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In drawing some preliminary and speculative conclusions about the position of
animals within the networks of the electronic zoo, issues of animal agency, human
experience and human responsibility emerge as a consequence of the
dematerialisation of animal forms. For Tuan (1977:18), places achieve concrete
reality when our experience of them is total; that is, 'through all the senses as with
the active and reflective mind'. I would suggest that this is equally so for encounters
with animals. The visual has arguably dominated expert understandings of nature for
several centuries. The visual is the defining sense in both the traditional and the
electronic zoo, and its pre-eminence over other senses in science and entertainment
drives the development of the electronic zoo. In the emphasis on the visual
consumption of animals within the electronic zoo, though, both human experiences
and animal agency are curtailed. Limited to visual experiences, the human visitor
misses out on the multi-sensory engagement and interaction with animals possible
within the embodied spaces of older zoos. Reduced to visual information, the animals
are fixed within image spaces which position animals as inanimate inhabitants of
wild spaces outside of the human realm. The electronic zoo does not overcome the
unequal boundaries created between humans and animals evident in the traditional
zoo, and in fact through further developments of visual technology may reinforce
the 'apartheid' between human and animal kind (Kiley-Worthington 1990).
Consigning animals to the purified spaces of an imagined nature, while constructing
new cultural and technological artefacts in their likeness, has implications for
understanding how animals are already fully bound into the many networks of
scientific understanding and environmental management as well as everyday life.
For Giddens (1984), place is a setting for seeing the consequences of one's
actions, for reflexive thought. Perhaps it can be argued that the traditional zoo— s a
place shared with animals, experienced with all the senses, and presenting us in
concrete form (often literally) with the boundaries and relationships forged between
human and non-human animals—offers a better location for such reflections than
the more controlled environment of the electronic zoo. The form of natural history
made flesh through the networks of the traditional zoo is full of contradictions for
the zoo visitor: I have argued that it reduces the freedom of animals, while also
giving expression to their agency. The electronic zoo offers a different kind of space,
one where we are relieved of coming face to face with the subjugation of animals,
and one perhaps where we are relieved of considering them at all. In important ways
most animals today are living their lives by consequence of human actions. Rather
than further removing living animals from everyday life, there is a need for new
spaces where we can explore the different means of taking responsibility for our
roles in deciding what these lives will be and how we might be able to share in
them.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Chris Philo, Chris Wilbert, Jacquie Burgess and Luke
Desforges for their criticisms and encouragement. I am indebted to members of the
