Abstract
This article takes as its starting point an encounter with a preserved
blue bird-of-paradise skin. Though rare, the bird became wildly famous
after it perched atop the head of Carrie Bradshaw during Sex and the City: The Movie. However, where in the movie the bird-skin acted as Carrie’s something blue,
I mobilize it in this article as a “telling example” of
near-extinction. This is because the blue bird-of-paradise is but one of
the millions of Paradisaea that were hunted, traded, shipped,
and lusted after since their earliest forms of commodification. And as
the theory of sexual selection confirms, biographical entitlement cannot
be assigned to a singular agent in the blue bird-of-paradise’s story,
which is why this article will chart its biogeographies: from New Guinea
rainforests to New York streets. Here, instead of tracing the blue
bird-of-paradise’s individual commodity biography, it becomes an act of
tracing and placing the bird-skin within the life and death worlds of
human-animal relations that produced, mobilized, and maintain(ed) it as a
commodity over time and space. In doing so, the article makes two
important contributions to the field of social history. First, by
conceptually focusing on the relations that produce lives, things, and
worlds, it challenges the certainty that anchors the narration of
biographies to the singular and anthropocentric embodiment of “a life.”
Second, mapping the biogeographies of a “lively” commodity, such as a
preserved bird-of-paradise, offers the opportunity of highlighting the
significant role so-called natural species and histories can play in
shaping human histories.
Original language | English |
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Article number | shz013 |
Pages (from-to) | 1061-1086 |
Number of pages | 26 |
Journal | Journal of Social History |
Volume | 52 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 21 May 2019 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2019 |
Keywords
- birds-of-paradise
- biography
- biogeography
- fashion
- commodity
- postcolonial
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Dr Merle M Patchett
- School of Geographical Sciences - Associate Professor in Human Geography
- Historical and Cultural Research Group
Person: Academic , Member