’Have you seen Little Cohn?’ An Elephant’s Life on Display

0565562 - EÚ 2023 PL eng A - Abstract
Szczygielska, Marianna
’Have you seen Little Cohn?’ An Elephant’s Life on Display.
. (2022)[The Animal on Stage. Cultural Performances conference. 15.11.2022-16.11.2022, Warsaw]
Institutional support: RVO:68378076
Keywords : wildlife trade * elephant * perfomance * animal biography * circus
OECD category: Antropology, ethnology
https://www.instytut-teatralny.pl/2022/11/02/the-international-conference-the-animal-on-stage-cultural-performances/

Many elephants transported to Europe at the turn of the twentieth century started their performing careers in circuses and ended them in zoological gardens. This presentation looks at the circulation of affect and knowledge between these two modern institutions specializing in the display of exotic animals. Building on the animal biography method, I follow an Asian elephant named Little Cohn in his journey between two German circuses and one Polish zoo. I ask what such reconstruction of a single elephant’s journey can tell us about the infrastructures of mobility that sustained various forms of animal captivity. In contrast to zoos, circuses have only recently started to be analyzed from the history of science and technology perspectives as venues both promoting and benefiting from innovations (Jürgens, 2020). The trajectories of trade in living animals highlight the role of traveling circuses in supplying zoos with specimens. However, apart from traffic in animals these institutional interconnections also facilitated the transfer of knowledge and affect. Zoo biology, which developed in the mid-twentieth century, advocated that zookeepers and veterinarians learn from circus dressage to improve animal welfare in captivity (Hediger 1968). This was amidst amounting critiques of the circus training of elephants as a violent practice based primarily on punishment. By following Little Cohn’s life story, I will compare how circuses and zoos mobilized affective registers of elephant spectacle.
Permanent Link: https://hdl.handle.net/11104/0337239