The Zoo in Literature From Spectacle to Mirror (Preview) (original) (raw)
The Zoo in Literature: From Spectacle to Mirror (Preview)
Luigi Gussago
The economic repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic on the entertainment sector could not but considerably affect the zoo community. Sanctuaries, reserves, shelters, aquariums, as well as traditional zoological gardens and safari parks have suffered the restrictions imposed on visitors’ intakes. Newspapers report that zoos have been forced to close for months, struggling to maintain their fauna, 1{ }^{1} and, in some circumstances, nearly resorted to euthanasia to be able to feed other animals. 2{ }^{2} To aggravate things, Coronavirus cases have also been detected among the animal population, most likely due to contact with humans; indeed, very few facilities are equipped to monitor the infection. 3{ }^{3} The overall crisis has brought to the fore, once again, the ethical issue of animal captivity, regardless of the possibly noble purposes of this practice for species conservation. Currently there are about 10,000 zoos worldwide, carrying on a considerable amount of conservation projects and initiatives to restore local or endemic habitats. However, as the American Zoo and Aquarium Association reports, of the 2400 zoos authorised by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, only 212 abide by the strict regulations imposed by the Association. And even the authorised zoos seem to spend only 3%3 \% of their financial resources on conservation. 4{ }^{4} What is more, about 47%47 \% of the assets utilised to this purpose are raised by only three institutions: the Wildlife Conservation Society (Bronx, N.Y.), San Diego Global, and the Zoological Society of London. 5{ }^{5} Bleak statistics like these possibly derive from objective sources, but, as Tom Regan sustains, they do not have a moral impact; numbers “neither establish that something is right nor that it is wrong”. 6{ }^{6} Apart from quantitative data, Rob Laidlaw, director of ZooCheck, criticises the life quality of animals in confinement: “Zoos keep animals alive, but they can’t maintain all of the behavioral or social aspects of these species in their current enclosures”. 7{ }^{7} As Regan polemically argues, there appears to be only one solution: “we must empty cages, not make them larger”. 8{ }^{8}
This chapter proposes to explore the multifaceted world of the zoo - a place of enclosures, i.e. walls par excellence - its history and evolution through time, and the way it has risen to a powerful literary locus to discuss human and non-human shifting identities. Zoos seem to be a thing of the past; many of us can watch animals in their habitats, or, at least, in audio-visual format. Hence, what makes zoos a still popular place of encounter with wildlife? What kind of wildlife is displayed there? How do humans feel about the separation wall between animality and civilisation, represented by a cage, or
- 1 “Zoos desperate as £95 million of support could ‘disappear’,” 20 January 2021. Link: https://biaza.org.uk/news /detail/zoos-desperate-as-95-million-of-support-could-disappear
2{ }^{2} Borja Reh, “The Extinction of Zoos in the COVID-19 Era,” Allies for Wildlife, website, 13 February 2021, notes 22 and 23. Link: https://www.a4w.org/post/the-extinction-of-zoos-in-the-covid-19-era.
3{ }^{3} Natasha Daly, “Several gorillas test positive for COVID-19 at California zoo-first in the world,” National Geographic, 12 January 2021: “Gorillas are the seventh animal species to have contracted the virus naturally, following confirmed infections in tigers, lions, mink, snow leopards, dogs, and domestic cats.” The gorillas mentioned in the article have been infected by zoo workers. Link: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals /article/gorillas-san-diego-zoo-positive-coronavirus. COVID vaccines meant for animals have been administered to four orangutans and five bonobos at San Diego Zoo early in 2021; see Natasha Daly, “First great apes at U.S. zoo receive COVID-19 vaccine made for animals,” National Geographic, 3 March 2021. Link: https://www. nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/first-great-apes-at-us-zoo-receive-coronavirus-vaccine-made-foranimals.
4{ }^{4} Laura Fravel, “Critics Question Zoos’ Commitment to Conservation,” National Geographic, 14 November 2003. Link: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/article/news-zoo-commitment-conservation-critic
5{ }^{5} Borja Reh, “The Extinction of Zoos in the COVID-19 Era”, note 13.
6{ }^{6} Tom Regan, “Animal Rights, Human Wrongs,” in Harlan B. Miller and William H. Williams (eds.), Ethics and Animals (Clifton, NJ: Humana Press, 1983) 23.
