Journeys to the Urban Exotic

JOURNEYS TO THE URBAN EXOTIC:

EMBODIMENT AND THE ZOO-GOING GAZE

REBECCA BISHOP

he term ‘icon’ implies an image cap- category ‘humanness’. Yet the aim of this T tured, a static visual reference, a paper is to suggest that while practices of material artifact whose surface represents visualism underscore complex politics of or symbolizes a fluid depth of social rela- identity construction in the West, vision tionships, ideas (eidos), and ways of being- itself is never static, and that the mean- in-the-world. As a cultural text, the icon ing of the animal object is multi-layered, implicitly relies on a dialogic relationship ambiguous and sometimes contradictory. between the visual and the social, where Further, I argue that practices of looking objects are endowed with significance, exist in tandem with an embodied appre- brought to life, through practices of hension of objects being-seen; through exchange and circulation in shared envi- examining audience responses to the ronments of meaning. Largely inspired spectacle of gorillas in cages in a city by the Foucauldian knowledge/gaze zoo. I suggest that while animal bodies dialectics, recent studies of gendered, are inscribed by a politics of vision, the ethnic and sexualized iconographies in apprehension of animals and animality the EuroWest have focused on the way is sensory as well as visually symbolic, in which acts of looking are informed by affective as well as an effect of discursive discursive fields which both constitute fields, and that iconographies may be and express the power relations inher- intercorporeal as well as indexical. ent within social process. This position has stemmed from and contributed to GOOD TO THINK WITH: THE a core concern over practices of visual- ANIMAL AS REPRESENTATION ism in EuroWestern theory, a ‘scopic regime’1 which separates the spectator The ‘animal’ has recently become the sub- from the object of the gaze, and where ject of an interdisciplinary investigation ‘other’ objects, peoples and places are which has examined the way in which bestowed meaning from the privileged animal bodies have served as key sites in position of the authoritative observer.2 processes of human self-definition. Key This paper will focus on how the ‘animal’ works by historians such as Thomas, icon has been constituted in this nexus of Midgley, Willis, and Ritvo,3 have drawn power/knowledge in the West, focusing attention to the way in which representa- in particular on how the non-human pri- tions of animals have shifted according mate has been discursively constructed to changing social, moral and political as both origin and antithesis of a broad landscapes. Haraway’s important work

106 REBECCA BISHOP Journeys to the Urban Exotic on the scientific stories that endow the suggests that ‘what zoogoers see in cages nonhuman primate body with meaning actually represent a kind of human con- has drawn critical attention to the com- trivance immeasurably distant from the plex material-discursive practices that real animal life…[a] ‘colonialist text’.13 In surround the nonhuman entity.4 Studies a similar vein, Mullin and Marvin assert of popular and political representations that ‘the zoo constitutes a gallery of of animals have focused on the way in images constructed by man. The fact that which animals have served as icons of he is able to arrange around him living otherness; Elder, Wolch and Emel for creatures from all parts of the world, to example, have explored the way in which make decisions with regard to the qual- ‘animals and their bodies appear to be ity and condition of their lives…is, in the one site of struggle over the protection end, an expression of power’.14 French of national identity and the production historians Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier of cultural difference’.5 Through examin- agree: ing the use of animal images in political propaganda and mass media6 Baker has Every aspect of humanity’s relationship suggested that ‘our visually oriented cul- with nature can be perceived through the ture objectifies the animal and keeps the bars of the zoological garden: repulsion animal at a distance’;7 Ham and Senior and fascination; the impulse to appro- have discussed representations of ‘animal priate, master and understand…linked acts’ in circuses and zoos and how these to vast parallel histories of colonization, sites ‘provided spaces in the city where… ethnocentrism and the discovery of the continuities between man and animal Other…To tour the cages of the zoo is could be dramatized’8 and a recent col- to understand the society that erected lection by Rothfels9 has explored a broad them.15 field of human/animal relationships, from fox hunting to animal cloning.10 In Australia, Anderson has exam- Some scholars have explored the way in ined how practices of animal contain- which the nature/culture divide that has ment and display at the Adelaide Zoo underscored the human/animal split is reflect broader global shifts in patterns of not universal, but a product of situated imperial appropriation and animal hus- Western epistemology.11 bandry, arguing that ‘the public has been In a cognate field of research, schol- initiated into a way of seeing that—in ars have explored the postcolonial manifestly variable ways over time— dynamics inherent in the capture and parades humans’ capacity for order and display of animal bodies in the zoologi- command’.16 cal garden. In his study of Western lit- The caged animal might indeed be eratures that have focused on the theme seen as representative of a broader post- of the zoo, Malamud for example, has colonial politics of appropriation and argued that practices of animal con- domination, yet this interpretation of tainment ‘convince people that we are the contemporary zoo belies the multi- the imperial species—that we are enti- layered meanings that surround the tled to trap animals, remove them from non-human body. While this paper will their worlds and imprison them within build upon previous studies of zoos as ours’.12 In her compelling history of Vic- sites for the imperial containment and torian relationships with animals, Ritvo exhibition of exotica, and animal bodies

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Figure 1: Taronga Zoo Enclosure as ‘mirrors’ upon which cultural values essence of deviance and pathology. As are inscribed,17 my aim here is to intro- Tapper writes ‘certain animals are ide- duce the ways in which animal bodies alized and used as models of order and are actively apprehended not simply morality’ while animals may also ‘some- through visual ‘readings’ of the animal times be represented as the Other, the as an representative object, but through a Beast, the Brute, the model of disorder’.19 blending of sensory and bodily as well as Throughout the history of Western visual modalities. ‘Semiosis is politics by knowledge practices and in contempo- other means’ as Haraway has suggested, rary relations between humans and non- yet the meaning ascribed to animals humans, these two interweaving poles in the modern West is multi-layered, form the grounds of and give meaning to ambiguous and sometimes contradic- the modern spectacle of the animal body. tory.18 On one hand, the animal body has Yet, as I argue below, while the animal historically been used as object/signifier may serve as an iconic re-presentation in a multitude of discourses which exam- of broader practices of power and iden- ine and negotiate the moral parameters tity formation, spectatorship itself is not of being-human, from the ancient fables a process of monolithic vision, where of Aesop to contemporary morality tales meaning is homogenous and singularly in Disney films such as Bambi and The bestowed. Spectatorship is filled with Lion King. On the other hand, animal- multiple frames of reference, multiple ity has been historically constructed as a means of making sense of the object on condition of being, as a subaltern qual- display; it produces multi-layered inter- ity, as a corporeal manifestation, as an pretations which continuously unfold.

