Abstract
The Brazilian Anthropological Exhibition, celebrated in 1882 in Rio de Janeiro's National Museum, is analyzed here as a monumental and spectacular attempt to re-evaluate the indianist iconography of the imperial state, which seemed to have become redundant at the time. The material evidence of indigenous "reality" demanded a reappraisal of the Indian's utility as a symbol of the modern nation. Yet, just as indianist discourse cannot be reduced to a single, univocal ideological stance, scientific reinscriptions of native life and culture sent out contradictory messages, which were further complicated and diversified in the uses that were made of the Anthropological Exhibition in the public sphere of Rio de Janeiro. The spectacle of science that supposedly replaced literary and artistic myths of the Indian, in fact reproduced traditional dichotomies between noble and ignoble savages, tupis and tapuias, past and present. The present article charts the emerging field of anthropology as a symbolic arena for the tensions over the identity and status of self and other to be played out, first by counterposing the new discourses on race and pre-Columbian civilizations to the indianist tradition, and then by looking more closely at how their different stances operated at the level of the order of display. It goes on to discuss the proliferation of visual representations of the objects and of the indigenous men and women present at the exhibition in painting, sculpture, photography and caricature
Key Words:
anthropology; indianism; museums; exhibitions; visual culture.otas