Seminarios Historia del la Ciencia IMF-CSIC: Violette Pouillard «Addressing animal resistance and agency through the history of zoos (19th century to the present time)» 23 de febrero del 2024, 12 horas

23 de febrero del 2024, 12 horas

Aula de seminarios

Acceso online: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6708521774?pwd=Ni9iNkNXNTl0QndtcmtrbXhNQXVNdz09

Violette Pouillard (CNRS, Lyon)

«Addressing animal resistance and agency through the history of zoos (19th century to the present time)»

Formato híbrido:

a) Presencial: Aula de seminarios (1er piso) IMF-CSIC, c/ Egipcíaques, 15, 08001 Barcelona

b) Online: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/6708521774?pwd=Ni9iNkNXNTl0QndtcmtrbXhNQXVNdz09

Abstract: This paper addresses lively debates on animal resistance and agency by relying on a long-term history from below of European zoos, paying attention to both their human and animal actors and to the evolving nature of their relationships. This bottom-up, relational perspective leads to a definition of animal resistance as any animal action which challenges the institution’s supremacy, in contrast to definitions insisting on the cognitive abilities of the perpetrators. This broad definition enables the establishing of strong hypotheses regarding the intentionality of the concerned animals of certain species in some well documented cases. It also prevents us from dismissing a priori cases of animal transgressions. Furthermore, the dynamics (or lack thereof) between humans and transgressive animals allows us to unravelling marginalized forms of resistance, such as stereotypic behaviors. Their prevalence in turn invites us to reconsider the nature, power, and limits of animal agency in asymmetrical relationships.

Violette Pouillard‘s research integrates more-than-human perspectives within socio-environmental historical narratives. Her current research programme concerns the history of (post)colonial wildlife conservation policies in Central Africa, carried out through a socio-environmental history of the management and taming of elephants and wildlife in both Congo and Uganda. From 2015 to 2017, she was a Wiener-Anspach postdoctoral fellow at the African Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. She continued her research as a postdoctoral assistant at Ghent University (2017-2019), then as a research fellow of both the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) at Ghent University and the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) at the Free University of Brussels. Since 2020, she has been a permanent research fellow at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), affiliated with the LARHRA (UMR 5190). She is also a visiting professor at Ghent University, Belgium.