Animal Acts

Animals have been subjects and objects of an ageless discourse in Western culture, which seeks through reincarnations, metamorphoses and philosophical vision to define the human and the animal and the nature of the border that separates the two. At a moment in history when the human being is about t [...]
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Animals have been subjects and objects of an ageless discourse in Western culture, which seeks through reincarnations, metamorphoses and philosophical vision to define the human and the animal and the nature of the border that separates the two. At a moment in history when the human being is about to be replaced by the machine, there is a blurring of the old line separating humans from animals. There is a desire to look for human uniqueness in the animal body, not the rational mind; a desire to re-examine the historical record in search of a lost tradition of zoomorphic shamans, trainers, poets and philosophers. This text records the history of that fluctuating boundary between animals and humans as expressed in literary, philosophical and scientific texts, but also in the visual arts and historical practices such as dissections, the hunt, zoo construction, and circus acts.