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This investigation is based on six viewing animals in zoos? How are these months fieldwork at Taronga Zoo in experiences of looking informed by com- Sydney, Australia. To make sense of plex discursive histories? And, perhaps a humans making sense of gorillas in question that has been markedly absent cages, I will outline a history of zoo prac- from studies of animal representations tices and explore how historical con- and captivity—how might we frame and structions of the animal icon infiltrate the describe the lived, sensory experience simulation and replication of ‘nature’ in of looking at, being near, and wander- the zoo. Secondly, I pay attention to the ing through, the zoo of animal iconogra- minute codings, gestures, comments and phies? bodily choreographies that occur among audiences at the gorilla enclosure, heed- THE ARTIFICIAL CONSTRUCTION OF ing Devereaux’s claim that these every- ANIMAL SPACE day aspects of human experience can be understood as symbolically rich indica- Exotic animals have been kept in captiv- tors of meaning. She writes that: ity throughout Western history and the caging and display of animals has con- All that is encoded in public spectacle, sistently been linked with practices of and much more, is already inscribed in sociopolitical power and status. Ancient the actions and interactions of everyday Romans used wild cats and elephants in life. Public spectacle may reinforce the displays of military might, where, often hierarchies of value by expressing the after being paraded, the animals were relations of hegemony and by coding subject to bloody massacre in public them as desirable and natural in the arenas. The early Middle Ages saw a language of dominant discourse, but it notable decline in the practice of keep- never creates them. This creativity lies in ing and parading wild animals,21 and the ten thousand interactions and signi- a revival of exotic animal containment fications of daily living, through which occurred during the Renaissance, when people witness, experience, discover and wild and ferocious animals were held in express their existences, in this particular the menageries of royalty and aristocracy place, this language, this group.20 and large animals such as elephants and lions were often paraded or pitted against It is in the ten thousand interactions domestic animals in combat. These ani- and significations that take place among mals often served as ‘living trophies’ audiences at the zoological garden, the of political power, used as diplomatic smell, the sound and the vision of caged gifts between sovereigns, and as sym- animal bodies, the movement of bodies bols of the imperial conquest of foreign through space, as well as through the lands, souvenirs of colonial adventures discursive constructions of ‘animal’ and in the wilderness.22 Traveling showmen ‘animality’ that infiltrate these experien- paraded wild animals to a paying public tial modes, that practices of looking at throughout this period, often displayed animals, and animal alterity itself, can be alongside human ‘freaks’ and ‘savages’. apprehended. How does the historical Reforms in practices of public edu- dialectic of animal as object and animal- cation and an increasing opposition to ity as a state of being infiltrate and impact elitist princely menageries under the upon the contemporary experience of French Revolution led to the creation of

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Europe’s first modern zoological garden, by curious spectacles and, in the case of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris in 1794. The the zoo, to find ‘natural’ spaces where one garden established a system of structured could relax and be healed of the modern exhibition space which would be imple- woes that industrial society bestowed on mented in zoos throughout Europe23, its working populations.27 As Rothfels with monkey and bird houses, a bear pit, suggests, the zoological garden was in and a building for ferocious animals, sur- turn linked to the ‘power and ambitions rounded by green foliage and lawns and of the new bourgeois elite’, the posses- winding pathways. In London, animals sion of a zoological garden a key marker held at the Tower of London menagerie of status and municipal wealth in the were gifted to the newly established nineteenth century urban landscape.28 Zoological Society of London, and were A key shift in practices of displaying the foundation for the establishment of animals at zoological gardens occurred in the Regents Park Zoo, which opened in 1907, when renowned animal trader and 1828.24 collector Carl Hagenbeck established a While menagerie animals had been ‘zoo without bars’. Partly in response to a utilized in scientific research during the growing public criticism over the caging seventeenth century, the Jardin des Plan- of animals and partly as a result of need- tes and Regents Park Zoos signalled a ing a place to store his considerable stock new era of scientific involvement in the of wild creatures, Hagenbeck decided to capture and collection of animal bodies.25 establish an ‘animal paradise’ in Stelligen, Throughout the early to mid-nineteenth Germany, where animals were placed in century the Jardin served the dual pur- enclosures which attempted to replicate pose of entertaining the public and pro- indigenous habitats and were separated viding a site for the scientific observation by natural landscape features rather than and dissection of animals. The arrange- cages and rails. The zoo signalled a radi- ment of the cages themselves reflected cal departure in animal display practices the empirical ethos of the developing sci- and implemented a critical new rhetoric ences of zoology and anatomy, arranged of ‘freedom in captivity’.29 in an orderly succession of cages which In addition to the rapid spread of allowed optimum viewing space for zoo-without-bars policies, the twentieth observers, a ‘living display cabinet with century saw key changes in moral dis- a number of well laid-out and correctly courses on the treatment and containment classified species…allowing naturalists of animals, spurred on in part by shifts and artists to examine often immobile in media and scientific representations animals closely as if they were models’.26 of animals. The development of Disney At the Regents Park Zoo, the Zoologi- biotopes and nature films brought wild cal Society of London aimed to provide animals increasingly under the public a similar venue for the advancement of gaze, field ethology presented the public zoological classification and description, with accounts of animals in their natural as well as the domestication of new ani- habitats while animal psychology and mals, and similarly placed its animals in cognition studies provided accounts of ordered houses and cages. Rapid urbani- the animal mind; further, the mid-twen- zation and an increase in leisure time tieth-century saw the implementation of from the 18th to 19th centuries led to an widespread animal protection laws. Each increasing public desire to be entertained of these developments contributed to

