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In-Depth Information
should be admitted that some human 'outsiders' such as homeless people, travellers
and law-breakers can also seek out these marginal spaces away from the normal
public round.
29
These may include the sorts of spaces inhabited by rodents in cities,
such as sewers, or the neglected tracts of land often situated next to urban railway
lines where a diversity of creatures may be found (see also Wolch
et al.
1995 on the
'habitats' which animals can find in the city; and also Wolch 1998). Such spaces and
their occupants are commonly regarded as transgressive of settled human society,
divorced from the civilised goings-on of towns, cities and villages, but still
sufficiently close-by to prompt enough distaste, fear and loathing to be coded as
'out of place' in proximity to everyday houses, businesses and streets. Sometimes the
very presence of certain animals seeking to live their lives in these spaces—think
particularly of rats in sewers—can help to render such spaces marginal in the minds
of many humans, as ones to be shunned by all 'decent' people. Moreover, marginal
spaces such as sewers, as well as becoming associated with both animals such as rats
and the more 'animalistic' aspects of human behaviour (urine, faeces and other
dirt), also constitute some of the symbolic recesses of urban societies in the
developed world (Gandy 1999: esp. 24, 36; Stallybrass and White 1986: Chap. 3).
They are the underground places where 'monsters' may lurk, 'uncanny' places where
other creatures, other hauntings, may be found at the heart of culture.
30
Mention
should also be made here of wild animals moving into built-up areas and surviving
in marginal spaces, given that they may sometimes be viewed as unwanted aliens by
their new human neighbours. Similarly, mention should be made of feral cats and
dogs setting themselves up in the marginal spaces of settlements such as Hull (see
Griffiths, Poulter and Sibley, this volume), particularly because feral creatures are in
themselves curiously transgressive beings, neither purely wild nor purely tame,
existing as 'in-between' animals finding themselves, appropriately enough, utilising
'in-between' spaces.
31
Many other examples of animals disturbing human spatial orderings could be
adduced here, but let us return once again to zoos. As already stated, zoos have
emerged as spaces wherein wild animals can be removed from the wild to cages,
enclosures and pools set within overall zoo complexes, often located adjacent to
centres of human population, ready to be viewed by the general (human) public (for
histories of zoos, see Hoage and Deiss 1996; Jordan and Ormrod 1978). In this
context, the animals are 'in place' (although see endnote 19), since, in their wildness
and essential
lack
of adaptation to human ways, they must be kept confined and not
allowed to escape from their proper place within the zoo grounds. Furthermore,
they must be disciplined to display behaviours appropriate to their place of
confinement and display in the zoo, a claim made with remarkable directness by the
author of a 1920s text on
Secrets of the Zoo:
32
For their own sakes, you
have
to make the Zoo's animals behave themselves as
far as their limited minds will permit of training and discipline…. For
example, they must take their food decently and allow their cages to be
cleaned, and if they have any little tricks or peculiarities they are encouraged
