In other words, the colonial will to knowledge produced a collateral obsession with the classification of living things that relied on the delivery of the dead bodies of birds as study objects.
This necroaesthetic will to knowledge is everywhere in evidence in the colonial archive. One especially compelling document is the Mémoire instructif sur la manière de rassembler, de préparer, de conserver et d'envoyer les diverses curiosités d'histoire naturelle, which we accessed in the Kroch Rare Books Library at Cornell University. Published in 1758 by Etienne-François Turgot, it is the earliest field manual for bird preparation and describes some of the earliest concerns of this scientific-aesthetic mode of re-presentation. Richly illustrated, the publication gives detailed instructions on tools for and techniques of skinning dead birds: a process typically requiring the length-wise cutting of the body to remove the internal organs, then the scraping off of fat from the skin before treating the feathers with spices and various chemicals, and then stuffing the body with a soft material. Alternatively, and depending on the size of the birds, Turgot also suggests placing them in brandy-filled jars or barrels for preservation. 11 Beginning with Turgot, we followed the various technical improvements for conservation as slowly but surely this practice was refined. Thus, as enormous collections were assembled from the colonies, an increasing number of specimens could be kept in a state of suspended decay; and, when the monumental natural history museum exhibitions first opened to their European publics in the nineteenth century, they could present lifelike, mounted specimens holding their postures in countless vitrines and habitat dioramas.
Notably, Turgot was not the only naturalist to contribute to the reordering of Nature in 1758; one of the early Enlightenment's most comprehensive taxonomies of the natural world was also published this year. With the Systema Naturae, Carolus Linnaeus introduced his binomial nomenclature to the world of zoological classification, but he also put it to use, with the author naming many of the species therein himself. Among them was one bird of paradise species, commonly referred to in English as the “greater bird of paradise.” Linnaeus chose the Latin name Paradisaea apoda—translated as the “footless” bird of paradise—in reference to the amputated state in which these dead creatures were traded in Nusantara, and therefore to the form by which the birds were also known in Europe. Since the first bird of paradise skins arrived in Portugal via Magellan's ship in the 1550s, the innovative if entirely false idea had circulated that these extravagantly feathered birds lived solely in the heavens and only fell to Earth when they died; given this divine habitat, they obviously did not require feet. Numerous illustrations by Renaissance naturalists, like Conrad Gessner and Ulisse Aldrovandi, also encouraged this belief, and for over two hundred years not a single European ornithologist contributed any reliable field observations of these particular birds' true habits or behaviors. 12
Notably, Turgot was not the only naturalist to contribute to the reordering of Nature in 1758; one of the early Enlightenment's most comprehensive taxonomies of the natural world was also published this year. With the Systema Naturae, Carolus Linnaeus introduced his binomial nomenclature to the world of zoological classification, but he also put it to use, with the author naming many of the species therein himself. Among them was one bird of paradise species, commonly referred to in English as the “greater bird of paradise.” Linnaeus chose the Latin name Paradisaea apoda—translated as the “footless” bird of paradise—in reference to the amputated state in which these dead creatures were traded in Nusantara, and therefore to the form by which the birds were also known in Europe. Since the first bird of paradise skins arrived in Portugal via Magellan's ship in the 1550s, the innovative if entirely false idea had circulated that these extravagantly feathered birds lived solely in the heavens and only fell to Earth when they died; given this divine habitat, they obviously did not require feet. Numerous illustrations by Renaissance naturalists, like Conrad Gessner and Ulisse Aldrovandi, also encouraged this belief, and for over two hundred years not a single European ornithologist contributed any reliable field observations of these particular birds' true habits or