Taming the untamable: early modern civet cats and the nature-culture dichotomy

Abstract

Although our systems of thought have long accustomed us to differentiate sharply between the human world of ‘culture’ and the animal world of ‘nature’, both sides of this very influential dichotomy are entangled in complex and indissoluble ways. The civet cat and its very special perfume—civet—provide a perfect example of this ‘merging’. The idea of taming the untamable, expressed in paintings of civet cats and textual sources, has been especially fruitful and became a promising preoccupation especially for artists like Joris Hoefnagel to enrich their work with an intellectual hybridity. The article shows how—in painting, perfume, and writing—nature and culture complemented one another, rather than standing in opposition. Owing to the animal’s odour, its mysterious nature, and debates about its (un)tamability, the image of the civet cat served as a focal point through which early modern Europeans wrestled with and redefined the realms of human and animal, of art and science, and of culture and nature.