2023 MIT
Stored within the Harvard Peabody’s Museum collection lies the ‘Mermaid’ (also known as the ‘Java’ or ‘Feejee’ mermaid), a hybrid creature cataloged as an ethnographic sculpture. The ‘Feejee Mermaid’ is thought to have been created by Japanese fishermen in the early 1800s and transferred through several owners trying to sell her around Europe and the United States 1. The mermaid was first exhibited in the US by hoax promoter P.T. Barnum in the context of object as spectacle, responding to a new market of sensational entertainment. The taxidermic study of the ‘Feejee Mermaid’ reveals its manufacturing from the assemblaged attachment of a monkey, fish, papier mache, wood, wire, and resin. The sculpture, presented as proof that this specimen indeed exists, was “advertised as a sensation that patrons would have to see not necessarily to believe but to judge for themselves.”2 However, this hoax creature, presented as proof of the mermaid, may have appeared in the public view strategically during a climate of scientific skepticism. In 1859, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published by Charles Darwin, twenty years after he first formulated his evolutionary theory3. Causing varied responses, the exhibition of such hoax objects provoked an oscillation between belief and skepticism at the same time4.
In this essay, I examine the Feejee Mermaid as an ethnographic sculpture and mythological creature, studying ‘wonder’ as an object of inquiry, knowledge, and cultural production. As a figure alluding to an ‘otherness,’ the mermaid is constantly instrumentalized across agendas, from religious, scientific, and imperial aims. Locating the ‘marvel’ as a skeptic site in-between mystery and imagination, the figure of the mermaid is a charged example alluding to an understanding of the past that questions present and future imaginations.
[full essay available upon request]
Notes:
1 Berry, Katie C., “The Littlest Mermaid: Just the gift I've always wanted: a brand-new mummified fish monster,” The Harvard Crimson, October 13, 2016. https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2016/10/13/feejee-mermaid/ (2016)
2 Leja, Michael, Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp, (2004), 50.
3 “Pew Research Center,” David Masci, February 4, 2019. https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2009/02/04/ darwin-and-his-theory-of-evolution/
4 Leja, Michael, Looking Askance: Skepticism and American Art from Eakins to Duchamp, (2004), 58.