7{ }^{7} Laura Fravel, “Critics Question Zoos’ Commitment to Conservation”.
8{ }^{8} Tom Regan, Empty Cages: Facing the Challenge of Animal Rights (Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2004), 61. ↩︎
in more modern times, by a discrete plexiglass screen? Rather than stating ethic principles in favour or against zoos, literary texts go to the core of the matter and offer different slants in shaping the relationship between human and non-human animals. This analysis will investigate literary texts and artifacts that, in many ways, portray animal captivity.
The exploration of the motives surrounding the theme of the zoo as cultural space often sees the interplay of real and fictional animals. A typical example of this interplay is a real animal that has ascended to mythical stature in Renaissance Europe: the celebrated, ill-fated “Ganga”, the Indian rhino of King Emanuel I of Portugal, portrayed by Albrecht Dürer in a woodcut in 1515. According to the story, the precious gift from the Indian Sultan Muzaffar Shah II of Cambay to Governor Alfonso de Albuquerque travels to Portugal to become part of the King’s menagerie at Ribeira. Ganga is engaged in a ‘rodeo’ with an elephant to prove the saying that the two beasts are archenemies, but, to the disappointment of the crowd, the elephant shies away and runs off. For diplomatic reasons, the rhino is then donated to Pope Leo X; however, on its way to Italy, the ship sinks and the animal, firmly shackled to the deck, drowns. His taxidermy is re-sent to Rome, to be displayed in the Pope’s own menagerie, but is soon forgotten and never retrieved. 9{ }^{9}
This fascinating story illustrates how the rhino inhabits a cultural space in our imagination which, in many respects, has little connection with the real animal ‘out there’. For example, in one of the earliest descriptions of the animal, Marco Polo sees it as “a very ugly” version of a “unicorn”, thus connecting the real to the biblical/legendary. 10{ }^{10} To western eyes, rhinos’ almost prehistorical appearance allowed westerners to make hasty assumptions about the primitive nature of the populations who lived in the same areas as these animals - Africa and Asia. The multiple vantage points from which we can look at this ‘unsympathetic’ animal is suggestive of the way we perceive non-human species. Our resources, based on language and, to a lesser extent, on the five senses, cannot keep us from looking at it through an anthropomorphic lens. So, Dürer’s rhino is a monstrous creature, capable of capturing the sensitivity of an early modern audience - it is covered in shields and armours, perhaps exaggerations of the scaly skin of the real, or a warlike harness provided by the Shah. In truth, Dürer never saw the animal personally, but only got inspiration from a drawing by an unknown Portuguese artist. The inscription underneath the drawing recalls Pliny the Elder’s ancient belief, maybe drawn from Persian sources, 11{ }^{11} that “rhinos are sworn enemies of the elephants”, 12{ }^{12} thus giving the animal a savage connotation compared with the more ‘sociable’ nature of the elephant, but also assigning to the rhino a typically human inclination to hatred and “antipathy”. 13{ }^{13}
Over two centuries after Dürer’s iconic work, in 1751, Pietro Longhi’s portraits of Clara, a female Indian rhino which toured Europe for 17 years, adds a further tinge of human, if not masculine supremacy over the animal. Clara, who sources describe as unusually tame, is depicted without her horn, while one of the onlookers pridefully waves it, in an attempt to draw the painter’s attention; in sum, another way of fictionalising animals to make them more congenial to human tastes.
Inspired by Ganga’s ill-fated journey, and with echoes of Fellini’s film E la nave va (1983), featuring a rhino rescued from a shipwreck, the talented sculptor Stefano Bombardieri has produced a life-size replica of an African rhino and had it suspended, through a girth, from a portico in the heart
- 9{ }^{9} Silvio A. Bedini, “The Papal Pachyderms,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 125, No. 2 (Apr. 30, 1981), 75-90 [80, 82]. Link: http://www.jstor.org/stable/986637.
10{ }^{10} Mentioned by Kelly Enright in Rhinoceros (London: Reaktion Books, 2008), 11.
11{ }^{11} Enright, Rhinoceros, 30.
12{ }^{12} From the inscription underneath Dürer’s woodcut drawing, British Museum.
