"Experiments of Destruction": Cinematic Inscriptions of Physiology

Cartwright, Lisa

doi:10.2307/2928742

Cited by 19 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…The very first moving images were used in the service of scientific knowledge in laboratories and explicitly aimed at revealing life in motion. The scientific films of Marey in France and Muybridge in the United States were some of the first moving images, and not coincidently, they involved animals, specifically frogs, dogs, and horses (see Cartwright 1992). These early films were living autopsies of sorts that revealed the workings of living bodies, animal bodies, as they underwent various surgeries and experiments.…”

Section: Executing An Elephantmentioning

confidence: 99%

See Topsy “Ride the Lightning”: The Scopic Machinery of Death

Oliver

2012

The Southern J of Philosophy

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This essay explores the connections between speculation, spectacle, and the death penalty, particularly insofar as they bear on what is “proper to man” and on the man–animal distinction. Returning to a scene of death from Derrida's seminar The Beast and the Sovereign, specifically the scene of an elephant's autopsy, we see how what he calls “the globalization of the autopsic model” of sovereignty requires the death of the animal (Derrida 2009, 296). Following Derrida, we see how man's dominion over other animals is built on a model of sovereignty as necropsy that erects itself through the autopsic model of power, which ultimately is built on the scaffolding of death and the death penalty. Following the history of the death penalty, however, we see that it becomes the property of man through its exercise on animals, particularly through the capital punishment of animals, which inaugurated the codification of law in Europe, and Thomas Edison's electrocution of animals, which inaugurated the electric chair as a form of execution in the United States. Moreover, the case of Edison (who invented both the electric chair and the first moving pictures, many of which were images of execution) makes manifest the connection between spectacle, animals, and the death penalty.

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Section: Executing An Elephantmentioning

confidence: 99%

See Topsy “Ride the Lightning”: The Scopic Machinery of Death

Oliver

2012

The Southern J of Philosophy

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“…15 11 Quoted after Canguilhem, 1994, p. 92. 12 On the relation between physiology and cinematographical motion pictures, see Cartwright, 1992;Deslandes, 1966;Doane, 1996;Nichtenhauser, ca. 1950.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Pictures, Preparations, and Living Processes: The Production of Immediate Visual Perception (Anschauung) in late-19th-Century Physiology

Schmidgen

2004

J Hist Biol

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This paper addresses the visual culture of the late-19th-century experimental physiology. Taking this case of Johann Nopomuk Czermak (1828-1873) as a key example, it argues that images played a crucial role in acquiring experimental physiological skills. Czermak, Emil Du Bois-Reymond (1818-1896) and other late-19th-century physiologists sought to present the achievements and perspective of their discipline by way of "immediate visual perception (unmittelbare Anschauung)." However, the images they produced and presented for this purpose were strongly mediated. By means of specifically designed instruments, such as the "cardioscope," the "contraction telegraph," and the "frog pistol," and specifically constructed rooms, so-called "spectatoriums," physiologists trained and controlled experiments on their own. Studying the material culture of physiological image production reveals that technological resources such as telegraphy, photography, and even railways contributed to making physiological facts anschaulich. At the same time, it shows that the more traditional image techniques of anatomy played an important role in physiological lecture halls, especially when it came to displaying the details of vivisection experiments to the public. Thus, the images of late 19th century physiology stood half-way between machines and organisms, between books and instruments.

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“…I have previously argued that the taking up of the practice of photographic motion study in experimental physiology and more generally in the life sciences and medical research in the nineteenth century entailed a turn away from the anatomical gaze that characterized, for example, dissection practices during which the dead body paradoxically becomes a source of knowledge about the living body as a set of static structures (Cartwright 1992 and1995). I have previously argued that the taking up of the practice of photographic motion study in experimental physiology and more generally in the life sciences and medical research in the nineteenth century entailed a turn away from the anatomical gaze that characterized, for example, dissection practices during which the dead body paradoxically becomes a source of knowledge about the living body as a set of static structures (Cartwright 1992 and1995).…”

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“…By the end of the nineteenth century, physiological instrumentation offered a range of techniques and disciplines designed to study and represent the body as an entity characterized most significantly by its dynamic living processes and functions, from interior systems to the invisible temporal processes of cellular change and growth of living tissue. Even with serial motion devices like the phenakistoscope, visual inspection of serial images and (later) motion picture film frames viewed without a motion projection device offered the study of temporality apart from the standards 2 On the relationship of physiology to the cinema, see Cartwright 1992 and1995;Landecker 2005 and2007. On the relationship of cinema to tomography, see Cartwright and Goldfarb 1992;and Saunders 2008. Chang, a Paramount wildlife film nominated for the Academy Award in 1927 was, in Mandel's account, "the first to combine wildlife documentary footage with a script of melodramatic human interest, and to astound viewers by use of a new invention, the magnascope."…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Chang, a Paramount wildlife film nominated for the Academy Award in 1927 was, in Mandel's account, "the first to combine wildlife documentary footage with a script of melodramatic human interest, and to astound viewers by use of a new invention, the magnascope." 1950;Michaelis 1955;Braun 1992;Martinet 1994;Cartwright 1992 and1995;Kevles 1997;Ostherr 2005;Landecker 2005 and2007;Gayken 2005;Canales 2009;Curtis 2005 and of reproduction of real time offered in conventional projection, with serial frames offering discernment and close inspection and analysis of incremental differences lost in projection. and growth over time.…”

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The Hands of the Projectionist

Cartwright

2011

Sci Context

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ArgumentThis essay considers the work of projection and the hand of the projectionist as important components of the social space of the cinema as it comes into being in the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth. I bring the concept of Maurice Merleau-Ponty on the place of the body as an entity that applies itself to the world "like a hand to an instrument" into a discussion of the pre-cinematic projector as an instrument that we can interpret as evidence of the experience of the work of the projectionist in the spirit of film theory and media archaeology, moving work on instrumentation in a different direction from the analysis of the work of the black box in laboratory studies. Projection is described as a psychological as well as a mechanical process. It is suggested that we interpret the projector not simply in its activity as it projects films, but in its movement from site to site and in the workings of the hand of its operator behind the scenes. This account suggests a different perspective on the cinematic turn of the nineteenth century, a concept typically approached through the study of the image, the look, the camera, and the screen.

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"Experiments of Destruction": Cinematic Inscriptions of Physiology

Cited by 19 publications

References 1 publication

See Topsy “Ride the Lightning”: The Scopic Machinery of Death

See Topsy “Ride the Lightning”: The Scopic Machinery of Death

Pictures, Preparations, and Living Processes: The Production of Immediate Visual Perception (Anschauung) in late-19th-Century Physiology

The Hands of the Projectionist

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