticulated and its contents removed as well, great pains are taken to reassemble the individual and disguise all marks of modification. The skin is treated and shaped over a model to create as lifelike a figure as possible; otherwise the goal of the taxidermied animal, which is to display the dead in an ideal manner as if still alive, would not be achieved.


The length of possession differed between the Shuar and the European taxidermists as well. The tsantsas were not intended to be accumulated, at least not until European involvement, but rather created, utilized in a symbolic and ceremonial context, and then subsequently discarded. It was in the production and instance of usage that the tsantsas gave warriors and their communities its power. This treatment of the tsantsas signifies the notions of a fluid power structure held by this egalitarian group; while power can be obtained, it is still subject to change and movement throughout the community, and simply cannot reside within one individual for the span of their life. Taxidermied animals, on the other hand, were made to be kept and displayed. Housed within museums, they formed entire collections of animal specimens. The figure was a trophy of the might of both the hunter and the imperial nation, and its eternal preservation ensured the eternality of the power of both bodies. The goal of taxidermy, to achieve a state of ideal permanence, required that the figures be possessed and observed; if the animals were locked away in storage without proper upkeep, they could become tattered and disconnected from the identities of the original hunters and taxidermists for whom they represent, losing the original purpose of the killing.


Although both the practices of Shuar tsantsa production and colonial taxidermy required the killing of an living being, the function of this killing was not the same. The tsantsas were traditionally fashioned from those who the Shuar fighters encountered during warfare, generally adult males, but occasionally the women and children of their enemy groups as well. Prior to the European demand for tsantsas, the conflict between the Shuar and their rivals, usually the Achuar, did not arise simply for the production of tsantsas. It was social and political disputes between the groups that would initiate the killings, and the consequential tsantsas would be manufactured as a result of victory. Not surprisingly, once the European colonizers sought out possession of their own tsantsas as exotic trinkets for their own collections, some Shuar individuals would kill others to meet this demand if they did not possess tsantsas of their own or could not steal them. Traditionally, however, this was not the intention of the intergroup violence, and tsantsas were not acquired in this manner. Contrastingly, the colonial hunters who obtained the individuals for taxidermy would do so specifically for the purpose of creating the figure itself. Generally, it would not be in self-defense nor for another pragmatic motivation, that the animal would be killed; hunters would enter wild and exotic terrains with the goal of poaching a wild beast for their own collections. While one could argue that the production of tsantsas was secondary to the violent conflicts between the Shaur and the Achuar, the production of taxidermied figures was often the primary purpose of colonial hunting expeditions.



In terms of the selection of individuals, there is some similarity between the two practices. Primarily the tsantsas and the taxidermied animals would be formed from the remains of adult individuals, although youth are also seen in both. Older individuals are not preferred for taxidermy as they do not conform to the ideal physicality that is the goal of the practice. As a consequence of war, adults, who were more likely involved in the conflict, would be utilized, although (as mentioned above) the conflict between the Shuar and their enemies would not be primarily for the purpose of tsantsas production. The symbolic functions of both the tsantsas and the taxidermied figures are similar as well. Both embody the power that is required in their respective productions, visual evidence of the assertion of one’s will over that of another; the tsantsas represent the warrior’s superiority over his victims and the group’s might over their opponent, and the taxidermied animals signify the hunter’s power over the wilderness, as well as the colonist’s subordination of the colonized.


The identities of the figures themselves are both juxtaposed, in that they are, quite apparently, the remains of a living individual on the one hand, but reduced to an inanimate artifact on the other. Both the tsantsas and the taxidermied animals are employed in the construction of duel identities. The tsantsas embody the identity of the warrior who produced it, while also aiding in the production of the community identity and its fluid power structures. The taxidermied animals are used as trophies of the hunters’ skill, while their production, accumulation and housing within museums in the name of colonial exploration and the scientific pursuit of knowledge helps shape the national identity of the Empire.


The two practices are seemingly unrelated to one another. If one considers the activities involved and the symbolic component of both, however, the similarities become more apparent. One could make the argument that when the Europeans made contact with the Shuar and increased the demand for tsantsas, they were doing so with similar motivations as when they poached exotic animals for taxidermy. The goal of the colonizers was to obtain symbolic materials from the exotic in order to demonstrate their own masculinity and dominance over the colonized, such as the Shuar; an effective way to do so would be to incorporate the powerful symbols, such as the tsantsas, that the Indigenous populations possessed and to transform their meaning from being representations of Shuar power, to emblems of the colonial impulse to conquer and accumulate.

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