Zoos in Postmodernism: Signs And Simulation

by Stephen Spotte

In his new book, Zoos in Signs and Simulation, marine biologist Stephen Spotte lumps together public aquariums and zoological parks (which he collectively calls zoos) and treats them as cultural derivatives assessable using semiotics (the study of signs and their meanings) and Baudrillard's models of simulation. He concludes that only modernist zoos can exist in postmodern times, making captive animal displays anachronistic. Today's zoos are thus reminiscent of an era generally agreed to have ended with the 1950s. Unable to evolve and compete with contemporary entertainments, they can only be spectacles viewed passively.
The putative mission of zoos - education and conservation - yield doubtful results, education because its information relies on description and exposition instead of narrative, conservation because only a few large, showy vertebrates receive the most effort. By controlling reproduction and restricting evolution, zoos reduce animals to artifacts - unattached ecological fragments - and ultimately revoke their ontological status as part of the natural world.
Spotte's argument assumes manifestations that impinge on contemporary theories of art, film, literature, photography, and science, the whole anchored securely by the twin poles of semiotics and simulation. This willingness to grapple with high-level theory - and to take intellectual risks - sets Zoos in Postmodernism apart from other treatments of zoos in contemporary western literature.

208 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

About the author

Stephen Spotte, a marine scientist born and raised in West Virginia, is the author of 23 books including seven works of fiction and two memoirs. Spotte has also published more than 80 papers on marine biology, ocean chemistry and engineering, and aquaculture. His field research has encompassed the Canadian Arctic, Bering Sea, West Indies, Indo-West Pacific, Central America, and the Amazon basin of Ecuador and Brazil. ANIMAL WRONGS is his fifth novel. He lives in Longboat Key, Florida.