13{ }^{13} A very similar subject is reproduced by Dalí in a sculpture in Marbella, Rinoceronte vestido con puntillas [Rhino dressed in laces]. It revisits Dürer’s original iconography of the rhino combining the sexual vigour represented by the animal’s horn with the lace, recalling women’s sexuality, and the sea urchins, Dali’s favourite food he consumed every day, in a sort of ritual. ↩︎
of the Italian town of Brescia. 14{ }^{14} The catalogue to the exhibition explains the purpose of the artwork within the artist’s overall production:
A recurring title in his output is in fact the weight of suspended time [“II peso del tempo sospeso” in Italian], expressed by the features of a rhino, a hippopotamus or a sumo wrestler raised from the ground.
Bombardieri creates a metaphor for the place of waiting and isolation, setting the scene once again for a figurative vision. 15{ }^{15}
To Bombardieri, the rhino is a symbol of the endangered ecosystem we are living in, but it also identifies timelessness and isolation - rhinos used to live in packs until hunters and poachers decimated them. Depleted habitats, reduced of sparse patches of vegetation, have also contributed to this separation. As a consequence, the white northern rhino has been officially declared extinct in the wild in 2008, and only two females, mother and daughter, survive in captivity. Fatu, the daughter, is more likely to outlive her parent, although her ability to procreate has been compromised. As her keeper at Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya explains:
Fatu is an ending […]. This is her reality. She will have to bear the responsibility of being the last of her kind. She will be a symbol of political and human greed. That’s what her loneliness stands for. That is her work. 16{ }^{16}
This necessary isolation brings us back to the message conveyed by the rhino’s suspended sculpture. What future is in store for northern white rhinos? Their embryos are now preserved in a tank of liquid nitrogen (a futuristic zoo?), “waiting for science to catch up” and allow for a complex process of surrogacy that today’s medical technology is unable to perform - once again, science tries to suspend time to ward off the species’ extinction.
Today’s zoos can be classified on the basis of their location - urban, suburban, safari parks or game reserves, where occasional hunting is allowed -, or according to their specialisation - petting zoos, with tame species that visitors can feed and cuddle, landscape immersion zoos, recreating specific habitats, or species-dedicated spaces like aquaria, insectaria, and aviaries or bird parks. Historically, though, zoos were meant for private viewing and as displays of power and grandeur in the form of menageries, dating back as far back as ancient Egypt (Hierakonpolis, 3500 BC). 17{ }^{17} Montezuma owned one of the largest collections of animals on earth, before the Spanish conquerors destroyed it in 1521. 18{ }^{18} In modern times, Michael Jackson and Pablo Escobar boasted their personal menageries. 19{ }^{19} The first zoo was probably the Schönbrunn Tiergarten in Vienna: built in 1751 as the Austrian emperor’s private menagerie, it was then opened to the public in 1779. A second animal park started in Paris in 1793, when aristocrats’ menageries were dismembered and the revolutionaries transferred the animals to the Ménagerie du Jardin des Plantes, still a popular zoological garden
- 14{ }^{14} Elia Zupelli, “Il peso del tempo sospeso,” in Bresciaoggi, 24 December 2020. Link: https://www.bresciaoggi. it/argomenti/cultura/il-peso-del-tempo-sospeso-1.8403635.
15{ }^{15} Stefano Bombardieri, Sospeso. Opere/raccolta anacronologica, trans. Olivia Bottesini (Brescia: Verbo Essere Editions, 2021), 14.
16{ }^{16} Megan Mayhew Morgan, “And then there were two: can northern white rhinos be saved from extinction?” The Guardian, 15 January 2021. Link: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/14/northern-white -rhinos-saved-extinction-stem-cells.
17{ }^{17} Lydia Kallipoliti, “Evolution of the Zoo: An Overview of Significant Zoological Developments Spanning from Biblical Times through to Contemporary Proposals,” Terra Incognita: Eco-Tales for Thessaloniki Sea Line. Website. Link: https://gsappstudioxthessaloniki.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/history-of-zoos lydia-kallipoliti .pdf.
18{ }^{18} Josef Lindholm III, “Zoo History,” Zookeeping (Chicago: Chicago UP, 2013), 32.
