Abstract
Persistent debates in science studies between constructivist and realist accounts of knowledge claims have for some time been seeking a productive alternative to the rhetorical impasse of naive realist and radical relativist articulations.1 Seeking to negotiate the shifting terrain between these poles, theorists have increasingly been focused on material-discursive models of agency that refuse to privilege one set of commitments over the other, but instead engage equally with both. Engaging with these models of agency, I want to focus attention on the particularly powerful and compelling trope of the Thoroughbred racehorse in early modern cultural formation, and attend to its various significations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
Karen Barad has coined the phrase “agential realism” in describing one such alternative: “The ontology I propose does not posit some fixed notion of being that is prior to signification (as the classical realist assumes), but neither is being completely inaccessible to language (as in Kantian transcendentalism), nor completely of language (as in linguistic monism). That reality within which we intra-act—what I term agential reality—is made up of material-discursive phenomena. Agential reality is not a fixed ontology that is independent of human practices, but is continually reconstituted through our material-discursive intra-actions. … According to agential realism, reality is sedimented out of the process of making the world intelligible through certain practices and not others. Therefore, we are responsible not only for the knowledge that we seek, but, in part, for what exists. Scientific practices involve complex intra-actions of multiple material-discursive apparatuses. Material-discursive apparatuses are themselves phenomena made up of specific intra-actions of humans and non-humans. … Intra-actions are constraining but not determining.” Barad’s notion of “intra-actions,” on which her “agential realism” depends, reconfigures the observer’s relationship to nature: we do not observe the nature around us, but rather we observe our own participation within nature. Karen Barad, “Reconceiving Scientific Literacy as Agential Literacy: Or, Learning How to Intra-act Responsibly within the World,” in Doing Science and Culture ed. Roddey Reid and Sharon Traweek (New York: Routledge, 2000), 221–58; quote from 235–36.
Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), 11.
The quoted phrase is from Nicholas Russell, Like Engend’ring Like: Heredity and Animal Breeding in Early Modern England (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 95.
Instead, “the word ‘Thoroughbred’ was first mentioned in Volume 2 published in 1821, though the term was not defined. Copenhagen, the Duke of Wellington’s charger at the battle of Waterloo, was by Meteor, and the pedigree of his dam Lady Catherine was given as ‘got by John Bull, her dam by the Rutland Arabian, out of a hunting mare not thoroughbred’ “: Peter Willett, The Thoroughbred (New York: G. P. Putnam & Sons, 1970), 102. This definition by negation may be the first use of the term in the official registry of Thoroughbred racing, but its affirmative use quickly entered the lexicon.
William Osmer, A Treatise on the Diseases and Lameness of Horses. In which is Laid Down a Proper Method of Shoeing (in General) and Treating the Different Kinds of Feet (London: printed for T. Waller, 1761), 247.
Harriet Ritvo, The Platypus and the Mermaid, and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997), 76.
Alexander Mackay-Smith, Speed and the Thoroughbred: The Complete History (Lanham, MD: Derrydale Press and Millwood House, Ltd., 2000), 85–86.
Lisa Jardine and Jerry Brotton, Global Interests: Renaissance Art between East and West (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2000), 151.
William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, A New Method and Extraordinary Invention, To Dress Horses, and Work Them According to Nature: As also, To Perfect Nature by the Subtilty of Art; Which Was Never Found out, but by The Thrice Noble, High, and Puissant Prince William Cavendishe (London: printed by Thomas Milbourn, 1667), 73.
C. M. Prior, Early Records of the Thoroughbred Horse (London: Sportsman Office, 1924), 74.
Nabil Matar, Turks, Moors, and Englishmen in the Age of Discovery (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999), 54.
John Hislop and David Swannell, The Faber Book of the Turf (Boston: Faber and Faber, 1990), 127.
Richard Wall, A Dissertation on Breeding of Horses, upon Philosophical and Experimental Principles; … Also Some Material Observations upon Those Sorts of Foreign Horses, Which Are Adapted to Racing; Particularly Those of the Kingdom of Yemine, in … South Arabia … By Richard Wall (London: printed for G. Woodfall, W. Cooke, R. Heber, and J. Wilkie, 1758), 14.
Daniel Defoe, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain rev. edn. (London: Dent, 1974).
William Osmer, A Dissertation on Horses: Wherein It Is Demonstrated, by Matters of Fact, as well as from the Principles of Philosophy, That Innate Qualities Do Not Exist, … By William Osmer (London: printed for T. Waller, 1756), 50–54.
Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 1979), 1.
Lady Wentworth, Thoroughbred Racing Stock and Its Ancestors; The Authentic Origin of Pure Blood (London: G. Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1938), 10.
Janet Sorensen, The Grammar of Empire in Eighteenth-Century British Writing (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 3.
Michael Hechter, Internal Colonialism: The Celtic Fringe in British National Development (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1999).
Richard Hall, “Whig Party Fortunes at the Yorkshire County Election of 1708,” Northern History 32 (1996): 131.
Bruno Latour, Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
John Lawrence, A Philosophical and Practical Treatise on Horses 2 vols. (London: printed for T. Longman, 1796–98), vol. 1, 34.
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2005 Karen Raber and Treva J. Tucker
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Nash, R. (2005). “Honest English Breed”: The Thoroughbred as Cultural Metaphor. In: Raber, K., Tucker, T.J. (eds) The Culture of the Horse. Early Modern Cultural Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09725-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-09725-5_10
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-73321-7
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-09725-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social & Cultural Studies CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)