110 REBECCA BISHOP Journeys to the Urban Exotic and reflected a twentieth century public sures in a replication of what they would ethos increasingly uncomfortable with do ‘naturally’ in the wild; the corporate the spectacle of animals behind bars and logos, electronic fences, wires and faux to practices of what Rothfels has referred landscapes a downplayed feature in the to as ‘managing eloquence’,30 or creating conservation and preservation of animal an illusion of ‘freedom’and naturalness bodies: a reproduction of ‘nature’ in both in animal enclosures, where zoo audi- the biology and technology. ences are made to ‘suspend disbelief long enough to accept what they saw before TARONGA ZOO AND THE them’ was a natural setting.31 Thus, in MASTERPLAN: A NEW AGE OF today’s zoos, one typically finds animals MECHANICAL REPRODUCTION enclosed in ‘natural’ habitats featuring foliages, rocks, water features and land- Taronga Zoo in Sydney, Australia, was scape designs reminiscent of the animal’s established in the nineteenth century, indigenous settings, often separated by a reflecting a broad proliferation of zoos moat or physical distance from the zoo in European cities and colonies through- audience; cages and bars are becoming out this period. The Zoological Society of inconspicuously present, hidden behind New South Wales was founded in 1879, trees and landscape objects to produce a with the aims of promoting and advanc- spectacle of naturalness. ing the science of zoology and conserving And yet, as I discuss below, the spec- indigenous species; it officially opened tacle of naturalness in the contemporary its first public zoo in 1884. After a visit zoo remains a ‘compelling illusion’.32 The to one of the Hagenbeck-inspired ‘zoos imperial practices inherent in the founda- without bars’ in Germany, the secretary tion of early zoological gardens remain of the zoo sought a larger site for the prevalent today, yet there have been sev- creation of a similar display in Sydney, eral striking shifts in the practices and and land for the new zoo was granted by discourses that surround contemporary the New South Wales government. Like practices of animal containment. Colonial many zoological societies across Europe, enterprises such as Hagenbeck’s have the Zoological Society of NSW gradu- given way to transglobal networks of ally became less involved in the admin- animal preservation conglomerates and istration of the zoo, focusing instead on corporate financing. The 18th–19th cen- the production and dissemination of tury focus on cataloguing and containing scientific papers. In 1913, management nonhuman bodies has been replaced by a of the zoo was passed to the New Zoo- project of replicating and simulating an logical Gardens Trust, and Taronga Zoo ‘authentic’ natural world. This construc- was officially opened on October 7, 1916. tion of ‘real’ copies of animal worlds is Exhibits were gradually completed over surrounded by a rhetoric of salvage and time, with the construction of a giraffe preservation of animal species, a project house in 1923, an aquarium in 1927 and of ‘rescuing’ animals from their indig- tiger pits in 1939. From the 1960s, echo- enous environments on foreign shores. ing changes in zoos across the West, the Within these twin themes of preservation philosophy of the zoo shifted to a new and simulation, animals themselves are emphasis on conservation, education made to perform daily rituals of eating, and research, and attractions such as the resting, moving inside and outside enclo- monkey circus and elephant rides gave

111 Humanities Research Vol. XI No. 1, 2004 way to a Rainforest Aviary and water- The quest for the ‘perfect zoo’ is fowl ponds. Today, the zoo houses 380 outlined in what the Zoo refers to as a species and over 2200 individual animals ‘Masterplan’, a program of zoo construc- in a variety of open enclosures, aviaries, tion which will take place over the next tanks and themed ‘forests’, and is visited twelve years. The masterplan, the site by over 1.5 million humans a year.33 suggest, signals an ‘historic new era’ of The policies and aims of Taronga Zoo animal conservation, which will ‘increase are made clear on their website, where it our ability to achieve our aim to be lead- states that through ‘our commitment to ers in the conservation, presentation and conservation, research, education and care of wildlife’.35 recreation, Taronga and Western Plains According to the website, this plan Zoos aim to inspire Australians and our to be a world leader in wildlife conserva- visitors to discover, explore, delight in tion and presentation will involve a pro- and protect out natural world’. The zoo gram of new exhibits which will take zoo summarizes its activities under the broad visitors on a ‘journey’ through authentic banner ‘Zootopia: in search of the perfect replications of indigenous spaces, which zoo’, where it states that: may include the reconstruction of ‘local villages’. Zootopia is a quest and a commitment. In a description of the zoo’s plans to It is a pledge towards excellence in the construct an ‘Asian Elephant Rainforest’, conservation and preservation of wildlife nineteenth century practices of display- and our natural environment. It is also ing ‘primitives’ in zoos and fairs echo our endevour to teach and inspire, and to with colonial tales of journey and discov- preserve our natural heritage for future ery in colonized territories: generations.34

Figure 2: Taronga Zoo spectator

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On entering the Asian Elephant Rainfor- ‘nature’, in which visitors can retrace the est, Taronga visitors will initially take steps of colonial explorers, discovering a unique journey through a busy Asian for themselves an unsullied wilderness village on the edge of the forest, to an and then at the end of this journey, com- elephant activity area showcasing their pare their experiences of ‘discovery’ with traditional role in village life … Following other travellers at a local village; the zoo the trail of the elephants, the path takes invites an iconic spatio-temporal shift visitors into the lush surrounds of the into wilderness while replicating both dense Asian rainforest. Wildlife through- the narratives and practices of nineteen out the rainforest will be ‘discovered’ just century colonial conquest. as it would in a real Asian rainforest ….36 Mitman has argued that the desire for a ‘real’ zoo experience stems from A description of plans to re-create an emerging aesthetic in early twentieth a ‘real African safari’ follow a similar century natural history, where ‘value theme: was placed on sensation … through an immersion in nature’s language—the Visitors will be taken through the safari language of the senses—that empathy, on guided tours and will experience the that truth of feeling, a knowing of the delight of discovering large free-ranging individual animal’.40 In their program animals and African game species…The of zoo ‘education’, Taronga lists three new African village will provide an forms of ‘experience’ at the zoo which opportunity for guests to relax and share at once build on an historical legacy of this unique experience at the end of the zoos as sites for animal classification journey.37 and this desire for an ‘immersive’ and sensory experience of animal bodies; What is interesting here is a juxtapo- the site suggests that visitors can ‘See It’, sition of a concern with the replication (‘[w]hether studying the characteristics of the ‘real’ with historical discourses of of a particular animal to describe its ‘discovery’ and ‘journey’, ‘following a classification or focusing on an animal for trail’ through ‘lush’ and ‘dense’ tropical life drawing, Taronga Zoo has something forests. This speaks at once to Benjamin’s for everyone’), ‘Sense It’ (‘see, hear and assertion that mass mechanical repro- smell wildlife at Taronga Zoo’) and ductions of objects and images produce ‘Save It’ (‘Learning about animals and a desire to bring real objects ‘closer’, plants in their environments increases both ‘spatially’ and ‘humanly’;38 yet it our awareness, develops understanding also speaks to a new desire for the simu- and builds positive attitudes towards lation of a lost ‘authenticity’ within the wildlife’).41 What is crucial to note global imaginary; a number of scholars here is that ‘it’ is not an a priori nature have pointed to the way in which mass which is replicated in zoological space, global tourism has been intertwined but a nature actively re-created in acts with an emerging ‘invention of tradi- of replication and simulation; both the tion’, in which colonial imaginings of a meaning of ‘nature’ and the meanings lost, primitive paradise are re-created ascribed to animal bodies are, to and marketed to Western audiences.39 use Butler’s terminology, ‘elaborate In the context of the zoo, these prac- performative fictions’. Consider Butler’s tices suggest a reinvention of a pristine assertion that gender itself is built on a

