'They are exactly like people’: the symbolic, embodied and material lives of wild animal circus performers in France

Abstract

In this thesis, I consider how wild animal performers in circuses inhabit a lively commodity status that can render individual animals at risk of ontological vulnerability. I follow Shapiro’s (1989) description of such vulnerability for individuals that relates to denial of individual idiosyncrasy and of species-specific characteristics based on particular sensory worlds; other animals are ‘lived towards’ as receptacles of certain features common to the group within which they have been placed. I consider the effects of circus life on so-called wild animals and in what specific instances and relationality vulnerability can occur. I conducted ethnographic research at one French gala circus, Grand Cirque, including interviews and observations with two animal trainers of sea lions, penguins and lions, as well as ethnographic research of a rescue centre that has taken in animals from circuses. I argue that in the cultural context of France, a particular conception of civility and its relationship with republican identity and le bon marché has held sway, appealing to spectators in circus narratives and embraced ‘behind the scenes’ by trainers, while I also explain how this conception can lead to ontological vulnerability of wild animals and frame conceptions of ‘wildness’. But I also argue that relationships between individual circus animal trainers and individual wild animals are based on intersubjectivity that has potential to complicate or challenge lively commodity status and its perils; I explore the experiences of women animal trainers and how they see themselves in relation to the animals they live with, perform with and train, and how these animals interact with them. Conceptions of animals’ wildness or non-wildness written into law are also central to this investigation, defining in terms of how these animals are re/presented and how their welfare needs are understood and acted upon. And finally, the rescue context, which will become increasingly important to wild animals in travelling circuses due to the impending ban on their use, becomes a place to explore decommodification and the French cultural concept of fraternity.