Last Dinosaur Book

More on The Last Dinosaur Book:

Read Chapter 37, "Why Children Hate Dinosaurs, an excerpt from the book.

Go to A Schematic History of Dinosaur Images adapted from page 101 of the book, with dozens of links to relevant websites.

An interview with W.J.T. Mitchell, reprinted from the University of Chicago Chronicle.


Other books by W. J. T. Mitchell published by the University of Chicago Press include:


Links to dinosaur resources on the web can be found at:

Encyclop†dia Britannica guide to dinosaur sites

Links from the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre

You may also like to read the Romantic Praxis interview of W.J.T. Mitchell.

 

Seven Theses on the Dinosaur
by W.J.T. Mitchell


Studies have shown that all important works of cultural history have a minimum of six and no more than eight core theses. Here are W. J. T. Mitchell's seven theses concerning dinosaurs and iconology, from his standard lecture handout.
 

1. The dinosaur, understood as a scientific concept and thus as a real entity in nature, may not exist.

2. The dinosaur, understood as a cultural icon, a symbolic object produced by human societies, certainly does exist.

3. The dinosaur is therefore much more important as a cultural object than as a scientific entity. If it were not for popular fascination, dinosaurs would probably have disappeared from scientific discourse in the nineteenth century.

4. The dinosaur is the totem animal of modern culture. It is a modern invention, a new animal group that did not exist prior to the nineteenth century. It serves, like traditional totems, as a symbol of social groups--clans, tribes, races, nations, and species. It is an ancestor figure, a magical or taboo object, and the focus of ritual feasts, spectacles of resurrection and sacrificial consumption.

5. As a cultural icon, the dinosaur changes its appearance and meaning in relation to transformations in modern political economies and to changes in scientific and technological paradigms.

6. The dinosaur is the modern descendant of traditional monsters like the dragon and leviathan. As such, it symbolizes the power of the total state in its modern constitutional form, and it has a special significance as the unofficial totem animal of the world's leading democratic nation, the United States.

7. In the last twenty-five years the dinosaur has crossed a new cultural threshold, becoming a central figure in the education of children in advanced industrial societies, a globally-circulated popular attraction, and the key to a postmodern cultural formation called "paleoart."


Berlinosaurus

The dinosaur appears here as if springing up out of the modern addition to attack the traditional building. The Mercedes logo on its tail identifies it as a creature of modern corporate power, gobbling up the past. This is the Berlinosaurus, an appropriate monster for a city that has been tearing itself down and erasing its past for over a century. The ruined tower of the Gedachtnissekirche or "church of memory," is the appropriate prey for Berlinosaurus.
(Postcard by Claudia Katz-Palme, collage artist, Berlin. From The Last Dinosaur Book.)


 
 

Copyright notice: Excerpted from page 230-35 of The Last Dinosaur Book by W.J.T. Mitchell, published by the University of Chicago Press. © 1998 by W.J.T. Mitchell. All rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of U.S. copyright law, and it may be archived and redistributed in electronic form, provided that this entire notice, including copyright information, is carried and provided that the University of Chicago Press is notified and no fee is charged for access. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the consent of the University of Chicago Press.


W.J.T. Mitchell
The Last Dinosaur Book: The Life and Times of a Cultural Icon
Cloth $35.00 ISBN: 0-226-53204-6
©1998, 334 pages, 45 color plates, 66 halftones, 3 line drawings

For information on purchasing the book -- from bookstores or here online -- please go to the webpage for The Last Dinosaur Book.