19{ }^{19} Some hippopotamuses escaped from Escobar’s personal zoo into the Colombian jungle, while the rest of his collection was sold or donated. ↩︎
today. 20{ }^{20} No doubt, a political statement. The Tower of London also hosted the royal menagerie since king John I, a facility which was later turned into a public zoo around the same age as Schönbrunn and Paris. 21{ }^{21}
The eighteenth century saw the advent of taxonomy and comparative biology, venturing fanciful theories about the kinship of humans and apes, and the affirmation of a ‘pet culture’ in western society 22{ }^{22} has induced a wider inquiry of species and breeds that are able to meet a variety of human needs - from companionship to food and garment industries, labour, or even scientific testing. Certainly, control over wildlife through taming, grooming, and zoo-keeping is a characteristic of Enlightenment times, but this may also work as a covert justification for animal captivity in early menageries and today’s zoos. The idea of speciesism derives from this important turning point: it is a particularly significant term that transfers, once again, a typically human concept onto the sphere of animal-kind. Coined by Richard D. Ryder in 1970, speciesism is the attitude of applying racial prejudice not towards other humans, but to non-humans. In the name of a species’ superiority, the suffering of an inferior creature can be tolerated for presumed ethical reasons. 23{ }^{23}
In the case of the zoo, speciesism justifies captivity for educational or conservationist 24{ }^{24} purposes, but, on many occasions, it even invites the spectator to favour certain groups of animals as more ‘appealing’ than others - the so-called “ambassador species”. In the novella A Man in the Zoo (1924) by David Garnett, a human being, named John Cromartie, asks to be displayed at the London Zoo in the primate quarter. He is comfortably hosted in a finely furnished cage placed between an orangutan and a chimpanzee. A sign describes the specimen as “Homo Sapiens MAN”, with the warning “not to irritate the Man by personal remarks.” 25{ }^{25} As the director of the London Zoological Society explains to John, visitors do not want to see any animal whatsoever; they want to “visit their particular friends, Sam, Sadie and Rollo, and not merely to look at any polar bear, orang, or king penguin.” 26{ }^{26} The director expresses the hope that, in time, Mr Cromartie “would develop as much personality as if he were a bear or an ape.” 27{ }^{27} As soon as the protagonist occupies his cage and starts attracting the onlookers’ attention, John is met with a very hostile reaction from the other animals, especially the apes: “They are wild with jealousy […] that you should have drawn such a large crowd.” 28{ }^{28} In this unprecedented competition between animals and humans, speciesism even happens among animals. Racism among humans becomes then speciesism when the human being joins the community of the animals. To the animals themselves, ironically, humans cease to be humans when
- 20 “Zoo,” Resource Library, Encyclopedic Entry. National Geographic. Website. https://www.national geographic. org/encyclopedia/zoo/.
21{ }^{21} Takashi Ito, “History of the Zoo,” in Mieke Roscher, André Krebber and Brett Mizelle (eds.), Handbook of Historical Animal Studies (Oldenburg: De Gruyter, 2021), 439. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110536553
22{ }^{22} For a fascinating journey in the representation of the ape in eighteenth-century Anglo-American literature and culture, see Laura Brown, Homeless Dogs and Melancholy Apes: Humans and Other Animals in the Modern Literary Imagination (Ithaca & London: Cornell UP, 2010), in particular, 34-40.
23{ }^{23} Richard D. Ryder, Speciesism, Painism and Happiness (Exeter: Andrews UK Ltd, 2017), 63: “[T]here are at least two separate meanings of speciesism. The first describes the exploitation of nonhumans justified on the grounds that they supposedly lack certain qualities alleged to have moral importance (such as high intelligence, reason, autonomy, a moral sense or a soul), whereas the second describes the exploitation of nonhumans as being justified purely on the grounds that they are of a nonhuman species. An illustration of the latter would be to approve severe experiments on an intelligent chimpanzee but not upon an irreversibly brain-dead human. In the latter case it is principally the species-difference itself that is taken as justification. I called the latter usage strong speciesism and the former weak speciesism.”
24{ }^{24} Conservationists and preservationists are two different kinds of ecologists. The former see nature as an essential resource to humans, present and future; it is a form of anthropocentrism. Preservationists consider nature as relevant in itself, regardless of human needs; it is a form of biocentrism. See Silvana Castignone, Povere bestie. I diritti degli animali (Venice: Marsilio, 1997), 14.
