Finding a scientific voice: performing science, space and speech in the 19th century

Abstract

Taking as a point of departure recent scholarly interest in the geographies of spoken communication, this paper situates the cultivation of a scientific voice in a range of 19th-century contexts and locations. An examination of two of the century's most celebrated science lecturers, Michael Faraday and Thomas Henry Huxley, offers a basis for more general claims about historical relations between science, speech and space. The paper begins with a survey of the geography of Victorian oratory in which advocates of science sought to carve out an effective niche. It then turns to a reconstruction of the varying and variously interpreted assumptions about authoritative and authentic speech that shaped how the platform performances of Faraday and Huxley were constructed, contested and re-mediated in print. Particular attention is paid to sometimes clashing ideals of vocal performance and paralinguistic communication and to the ways in which these were inflected by convictions about gender and class. This signals an interest in the performative dimensions of science lectures rather more than their specific cognitive content. In exploring these concerns, the paper argues that 'finding a scientific voice' was a fundamentally geographical enterprise driven by attempts to make science resonate with a wider oratorical culture without losing distinctive appeal and special authority.

Uttering geographies: Speech acts, felicity conditions and modes of existence

“…This still requires empirical attention to performances in context – utterances exist nowhere else – and existing work can be rethought in these ways. Thus, examinations of speech and knowledge effectively demonstrate the construction of referential chains of utterances that bring the world to attention, and work on politics demonstrates how the curves of political speech bring collectives into being or fragment them (Finnegan, 2017; Kanngieser, 2011). However, since few existing studies have worked across these different modes – let alone attending closely to other modes, such as law and religion – there has been more concern to differentiate and exemplify local performative styles and contextualized meanings of speech in action – the specific relationships between location and locution – than to examine the felicity conditions which can differentiate between regimes of enunciation in their particular spaces of practice.…”

“…Work on the geographies of speech has got a bit stuck. Studies have primarily explored either the role of speech in making scientific and geographical knowledge in place and across space (Finnegan, 2017;Higgitt and Withers, 2008;Keighren, 2008;Livingstone, 2007), or examined the located cultural politics of voice and silence (Brickell, 2013;Featherstone, 2009Featherstone, , 2010Kanngieser, 2011;Ogborn, 2011). They have even done both together (Ogborn, 2013).…”

Off the beaten track? Critical approaches to exploration studies

“…Furthermore, newspapers, magazines and other printed media were also filled with stories about the latest feats of exploration allowing a diverse array of new information to spread across all levels of European society (Fyfe & Lightman, 2007;Lightman, 2007;Newman, 2019;Sebe, 2014). Explorers also undertook lengthy lecture tours to share their experiences with audiences and, in the process, shaped ideas about the regions where they had travelled (Finnegan, 2011;Finnegan, 2017;Keighren, 2008). As Innes Keighren, Charles Withers, and Bill Bell have noted, Exploration usually also had a lasting public 'afterlife' as the results were debated in scientific institutions as well as in the periodical and newspaper press (Keighren, Withers, & Bell, 2015, p. 7).…”

Making Mount Kilimanjaro German: Nation building and heroic masculinity in the colonial geographies of Hans Meyer

“…While 19th‐century Geography was to a large degree one of spoken communication and “vocal authority and authenticity” (Finnegan, , p. 202) and in the months after his return Meyer complained of fatigue from the talks and lectures, his principal task at this time was to transfer knowledge into print. Given the complex and often tedious labour fieldwork entails, the assertion that “[g]eography begins only when geographers begin writing it” (Wooldridge and East 1951, quoted by Withers, , p. 47) is arguable at the least.…”

“…The paper draws on the rich literature on Geography, colonialism and exploration in late 19th‐century Africa (Driver, , ), on the production of the trustworthy (geographical) self (Bond, ; Heffernan, ; Jöns, ; Shapin, ; Withers, ) and especially on the production of white masculinity within this context (Myers, ; Reidy, ; Rose, ; Sundberg, ; Terrall, ). Further, it seeks to complement research interested in the material production and communication of geographical knowledge from a science studies perspective, which encompasses exploration of the role of instruments and technologies of recording (Ryan, ; Withers, ) and the transfer of knowledge from the field to printed text (Keighren et al., ), talks, and “geography's venues,” such as museums and geographical societies (Agnew & Livingstone, ; Barnett, ; Finnegan, ; Koivunen, ; MacDonald & Withers, ; Naylor, ; Ryan, ). The paper represents an attempt to connect those heterogeneous fields through examining one geographer's work and working practices.…”