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‘tacit agreement to perform, produce between the discursive construction and and sustain’ gendered identities, where technological replication of nature and the ‘authors of gender become entranced the lived experience of ‘natural’ animal by their own fictions whereby the bodies in the zoo? construction compels one’s belief in its necessity and naturalness’ and gender TALKING ABOUT ANIMALS: itself is a ‘putatively regulated cultural POPULAR DISCOURSE IN THE fiction’.42 So too, ‘wildness’ and ‘nature’ GORILLA ENCLOSURE might be seen as performative spaces which are both historically constructed The gorilla exhibit at Taronga Zoo is half and em-bodied in an iconographic way down the zoological park, separated ‘experience’. by foliage and walkways from its neigh- Just as zoos and menageries through- bours, the ‘Asian African Rainforest’, out European history have embodied the the seal sanctuary and a food kiosk.43 weave of the cultural imaginary and the Rounding a bend in a pathway that leads mechanics of colonial political economy, down from the kiosk, the long enclosure today’s zoos re-present the complex comes into sight; a grassy bank with scat- relationship between imagined spaces tered trees, a waterfall cascades down on of nature and the construction and per- a faux-rock ledge, tree stumps reach over formance of consumable otherness. The a trickling stream, connected by hang- transition from the historical display ing wires for the gorillas to swing from. of animals in ordered and successive In the far right corner, another clump of houses and cages to simulations of the trees sits before a small stone and dirt ‘real’, reveals the way in which the pres- plateau which slopes down in front of entation of animal bodies indeed mirrors the rear rock face. Next to the outdoor existent politico-moral landscapes and enclosure is the indoor gorilla den, with knowledge practices: the animal is no brightly coloured jungle gym and view- longer an object to be placed in a cage ing windows, and to its right, a small and gazed upon, but is an object which outdoor setting closed to the public. The invites a certain kind of experience, a audience is separated from the gorillas ‘being there’, a participation or re-enact- by a moat, and follow a pathway paral- ment of journeys into the jungle. The vast lel to the enclosure to arrive at a covered economic networks behind the manufac- viewing platform with a small amount of ture of ‘natural space’ are kept largely seating at its rear; they enter the enclo- from sight in the contemporary rhetoric sure from the right, follow the pathway of salvage and conservation. This tension to the platform and exit to the left. between manufacture and authenticity Rounding the bend to find the gorilla is captured at the entrance to Taronga’s display, audience members frequently gorilla enclosure, which boldly bears the gasp with pleasure and interest at the title ‘McDonalds Gorilla Forest’, where sight before them, eager to seek out the the corporate giant takes on the face of gorillas dotted around the enclosure. The benevolent host to animals threatened choruses of exclamation mingle with the by Third World destruction. Yet how sound of the trickle of the waterfall, the do audiences themselves apprehend occasional pok-pok of a juvenile male the animal bodies before them? How is gorilla beating his chest, the call of birds, it possible to understand the dialectic the low murmur of the rest of the crowd,

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Figure 3: Taronga Zoo gorilla and the shouts and laughter of children, from us, I want to see it!. who often race back and forth along the The juvenile gorillas are another pathway against the enclosure. Most of source of public amusement, and often the audience congregate at the viewing interact or play with each other. The platform, where they rest their hands audience commonly laughs in delight at against the rails of the enclosure and these spectacles, pointing their fingers at peer in. Kibabu, the large male silverback the animals and sighing in disappoint- is without doubt the primary object of ment when these moments of activity audience interest, and people commonly pass. When the animals are still, audi- express their frustration at not being ence members will spend a few minutes able to see his face, or to make out his at the enclosure, waiting for activity, and body as he rests behind trees and bush; then move on down the pathway. They’re they form tight groups at the corner of not doing anything for us, stated one child, the enclosure where Kibabu often hides They are just sitting around, it’s boring, behind a clump of foliage. When Kibabu they are ignoring the people, to which his makes a public appearance, he is greeted mother replied, Let’s come back later when with exclamations of wonder at his size; something is happening. A visitor made the a child exclaimed I didn’t know he was that disappointed comment, They’re not look- big!; an adult male noted, Look at the size ing too magnificent, they’re looking a bit … of that thing! When the silverback is out reclining. When the animals are active, of view, audiences frequently say Where cameras are produced from pockets and is he? I want to see the big one!, or, as a dis- bags in a flurry of shutter-clicks; when appointed child stated, Why is it hiding three juvenile gorillas chose to sit in a

