Animal Sex in Public

Abstract

AbstractContemporary zoological gardens are hoping to delay the sixth mass extinction through captive breeding of endangered species. This article explores the dominant temporal orders invoked by managing animal sex in captivity in order to unfold unnatural histories of the zoo. Departing from the queer critique of reproductive futurism, it demonstrates that in the modern zoo, reproduction is removed from sexuality. By mapping out the more-than-human dimensions of chronopolitics at the zoo, this article unravels the complex process of transposing sexual acts into temporally fixed sexuality. To account for multiple pasts and futures of captive sex, this analysis employs the category of queer animality. Tracing the fascination with animal homosexuality to early sexological taxonomies, this article argues that anchoring sexual identity in animality is an anachronistic move that rests on the myth of timeless nature. At the same time, the sexological distinction between constitutional and circumstantial homosexuality relies on two types of teleological temporality: developmental and degenerative time of evolutionary change. The zoo is not only a place where education of desire occurs along the deep time line of natural history but also a contested terrain of captivity that can cancel any claim to atemporal naturalness.