3 - Regarding Trucanini’s Dignity

Summary

This is the first of three chapters which present ‘mini-studies’ of dignity. If, as the book argues, abstract discussion of dignity elides much of what we need to know about the concept, these mini-studies are designed to illustrate how a more contextualised treatment can take us further. Each of the mini-studies is concerned with dignity at a particular time, in a particular place, and with reference to a particular object. In the case of this chapter, the object is a series of photographs taken of Trucanini, a Tasmanian Aboriginal woman once (erroneously) said to be the ‘last of her race’. The chapter explores dignity at the intersection of colonial photography and Victorian race science.