115 Humanities Research Vol. XI No. 1, 2004 row, arms around each others shoulders, the ape as both antithesis and origin of audience members happily exclaimed It’s being-human. Throughout the history the three wise monkeys ha ha! and gotta get of the Euro-West, ‘animality’ has repre- a picture of that!. Such moments suggest sented a multitude of behavioural and that humans primarily seek out entertain- bodily transgressions associated with the ment from the spectacle of animal bodies instinctual, the carnal, the sexual and the before them; inactivity produces dis- earthly, all of which have shifted ambig- satisfaction which commonly results in uously between notions of the nature of people leaving the enclosure. As Mullan a human nature and the animal nature and Marvin note, there is ‘usually a sense which lurks quietly inside the human. of disappointment in the visitor when The ape has historically embodied these the sleepy and lethargic beasts visible in twin poles of humanness and animality, front of him are not easily imagined as from medieval visions of wild men on the accomplished hunters of the African foreign shores to Enlightenment specula- plain…’.44 tions on humanity’s origins.45 At the same Particularly ‘animal’ activities such time, the ape has served as a parodic and as urinating, defecating or touching gen- grotesque figure, a state expressed in the itals evoke amusement and repugnance dictum simian quam similes turpissma bestia among the audience. Comments like Ooh nobis, ‘How like us is that ugly brute, the that’s disgusting! Gross! are frequent. Oh ape’. The continued role of the ape as yuk! He’s not human! exclaimed a small carnivalesque figure is made clear in the child, to which his mother replied I hope delight and repugnance that contempo- he’s going to wash his hands! Occasionally, rary audiences express towards gorilla mythologies of gorilla ferocity and brute bodily functions; these ‘human-like’ fig- strength, made popular in tales such as ures transgress and turn ‘upside-down’ King Kong, enter the zoo arena, where, for standards of civilized bodily conduct example, a young girl exclaimed, Don’t with defecation, genital touching, (and put your hands over the edge, they’ll rip your more common among the chimpanzees, arms off! Yet at the same time, there are masturbation) and audiences respond underlying moral concerns in the com- with happy revelry and mock horror at ments of zoo-going audiences regarding this spectacle of the ‘unfinished and open the appropriateness of utilizing animals body….which is blended with the world, as amusement, particularly as the goril- with animals’.46 las are deemed ‘almost human’. Audi- Yet, for the zoo-goers, the perceived ences will frequently comment Look at ‘humanness’ of the gorilla adds an ele- their eyes, they are so human, They are just ment of unease to the grotesque spectacle. like us, I wonder what they are thinking or The eyes of the gorilla frequently evoke they’re like humans, they do the same things their sentience for zoo audiences; as one humans do. Audiences will often note audience member commented, You can with some discomfort, these gorillas come see right into their souls. Indeed, Bakhtin from Africa and animals shouldn’t really be points out that the ‘eyes have no part’ kept in cages, they belong in the wild. in grotesque images, for ‘they express This oscillation between the ‘human- an individual, so to speak, self-sufficient ness’ of the gorillas and their animal human life’.47 Thus, while on one hand, behaviour and activities reflects broader audiences enjoy their delighted repug- historical Euro-Western dialectics of nance at the spectacle of the open, leak-

116 REBECCA BISHOP Journeys to the Urban Exotic ing animal body, the perceived presence rience, where subject and object, human of a ‘subjectivity’ behind the eyes of the and animal temporarily merge. At the animal disturbs this comic vision; there same time, I suggest that when audi- occurs an uncomfortable fit between ences believe they see their own human- ‘they are just like us’ and ‘let’s watch ness reflected in the visage of the gorilla, the gorillas do things for us’. This phe- this occasionally produces an apprehen- nomenon evokes what Peter Berger sees sion over the potential threat of their own as a certain ontological emptiness in the containment. I wouldn’t like to be stuck in a zoo-going experience, where animals are cage like that. The illusion of ‘freedom’ in reduced to tragic and non-comprehensi- animals without bars produces an affir- ble objects, where the animal’s ‘silence mation of audience members own spa- guarantees its distance, its distinctive- tial and ontological ‘unboundedness’: a ness, its exclusion from and of man’.48 privileged freedom to move. He writes that the ‘look’ that humans What is striking in this context is and animals once shared has been extin- the way the ‘human’ and the ‘animal’ guished and in its place, an anxiety marks are multi-layered and ambiguous cat- the visual relationship between human egories which are produced both in dis- and nonhuman: course and in dynamics of intercorporeal engagement. Perceived ‘gorilla sentience’ They proceed from cage to cage, not must be seen as an outcome of a shift in unlike visitors in an art gallery who stop knowledge practices which have encour- in front of one painting, and then move aged a belief in primate cognition and on to the next or the one after the next. Yet emotionality; several decades of field in the zoo the view is always wrong. Like ethology and animal language/aware- an image out of focus. One is so accus- ness experiments have re-created the tomed to this that one scarcely notices it meanings ascribed to the primate body, anymore, or rather, the apology habitu- producing notions of nonhuman pri- ally anticipates the disappointment, so mates as capable of ‘feeling’, of having that the latter is not felt … However you tool-making capacities and family/tribal look at these animals, even if the animal organizations, of being ‘proto-human’.50 is up against the bars, less than a foot This pedagogy infiltrates practices of from you, looking outwards in the public looking-at primates, and combines with direction, you are looking at something that a lived sense that there is a subject behind has been rendered absolutely marginal.49 the visage of the animal other, where, as the ancients suggested, animi sedem esse in Among audiences watching apes, oculus, the seat of the soul is in the eyes. the perceived subjectivity of the goril- In this experiential semiotics of animal las produces a multi-layered anxiety; I otherness, the ‘gorilla’ is endowed with argue that among audiences there is an an historically constructed set of mean- ontological recognition of the fine line ings which infiltrate the lived experience between being ‘human’ and one’s own of spectatorship, at the same time that animal origins, between being-self and the nonverbal, intercorporeal practices being-other. The spectacle of beings with which with humans make sense of one ‘human’ eyes and sentient capacities another infiltrate that knowledge-of oth- enclosed in captivity, invites a translation erness; gorilla bodies, like human bodies of ‘their’ experience into one’s own expe- are read intersubjectively, their eyes and

