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Human remains: Anthropodermic bibliopegy and the appeal of the extreme in challenging the continuing external management of Indigenous remains
Journal article

Human remains: Anthropodermic bibliopegy and the appeal of the extreme in challenging the continuing external management of Indigenous remains

Sandy O'Sullivan
Ngoonjook, (30), pp.80-85
2007
url
https://search.informit.com.au/documentSummary;dn=891806565318193;res=IELINDView
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Abstract

Cultural Studies Curatorial and Related Studies human remains Indigenous remains human skin anthropologic museology
The title of this discussion paper is deliberately sensational, inviting the reader into an investigation of horrific tomes covered in human skin. In May, 2006 an article which made front page headlines in the United Kingdom, also did the rounds of the international press. It highlighted the gruesome discovery, of an anatomy text covered in the human skin of what was presumably an eighteenth-century victim of bibliological, rather than biblical, proportions (BBC News Online 2006). More interesting than the form and content of the find, which as any biblio-historian would know was common-place as a means of literally contextualising the material and often little more than a curio in intention, is the public reaction and moral lesson that the editorial and dissemination promotes - to transform and manage human remains into a simulacrum of animal skin is wrong.

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