Book contents
- Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World
- Science in History
- Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Language
- A Note on Related Texts
- Maps
- Introduction: The Show Begins
- 1 Bumps on the Road: Phrenological Touts and Travellers
- 2 Massaging the Town: Phrenological Ordeals and Audiences
- 3 Tactics on Stage: Indigenous Performers, Cultural Exchange and Negotiated Power
- 4 A Godly Touch of Male Power: Phrenology, Mesmerism and Gendered Authority
- 5 Talking Heads on a Murray River Mission
- 6 Black Phrenologists, Black Masks
- 7 Popular Science in a Changing Māori World
- 8 Gardening a European Island: Phrenologists, Whiteness and Reform for Nationhood
- 9 Divinatory Science in the City and the Bush
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Tactics on Stage: Indigenous Performers, Cultural Exchange and Negotiated Power
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 May 2023
- Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World
- Science in History
- Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman World
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Acknowledgements
- A Note on Language
- A Note on Related Texts
- Maps
- Introduction: The Show Begins
- 1 Bumps on the Road: Phrenological Touts and Travellers
- 2 Massaging the Town: Phrenological Ordeals and Audiences
- 3 Tactics on Stage: Indigenous Performers, Cultural Exchange and Negotiated Power
- 4 A Godly Touch of Male Power: Phrenology, Mesmerism and Gendered Authority
- 5 Talking Heads on a Murray River Mission
- 6 Black Phrenologists, Black Masks
- 7 Popular Science in a Changing Māori World
- 8 Gardening a European Island: Phrenologists, Whiteness and Reform for Nationhood
- 9 Divinatory Science in the City and the Bush
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Within a tidal wave of dispossession, Indigenous performers forged livings in scientific showmanship. In 1850, ‘Jemmy’, an Aboriginal boy, starred in a Melbourne lecture series that fused phrenology with mesmerism. During the mid 1860s, Tamati Hapimana Te Wharehinaki, chief of the Ngati Ruangutu hapū of the Tapuika Iwi, toured through the Australian colonies with the infamous Thomas Guthrie Carr. Supposedly mesmerised by the lecturers, these performers demonstrated actions that corresponded with particular phrenological organs, wrapping feigned subordination in displays of cultural difference that fascinated Europeans. An ethnographic history approach to these lecture reports reveals how these performers cannily shaped these representations for personal gain. Although serving colonial fantasies of control, the stage world nevertheless allowed them to push against the constraints that bound their daily lives. The fragile relations of power that made or broke a show enabled tactical choices for fleeting material or social benefit.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Science and Power in the Nineteenth-Century Tasman WorldPopular Phrenology in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand, pp. 80 - 106Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023