EtnoAntropologia (Mar 2018)
La misura mostruosa della normalità Il museo anatomico, la piazza, gli ethnic show
Abstract
During the second half of the 19th Century, teratological bodies have been a privileged matter of concern in the public spaces and scientific laboratories. On one side, freak shows reached their greatest success of audience; on the other, teratology, the science which studies freaks, become one the reference science for other medical disciplines. The aim of this article is giving a picture of the biunivous exchange of relics between scientific institutions and freaks exhibitions in local fairs, which could be also considered, in an evolutionist view, an exchange of knowledge. During the 19th Century, a monstrous body, looked by the perspective of the theory of the adult development and the theory of embryonic recapitulation, was used to keep together the ethnological cause and the biological one, naturalizing the classification of human races.