117 Humanities Research Vol. XI No. 1, 2004 facial expressions taken as signifiers of to the top of the zoo; the ultimate view the subject within.51 from above. From one’s position as the surveyor of animal bodies below, a grad- MOVING ANIMALS: EMBODIED ual descent of (hu)man is invited, with SPECTATORSHIP map in hand, one walks down through meandering pathways and trails, follow- As Jackson writes, meaning cannot ing a cartography of iconographic signs be reduced to a sign which ‘lies on a to find living examples of animal bodies, separate plane outside the immediate until one reaches the bottom of the zoo, domain of the act’;52 practices of looking crosses the road and waits for the ferry are accompanied by sensory modalities that returns to urbanity. of the body which inform and infiltrate Inside the zoo, the movement of visual experience. The verbal responses human bodies follows a series of repeated of audiences to enclosed animals are patterns. The mimesis of animals is a woven into an embodied, visceral and recurring activity, and points to the sensory choreography: a ‘making sense’ embodied grounds with which humans of the animal spectacle.53 Travelling to make sense of animal objects. Among the Sydney’s Taronga Zoo one exits the busy gorilla audience, historical conceptions metropolitan Circular Quay on board a of the ape as parodic mimesis undergo ferry, slowly leaving behind the hum of a curious twist: often, audiences will traffic, bodies and buildings as it makes imitate the ape. Frequently children and its way across Sydney Harbour towards sometimes adults, beat their chests like Manly. On the fifteen minute journey, a male gorillas, they will jump up and dense network of buildings gives way to down or walk in the long-armed gait of a magnificent waterway, surrounded by a non-human primate. When a gorilla lush, green foliage and dotted remnants scratches its head or grooms its body, the of Sydney’s colonial history. As the scent children may motion to each other and of Sydney’s pollution gives way to the repeat the acts themselves in parody. odour of the sea, one arrives at the ferry Children will make the ‘hoo-hoo’ noises platform, which winds its way upwards associated with the hoot-pant of the to the zoo entrance and the animals chimpanzee, or roar mightily like a fero- that wait within. The series of spatial cious gorilla. These occurrences lunge movements and sensory shifts invites ‘us into the plane where the object world all manner of metaphoric and tropic and the visual copy merge’.55 These acts analyses of imperial space, of times and of imitation highlight the bodily, synaes- others;54 a movement from the urban to thetic elements of acts of looking, where the wild space of exotica, a journey across ‘being-animal’ is momentarily appre- the water into the forest, a gradually de- hended as a movement in space, a set of temporalizing from post-industria, past repeated actions through which one can the crumbling ruins of convict shelters ‘yield into and become Other’.56 Through and imperial estates, to the original pris- these acts of mimesis, there occurs a lived tine state of jungle-ness, trees and ani- experience of the animal object, a visual- mals and ocean. The spatial organization ity accompanied a brief em-bodying of of the zoo itself is ripe with signification: the animal body. upon arrival, one enters a cable car to be Yet, as Taussig suggests, acts of imi- taken slowly up, past the animals below, tation cannot be conceived outside the

118 REBECCA BISHOP Journeys to the Urban Exotic historical production and negotiation of enclosure, humans express a desire for alterity. While the mimetic movement of contact with the animals (I wish I could human bodies at animal enclosures can pat one), yet these railings provide both be seen in part as an imaginative means a certainty of security from the wild ani- of apprehending animal-others, the cho- mals (They’ll rip your arms off); there thus reography of the gorilla audience itself occurs in space what might be seen as the reveals the way in which politico-cos- essence of contemporary relationships mological distinctions and boundaries with non-human beings: a desire to share can be embodied in particular corporeal common ground with the animals and a activities. Moving into an enclosure to recognition of the fundamental differ- witness a spectacle, leaning against the ences between the world of humans and rails, and following the pathway out of the world of beasts. This gap is mirrored the enclosure is a series of bodily move- in the act of looking at animals, who ments so common in the contemporary remained confined, open to inspection, milieu that it has become a taken-for- while human bodies progress onwards granted aspect of exotic animal-viewing. past them; or, as Malamud writes, decid- Human relationships with wild ani- ing ‘when to come, look and depart, mals in the modern zoological garden, while the subject must stay’.58 the theme park, the wildlife sanctuary, the aquarium are each marked in vari- CONCLUSION ous ways by a movement into a display space, a separation of human and The commentaries and bodily movements non-human with rails, glass, moats, or of audiences at the gorilla enclosure evoke ditches, a watching of the animal on dis- comments by the anthropologist Clifford play, and a movement onwards to the Geertz on the Balinese cockfight, where next object. Bourdieu’s (1977) analysis of in a single structured space of human/ body movement in the context of sym- animal activity one can find broader social bolic ritual is useful in the context of the patterns of ‘assorting human beings into modern animal spectacle: fixed hierarchical ranks and then organ- izing the major part of collective exist- All symbolic manipulations of bodily ence around that assortment’; where one experience, starting with displacements learns a cultural ethos and ‘what it looks within mythically structured space, eg, like “spelled out” externally in a collec- the movements of going in and coming tive text’. Certainly, the animal spectacle out, tend to impose the integration of re-presents a broader politics of contain- the body space with the cosmic space by ing and displaying the bodies of those grasping in terms of the same concepts… ‘others’ which have long constituted a the relation between man and the natural semiotic chain with the animal: the freak world.57 and the ‘savage’. The spatial organization of the zoo, from the nineteenth cen- Imperial practices of display and tury caging and staging of organized containment, and historical representa- bodies, to the twentieth century replications of the ape as liminal entity both tion of ‘natural’ space reflects a broader feed into and are affirmed by this experi- relationship between political economy ential semiotics of animals and animality. and practices of display, a movement Leaning against the railings of the gorilla from containment and classification to

