Online Lecture: Zoo-break narratives

This coming Wednesday, 27 May, I will be speaking to the members of SV Euphorion, the Utrecht University Literary Studies students’ association, about my zoo research, specifically about the trope of the ‘zoo-break’, i.e. the breakdown of the barrier between inside and outside the cage, which has become the dominant mode of representing zoos over the past twenty-or-so years. The zoo is itself already a sort of ‘space of exception’ (inclusive exclusion of the ‘wild’ within the ‘urban’), and so the imaginary of the breakdown as a result of war, natural disaster, or biotech mishap/zombie apocalypse (to name the most frequent motifs) constitutes a sort of exception to the exception.

Owing to the currently prevailing state of exception, the lecture will be held online. It will also feature presentations by some of the students in my RMA Masterclass on “Reading Zoos.”

Further details on Euphorion’s facebook page: https://fb.me/e/4js9FAGjy