The genealogy of the zoo: Collection, park and carnival

Abstract

The zoo, like all organizations, is constituted by processes of collection and separation. This article provides a genealogical account of the conditions of possibility of the modern zoological gardens, beginning with the cabinet of curiosities, then the landscape park and the menagerie, and finally the carnival and fair. This leads to a discussion of the foundation of the bourgeois zoo in the 19th century, and its mutation into its contemporary combination of spectacle and civilizing institution. I conclude with some reflections on the dialectic between order and disorder that the zoo exemplifies, an organization which is constructed to civilize and contain, but which is always haunted by the financial need for spectacle and the production of the wild non-human.