119 Humanities Research Vol. XI No. 1, 2004 salvage and simulation, from a civilizing privileged position of ‘human’ unbound- mission to a repatriation of endangered edness. Both the zoological garden and others, from wildness to wilderness. For the gorilla itself are not simply repre- zoo audiences, the gorilla enclosure is, sentations of animal otherness, but sites to use Geertz’s words, ‘a story they tell in which the parameters of human and themselves about themselves’.59 animal, are played out in bodies and in Yet it is a story with an ‘unfinished’ space: an embodied iconography. body and one which reveals the way in which meaning is produced in a ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS dynamic experiential semiotics which blends knowledge practices with a lived, I gratefully acknowledge the advice and sensory, and corporeal engagement. The comments of Mandy Thomas, Howard meanings attributed to the animal body Morphy and two anonymous reviewers are the product of a weaving of multi- in writing this paper. I also acknowledge layered discourses which both stem the assistance given to me by the staff from and impact upon a lived experi- of Taronga Zoo in Sydney during the ence of bodiliness; the gorilla body is a research process. body without culture, it masturbates, it defecates, it does not recognize a civiliz- ENDNOTES ing process;60 at the same time, it reflects back, it gazes, it suggests a presence of 1 M. Jay, ‘Scopic Regimes of Modernity’ sentience; the ontological recognition of in Hal Foster, ed., Vision and ‘subjectivity’ in the eyes of the ape itself Visuality (Seattle: Bay Press) 1988. speaks to a Western metaphysics which places the eye as the mirror of the soul 2 J. Fabian, Time and the Other: How and a cosmology which situates the non- Anthropology Makes Its Object (New York: Columbia University Press), 1983. human primate as a wild man or pre- human who dwells in a liminal space. 3 K. Thomas, Man and the Natural World The efficacy of the symbol of the ape as a (London: Penguin), 1984; M. Midgley, grotesque spectacle or parody resides in Beast and Man: The Roots of Human Nature the attribution of qualities of an embod- (London and New York: Routledge), ied ‘humanness’ to the ape, its animal 1995; R. Willis, ed. Signifying Animals: Human Meaning in the Natural World actions make sense as comic visions pre- (London: Unwin Hymen), 1990; H. Ritvo, cisely because those eyes stare out with a The Animal Estate: The English and Other gaze that is recognized, at least momen- Creatures in the Victorian Age (Harvard tarily, as self. MA: Cambridge University Press), 1987. Like the ‘noble savage’ of the enlight- 4 D. Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race ened imaginary, the gorilla in its ‘natu- and Nature in the World of Modern Science ral’ zoological space re-presents a lost (New York: Routledge), 1989; Simians, idyll which must be ‘rescued’ from Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of the ravages of third world ecological Nature (New York: Routledge), 1991. destruction; colonial imaginings of dense African forests ready for discovery are 5 G. Elder, J Wolch and J Emel, ‘La Pratique Sauvage: Race, Place and the translated into immersive, sensual envi- Human–Animal Divide’ in J Wolch ronments where one can momentarily and J Emel, eds. Animal Geographies: become-other while maintaining the Place, Politics and Identity in the

120 REBECCA BISHOP Journeys to the Urban Exotic

Nature–Culture Borderlands (London, 14 B. Mullin and G. Marvin, Zoo New York: Verso), 1998, 14. Culture (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson), 1987, 160. 6 S. Baker, Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation (Manchester 15 E. Baratay and E. Hardouin-Fugier, Zoo: UK: Manchester University Press), A History of Zoological Gardens in the West 1993; The Postmodern Animal, (London: Reaktion Books), 2002, 13. (London: Reaktion Books), 2000. 16 K. Anderson, ‘Behind Bars—The 7 Baker, Picturing the Beast, 116. Meaning of Zoos’ in D. Headon, J. Hooton and D. Horne eds. The 8 J. Ham, ‘Taming the Beast: Animality Abundant Culture: Meaning and in Wedekind and Nietsche’ in J signiﬁcance in everyday Australia (Sydney: Ham and N Senior eds. Animal Acts: Allen and Unwin), 1995. ‘Culture and Conﬁguring the Human in Western History Nature at the Adelaide Zoo: At the (New York: Routledge), 1997, 146. Frontiers of “Human” Geography’, Transactions of the Institute of British 9 N. Rothfels, ed. Representing Animals Geography No. 20, 1995, 275–94. (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press), 2000; 17 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs Savages and Beasts: The Birth of and Women, 21. the Modern Zoo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press), 2002. 18 Haraway, Primate Visions, 111.

10 See also a special edition of Society 19 R. Tapper, ‘Animality, Humanity, and Animals, Vol. 9, No. 3, 2001, Morality, Society’ in T. Ingold, which examines how human ed. What is an Animal? (London: understandings of animals are Unwin Hyman), 1988, 51. mediated by visual representation. 20 L. Devereaux, ‘Experience, Re- 11 P. Descola and G. Pálsson, Nature and presentation and Film’ in M. Banks Society: Anthropological Perspectives and H. Morphy, eds. Rethinking (London: Routledge), 1996. B. Noske, Visual Anthropology (London: Yale Humans and Other Animals: Beyond the University Press), 1997, 66. Boundaries of Anthropology (London: Pluto Press) 1989. C. Scott, ‘Science 21 Historians of animal-keeping are yet for the West, Myth for the Rest? The to formulate reasons for this decline. Case of James Bay Cree Knowledge Baratay and Hardoiun-Fugier, Zoo, 19, Construction’ in L. Nader ed. Naked note for example that ‘this question has Science: Anthropological Enquiries into not been resolved’ while Rothfels Savages Boundaries, Power, and Knowledge (New and Beasts, 18–19, points to this period as York: Routledge), 1996. For a broad ‘murky’ in historical explorations of zoos. history of contemporary scholarship This will surely prove an interesting and on human/animal relationships see fruitful enquiry in future researches. M.H. Mullin, ‘Mirrors and Windows: Sociocultural Studies of Human–Animal 22 P. Batten, Living Trophies (New Relationships’, Annual Review of York: Thomas Y Crowell), 1976. Anthropology, No. 28, 1999, 201–224. 23 Zoological Gardens opened across 12 R. Malamud, Reading Zoos: Representations Europe after the Jardin des Plantes and of Animals and Captivity (New York: Regents Park Zoo: including Dublin New York University Press), 1998, 2. (1831), Amsterdam (1838), Antwerp (1843), Berlin (1844), Copenhagen (1859), 13 Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 43. Moscow (1863), Basel (1874). For a full

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chronicle see and Hardoiun-Fugier, Zoo, Reminiscences from the Melbourne Zoo 80–83. For a broad history of Western (Melbourne: Whitcombe), 1918, for a zoological gardens see W. Blunt, The discussion of historical developments Ark in the Park: The Zoo in the Nineteenth at Melbourne Zoological Park Trust. Century (London: Hamish Hamilton Ltd), 1976. R. Bendiner, The Fall of the Wild, 34 Taronga Zoo website online at: http:// The Rise of the Zoo (New York: Dutton), www.zoo.nsw.gov.au/content/view. 1981. James Fisher, Zoos of the World asp?id=46, sourced May 2002. (London: Aldus), 1966. V.N. Kisling, Jnr, ed. Zoo And Aquarium History: 35 Online http://www.zoo.nsw.gov. Ancient Animal Collections to Zoological au/content/view.asp?id=22 Gardens (Boca Raton Fla: CRC), 2001. 36 Online at http://www.zoo.nsw. 24 For more information on the history gov.au/content/view.asp?id=231 of the menagerie at the Tower see R.D. Altick, The Shows of London, (Harvard: 37 Online at http://www.zoo.nsw. Harvard University Press), 1978. E.T. gov.au/content/view.asp?id=231 Bennett, The Tower Menagerie: Comprising the Natural History of the Animals 38 W. Benjamin, ‘The Work of Art in the Contained in that Establishment; With Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ in Anecdotes of Their Characters and History H. Arendt, ed. Illuminations (New York: (London: R. Jennings NSW), 1829. Harcourt, Brace and World), 1968.

