'Imperiale Männlichkeiten, zoologische Taxonomien und epistemische Gewalt: Schweizer Naturforscher in Niederländisch-Ostindien, ca. 1880-1900: Zeitschrift für feministische Geschichtswissenschaft

Abstract

This article investigates the zoological expeditions of two ‘colonial outsiders’: the Swiss colonial medical officer Conrad Kläsi and the Bernese zoologist Johann Büttikofer. By reconstructing their journeys through the ‘remote’ islands of Sumatra and Borneo – then part of the Dutch East Indies –, I argue that collaboration with colonial institutions allowed middle-class men from nation states without colonies to claim hegemonic ideals of masculinity, embodied by globetrotting naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt or Charles Darwin. Furthermore, I demonstrate that zoological knowledge production was inextricably linked to physical and epistemic violence. Not only were zoological expeditions accompanied and supported by the Dutch East Indies’ army, the urge of European naturalists to hunt, transport, donate and classify the tropical fauna rendered indigenous contributions and epistemologies nearly invisible. Taken together, the article aims to illuminate the co-construction of imperial masculinities, zoological taxonomies and epistemic violence.