25{ }^{25} David Garnett, A Man in the Zoo (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1924), 28.
26{ }^{26} Garnett, A Man in the Zoo, 60.
27{ }^{27} Garnett, A Man in the Zoo, 60-61.
28{ }^{28} Garnett, A Man in the Zoo, 32. ↩︎
they are placed in a cage: “They had somehow learnt that he was being exhibited as they were themselves.” 29{ }^{29} Accustomed to behaving according to human rules of conduct, they see the new guest as an antagonist, and they resort to violence to protect their ‘interests’. As ironic and paradoxical as the situation might look, it highlights a fundamental issue when discussing animal and human rights: how can we qualify and even quantify contrasting interests of the parts involved, so that we can ascertain their level of equality? How far can utilitarianism find its justification in real life? The Australian utilitarian philosopher Peter Singer promoted vegetarianism as a way of preserving animal interests in staying alive, the same way we would preserve the life of a human creature. However, Regan points out that, from a strictly utilitarian point of view, it is hardly possible to make sure vegetarianism would not have devastating effects, in terms of utility and interests (he calls it "the greatest possible balance of good over evil"30) to those individuals that base their livelihood on the animal industry and its suppliers. 31{ }^{31} The same could be said about the zoo sector and its colliding interests.
How do humans see animals? Mostly through stereotypes, as Thomas L. Benson suggests. He defines five different approaches, all of them dictated by human needs to cope with the ‘unknown’ that animals represent: animals can be seen as aliens, children, moral paragons, demons and machines. 32{ }^{32} It is relevant to apply some of these stereotypes, which tend to overlap, to a zoo environment, and argue about the way zoo literature may nurture or challenge them.
The ‘alien’ stereotype views animals as fully unfamiliar and distinct in behaviour and biology from humans. Animals fascinate and, at the same time, intimidate the human onlooker. A zoo environment seems to do away with this alienation by bringing the animal ‘close’ to humans, also by imposing to the captive animals a daily routine and restraints to their freedom of behaviour (for example, with regard to reproductive urges). In fact, these impositions have a different purpose: they make these differences look futile, with the result of reinforcing distances. As Benson contends, animal appearance and behaviour fascinate visitors, “but this interest is indulged only within a framework of strict controls.” These controls cannot in most cases go as far as domestication, but they still manage to partly devoid the animal of its innate behaviour. In early examples of commercial zoo events, for instance, particular emphasis is placed on the animal’s abilities to mimic human behaviour. For instance, the American Bostock cirque-ménagerie hosted at the Paris Luna Park in 1928 boasts about three hundred animals, performing acrobatic dressage routines, including a ‘jockey’ royal tiger riding a horse, or the so called “spectacle des fauves” (wild animals show), which, to the admiration of a journalist, turns out to be far from ferocious:
Les humains sont toujours avides des formes et des secrets des animaux sauvages […] ces animaux, on le voit, on le sent, sont traités avec révérence et bonté. Ils sont captifs, mais leur captivité connaît le dédommagement, appréciable sans doute pour eux, des nourritures assurées. Et ils ne sont point solitairement enfermés: ils sont en troupes et peuvent se battre ou s’aimer. 33{ }^{33}
- 29{ }^{29} Garnett, A Man in the Zoo, 33.
30{ }^{30} Tom Regan, “Animal Rights, Human Wrongs,” 32.
31{ }^{31} Tom Regan, “Animal Rights, Human Wrongs,” 32-33. “It is quite possible, for example, to count the equal interests of blacks and whites the same (and thus honor the equality principle) and still discriminate between races when it comes to what members of each race are permitted to do to pursue those interests, on the grounds that such discrimination promotes the utilitarian objective” (33).
32{ }^{32} Thomas L. Benson, “The Clouded Mirror: Animal Stereotypes and Human Cruelty,” in Miller and Williams (eds.), Ethics and Animals, 80.
33{ }^{33} Gérard d’Houville, “Chronique Dramatique du ‘Figaro’. Cirque-ménagerie du Parc de Paris. Direction Leon Volterra American Circus,” Le Figaro, 6 August 1928, 14. I am grateful to Dr James Cannon for providing these precious sources about the Paris menagerie. ↩︎