25 Batten, Living Trophies. 39 E. Hobsbawn and T. Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition (Cambridge: 26 Baratay and Hardouin-Fugier Zoo, 137. Cambridge University Press), 1983.

27 Thomas, Man and the Natural World, 40 G. Mitman, ‘When Nature is the 260, Ritvo, The Animal Estate, 2–3. Zoo: Vision and Power in the Art and Science of Natural History’, 28 Rothfels, ed. Representing Animals, 37. Osiris No. 11, 1996, 117–143.

29 See Rothfels Representing Animals 41 Online at http://www.zoo.nsw. for a history of Hagenbeck’s zoos. gov.au/content/view.asp?id=51

30 Rothfels, Representing Animals, 197. 42 Butler, ‘Performative Acts and Gender Constitution’, 405. 31 Rothfels 201. 43 The current gorilla group of 10 (7 32 J. Butler, ‘Performative Acts and females, 3 males) largely arrived in 1996 Gender Constitution: An Essay from Apenhaul Primate Park in the in Phenomenology and Feminist Netherlands; Kibabu (1977), the lone Theory’ in K. Conboy, Nadia male silverback, has fathered eight of Medina and S. Stanbury eds. Writing the gorillas in the enclosure; Mouila on the Body: Female Embodiment (1972), the oldest female and the only and Feminist Theory (New York: gorilla in the group born in the wild, is Columbia University Press), 1997. the mother of the female Kriba (1979), male juveniles Haoko (1993) and Shabani 33 For a broader history of Taronga Zoo (1996), while Kriba is mother to the see R. Strahan, Beauty and the Beasts: A females Kjivu (1993) and Saﬁri (1996) as History of Taronga Zoo, Western Plains well as another female Joas (1989), who Zoo and Their Antecedents (Chipping was taken to Basle Zoo on a breeding Norton, Surrey: Beatty and Sons), 1991. loan. Frala (1981), half-sister to Kriba See also A.R. Osborn, Almost Human: is mother to the two females Shinda

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(1991) and Anguka (1994). Mouila and Radical Empiricism and Ethnographic Kibabu recently produced an infant Inquiry (Bloomington and Indianapolis: female Mbeli (Feb 2003), followed Indiana University Press), 1989, 122. by Frala and Kibabu producing the infant male Fataki (March 2003). 53 David Howes, ‘Sensorial Anthropology’ in D. Howes, ed. The Varieties of 44 Mullin and Marvin, Zoo Culture, 159. Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook for the Anthropology 0f the Sense (Toronto: 45 For a discussion of the role of the great Toronto University Press), 1991. ape in the EuroWestern imaginary see R. Corbey, and B. Theunissen, 54 Fabian, Time and the Other. Ape, Man, Apeman: Changing Views Since 1600 (Leiden: Department 55 M. Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A of Prehistory, Leiden University), Particular History of the Senses (New 1995. H.W. Jansen, Apes and Ape Lore York: Routledge), 1993, 35. Recent in the Middle Ages and Renaissance studies of children’s relationships (Nendeln: Kraus Reprint), 1976. with animals have emphasized the nonverbal dimensions of child 46 M. Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, interactions with nonhumans, where trans. Helene Iswolsky (Massachusetts: children imaginatively grant animal’s MIT Press), 1984, 26–7. agency, and in their own movements and discussions of animals, afﬁrm 47 Bakhtin 316. their own status as agents in a world of other things and beings. O.E. Myers 48 J. Berger, About Looking (New Children and Animals: Social Development York: Pantheon Books), 1980, 4. and Our Connections to Other Species (Boulder CO: Westview Press), 1986. 49 Berger 21–22, original emphasis. See also B.A. Birney ‘Children, Animals, Leisure Settings’, Society and Animals 50 Haraway, Primate Visions, 133–185. Vol. 3, No. 2, 1995. S.R Kellert and I refer here also to works in popular M.C. Westerveld ‘Children’s attitudes, socio-biology such as those by Desmond knowledge and behaviour towards Morris, who has produced a large animals, Phase V’, (Arlington VA: body of popular works dealing with NTIS No. PB83-211474), 1983. the issue of the human–animal and the biological grounds for contemporary 56 Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity, xiii. urban human behaviour. See for example D. Morris, The Naked Ape: A 57 P. Bourdieu, Outline of A Theory of Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal Practice (Cambridge MA: Cambridge (London: Jonathon Cape), 1967. University Press), 1977, 91.

51 I use the term intersubjectivity in 58 R. Malamud, Reading Zoos, 86. One Schultz’s sense of an intersubjective area of future investigation is that of ‘signitive experience of the world’, cross-cultural differences in audience where in ‘my point of view as observer, responses to zoo animals. My own your body is presented to me as a field research indicates that while broad of expression on which I can “watch” patterns of behaviour recur among the flow of your lived experience’. A. all members of the audience, there Schultz, The Phenomenology of the Social are some cultural variations in the World, trans. George Walsh and Frederik amount of time spent photographing or Lehnert (Evanston: Northwestern engaging with animals. Birdwhistell’s University Press), 1967, 117. film Microcultural Incidents in Ten Zoos (1969) which examined the nonverbal 52 M. Jackson, Paths Toward A Clearing: family interactions in zoos in England,

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France, Italy, Hong Kong, India, Japan and the US highlights these variations and will prove a useful antecedent in future research into the topic. It may also be fruitful to explore the way in which zoo-keeping staff negotiate the marketing strategies of zoo administration which construct an artiﬁcial nature for consumption and the everyday demands of animal care in a zoo environment (I am grateful to an anonymous reviewer for this insight).

59 C. Geertz, ‘Deep Play: Notes on The Balinese Cockﬁght’ in P Rabinow and W.M. Sullivan, eds. Interpretive Social Science: A Second Look (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press), 1987, 234, 236.

60 N. Elias, The Civilizing Process: Part One, A History of Manners (New York: Pantheon), 1978, [1939].

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