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Domesticating Nature, Appropriating Hierarchy
the reader, both the Lapps and the Polish look like close aliens or inner Others in
the same continent. In the Lapp scene (Plate IX, lower section [ill. 9]), two men are
shown in the foreground of a “Nordic” landscape; one is standing, wearing elabo¬
rate fur clothes and holding a stick in his hand, while the other is sitting, a whip
in his hand, in a triangle-shaped sleigh (the pudka of the Sami people) pulled by a
reindeer. The Poles (Plate VIII, middle section [ill. 10]) are shown as two men in
the forest: a younger and an older musician wearing peculiar clothes, long coats tied
with a belt on their waists, playing trumpet-like musical instruments and having a
big bear dance to the music. While the Lapp scene (together with its detailed textual
description of the life of those reindeer keepers) was presented as an “accurate” eth¬
nographical demonstration of those people living close to nature,'” and the funny,
joyful Polish scene—likewise putting its main characters out in nature—might
contain an anecdote or tale belonging to it,'* both people were presented as strangers
in a Europe imagined, as it seems to have been, somewhere from its more industrial¬
ized, western corner. This corner has not, however, been defined any more closely.
The general Western gaze of Raff's schoolbook seems to have been founded
on, and supported by, the use of a number of different, identifiable iconographical
strategies of Othering present in the images. These visual strategies of representation
were drawn upon in order to construct a visual Them as different from a—similarly
constructed—visual Us. Although these strategies are well distinguishable from
one another, they are present in the pictures rather simultaneously. Two, three, or
more of them interpenetrate each another in the individual images. The first of such
visual strategies is simplification and uniformization, that is, reducing the representa¬
tion of the people (mostly of non-European indigenous people) to some basic fea¬
tures like dark skin and (almost) nakedness, wearing simple clothes like loin-cloths,
short skirts, and so forth. The second strategy is stereotypization and commonplacing,
that is, assigning certain activities to or features thought/proposed to be dominant
12 ‘The text relating to the reindeer—just like other passages in Raff's schoolbook—provides kind of
a micro-ethnographical profile. It describes in detail how the geographical region looks like where the
Lapps live, what sort of animals they raise, what a reindeer is like, and how those people make use of
every part of the animal. The figure of the Lapp appears as commonplace in eighteenth century books
of natural history. One finds striking similarities between Raff's profile of those Nordic people and,
for example, that of Buffon in their attempt at describing meticulously the specificities of it as an alien
culture. The different editions of Buffon focused not only on the various uses of the reindeer but also the
peculiar shape and know-how of the pu/ka well into the nineteenth century (e.g., Buffon 1835: 73-78).
Lapland had a special importance for Linnaeus himself. He took a journey there in 1732, published on
its flora (Flora Lapponica 1737) and, in general, considered the Lapps an exotic, happy people, not less
than “our teacher” (Koerner 1999: 56-81).
13° Bear-dancing was a common visual stereotype attached to the eastern Slavic peoples in general in
the age; one would associate it also with the Russians. The presence of this image in Raff's schoolbook
testifies again to its cultural bias and generalizing-uniformizing efforts. It also singles out one of the
printed media—illustrated schoolbooks—in which such visual stereotypes of ethnicity circulated all over
Europe throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
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