Model Communities: Artificial Anatomies and the Paradox of Modern Identity

Using case studies of nineteenth-century anatomical model making and use, this paper seeks to challenge/interrogate current historiography concerning the role of anatomical representations for modernity. Following particular readings of Foucault’s concept of power/knowledge, historians’ interpretations of anatomical images and models tend to foreground these objects’ functions as representations of a distinctly modern body: healthy, productive, and individual, and in need of constant vigilance, maintenance, and self-improvement. Gendered and racialised representations were used to claim functional and hierarchical differences between the sexes and races. However, cases of anatomical model use indicate that models were simultaneously employed in efforts to create new kinds of communities through processes of emulation and education, from women’s rights activists in the U.S. to workers’ communities in France and new groups of medical practitioners in Egypt. The paper will use these examples to explore how tensions between individuality and shared identity were articulated around anatomical models, and ask how we can tell stories about such medical objects which acknowledge their oppressive, isolating function while also recovering their potential for the constitution/creation of new types of communities.