‘As dead as a dodo’: Extinction narratives and multispecies justice in the museum

Abstract

This article unites recent writing in extinction studies with work in political ecology, justice theory and museum studies to explore qualitative, cultural approaches to extinction. I examine the role of storytelling and the power of narratives in addressing nonhuman extinction. Analysing the case study of a permanent gallery on extinction, evolution and biodiversity loss – the Survival Gallery of the National Museum of Scotland – I utilise a more-than-textual approach to narrative analysis. This paper explores the diverse ways in which the gallery relates stories of ‘natural’ extinction to the contemporary anthropogenic ‘Sixth Mass Extinction’. The Survival Gallery narrates a remarkably complex compilation of extinction stories, but the gallery’s narrative avoids areas of conflict or controversy, obscures justice concerns and ultimately presents a problematic depiction of a universalised humanity. Using this analysis of museum extinction storytelling, the paper contributes to emerging conceptualisations of multispecies justice frameworks. The article explores the possibilities and challenges of museum storytelling in grappling with complicated pasts and envisioning potential futures of survival, coexistence and flourishing. The paper concludes by considering how a multispecies justice approach to narrating extinction (and other entangled ecological-social phenomena) might flourish within and beyond museums.

Slowing Time in the Museum in a Period of Rapid Extinction

“…These bodies can be woven into many narrative strands as they are used in different ways, including scientific, historic, and artistic (Bezan 2019). Taxidermized animals in museum displays are important to exploring big ideas like extinction and the Great Acceleration of change in the Anthropocene, although museums have not always used them in ways that promote multispecies justice (Guasco 2021). In the twenty-first century, taxidermized animals have found their way into 'high art' (Robin 2009).…”

Hidden Stories of Extinction: Hawaiian ʻAhuʻula Feather Capes as Biocultural Artefacts

“…3 Although visitors get a hint of the birds whose feathers make up the object before them, they remain unidentified by names and their status in nature is unrecognized. The National Museum of Scotland has deliberately decided to separate their biological collections from the cultural ones (Guasco 2021(Guasco : 1058, although their Pacific collections contain by-products from plants and animals that could diversify their stories about extinction in the 'Survival Gallery'. The Museum has two ʻahuʻula in its collection, which it rotates regularly to prevent damage to the light-sensitive feathers (figure 1).…”

“…One of the challenges addressed in this article is the division of 'natural history' and 'human culture' that followed the museums' specialization into subject areas (Gordon-Walker 2019: 248). When extinction stories are limited to scientific contexts, it can, as Anna Guasco (2021Guasco ( : 1059 remarks, create an 'incomplete understanding of the ways in which the ecological and the social are always, already entangled'.…”

“…Extinction scholars have mainly looked at natural history collections as remnants of extinction, from the display of 'endlings' (Jørgensen 2017a) to analysis of natural galleries of extinction (Guasco 2021) to critical exhibitions of extinction inside natural history museums (O'Key 2020). But as O'Key (2020: 644) rightly points out, 'no matter how taxidermy specimens are reframed, they still stand as signs of anthropocentric mastery'.…”

Wonder, Empire, Science: The Quagga and Other Extinctions on Display at Naturalis

“…It is only in retrospect, then, that the mare would be seen for what she was: the endling, the terminarch (Spreen 2016: 12; for a cultural history of the term 'endling' see Jørgensen 2017). Hers was a double-death, marking both the end of an individual life and of a species (Guasco 2021(Guasco : 1056. This dual sense of tragedy adds to the uniqueness of the animal-object on display at Naturalis and the caption emphasizes this.…”