Bodies Impolitic? Reading Cadavers

Abstract

The manuscript considers Body Worlds, Bodies: The Exhibition, and other contemporary displays of plastinated cadavers as communicative museum “texts.” It employs five hermeneutic frames through which these exhibitions might be viewed, and through which the museum objects might be transmogrified into meaningful content in a viewer’s mind: specimens, education, profits, consent, and—intertwined with consent—dignity.