ABSTRACT
Tourism is typically construed as a uniquely human phenomenon. Working on the interface of animal studies and tourism studies, however, compels a critical examination of this anthropocentric perspective. One way to develop a zoocentric theory of tourism is to approach live tourist/animal interaction choreographically. Such an approach foregrounds processes of cared-for-ness, mastery, gifted-ness, learning, intersomaticity, and world-knowledge-making that speak to shared human/non-human experiences without human exceptionalist biases. A rock-climbing excursion undertaken in Yosemite National Park that involved an unplanned interaction between climbers and a California Black Bear illustrates how a choreographic approach ‘ensubjectifies’ animal subjects, reframing nonhuman bodies as agentive, affective, learning individuals with lives and life histories that are of social and political value.
