Illustrations and (l) imitations in Western art and Science: A critical biography of intersections in the co-creation of liberal humanism

Abstract

This paper offers a critical biography revealing certain historical intersections and divisions between Western art and science and points to specific moments where they have worked together through an exclusionary version of liberal humanism. This version of liberal humanism was often constructed through the dehumanization of women, people of color, people with disabilities and sexual minorities who were relegated to the non-human, the almost human, the animal or the monstrous. As part of the methods, it offers a critical genealogy, sifting through the cultural vestiges of art, science, philosophy, medicine, atlases, illustrations, colonial and eugenic discourses, feminist, queer, and postcolonial theories, and visual culture in order to recover and reconstruct specific connections between art and science in different historical periods (from the late 1400so the present). By drawing attention to the fact that “the human” has been a shifting and unstable signifier, this paper concludes that both Western art and science have the ability to help co-construct humanity by formulating new more equitable assemblages or the power to magnify already existing power disparities.