TY - CHAP

T1 - Monstrous Bodies in Rudolf Virchow's Medical Collection in Nineteenth-Century Germany

AU - Stammberger, Birgit

N1 - This collection offers cultural historical analyses of enfreakment and freak shows, examining the social construction and spectacular display of wondrous, monstrous, or curious Otherness in the formerly relatively neglected region of Continental Europe. Forgotten stories are uncovered about freak-show celebrities, medical specimen, and philosophical fantasies presenting the anatomically unusual in a wide range of sites, including curiosity cabinets, anatomical museums, and traveling circus acts. The essays explore the locally specific dimensions of the exhibition of extraordinary bodies within their particular historical, cultural and political context. Thus the impact of the Nazi eugenics programs, state Socialism, or the Chernobyl catastrophe is observed closely and yet the transnational dimensions of enfreakment are made obvious through topics ranging from Jesuit missionaries' diabolization of American Indians, to translations of Continental European teratology in British medical journals, and the Hollywood silver screen's colonization of European fantasies about deformity. Although Continental European freaks are introduced as products of ideologically-infiltrated representations, they also emerge as embodied subjects endowed with their own voice, view, and subversive agency.

PY - 2012/12

Y1 - 2012/12

KW - Philosophy

M3 - Contributions to collected editions/anthologies

SN - 978-1-443-84134-4

SP - 129

EP - 149

BT - Exploring the Cultural History of Continental European Freak Shows and Enfreakment

A2 - Zittlau, Andrea

A2 - Kerchy, Anna

PB - Cambridge Scholars Publishing

CY - Newcastle upon Tyne

ER -