“Extraordinarily Inconspicuous” Elephants: The Interspecies Constitution and Contestations of the Ivory Commodity Frontier in Nineteenth-Century South Sudan

Elephants have been extraordinarily inconspicuous in the history of the ivory trade in nineteenth-century southern Sudan. One explanation for this is the process of commodification, which abstracted ivory from its animal origins and rendered invisible both elephants and the indigenous knowledge and labor that was vital to the trade. However, this process of commodification was incomplete, unstable, and fundamentally shaped by the relations of elephants, humans, cattle, and their environments. Through their movements and bodily nature, elephants played a part in determining the geography and structures of the ivory trade, which in turn shaped the territory and enduring marginalization of southern Sudan as an exploited periphery. At the same time, through cultural representations of their behavior, elephants also indirectly contributed to the indigenous value systems that limited commodification and prioritized animate life over inanimate objects.