‘Plaster and Papier Mâché in the Production and Circulation of Anatomical Knowledge, 1750-1850’, presentation by Marieke Hendriksen, 5 April, Göttingen

On 4-6 April 2019, Marieke Hendriksen will attend  the workshop Social Technologies and Global Knowledge Economies, 1750-1850, to be held in Lichtenberg-Kolleg, Göttingen. She will present a paper titled ‘Global and Local Materialities and Techniques: Plaster and Papier Mâché in the Production and Circulation of Anatomical Knowledge, 1750-1850’.

The remarkable density of connections that characterized knowledge production between 1750 and 1850 has long figured in definitions of the ‘rise of modernity’. The commerce of ideas through correspondence networks and print as well as manuscript circulation in salons, learned societies and other institutions, has been celebrated as foundational to modernity’s more conspicuous highlights, from the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment to the political articulation of universal human rights. Indeed, the circulation of ‘useful knowledge’ – or, in today’s phraseology, the knowledge economy – remains integral to the modern concept of progress, formulated and adopted during the brief period between 1750 and 1850. This interdisciplinary workshop, organized by Lichtenberg-Kolleg, the Göttingen Institute for Advanced Study, will focus on interrogating these narratives of modernity in the context of the emergence of an array of ‘social technologies’ that enhanced networks of knowledge production and circulation at the turn of the nineteenth century.