ABSTRACT
As my two epigraphs suggest, the burgeoning eld of animal studies encompasses a vast cultural territory, ranging-contentiously2-from philosophy to activism, and including anthropology, sociology, history, psychology, art history, cinema, and literary studies. This special issue of TDR [The Drama Review, Spring 2007] extends an exploration, begun several years ago,3 of the intersections of this new eld with performance studies. In proposing the term “zooësis” to designate the activity at these intersections, I am conscious of indulging a neologistic impulse that has become a characteristic of animal studies; a symptom, perhaps, of its desire to intervene radically in established discourses and their terms of art. Coinages like “zoontologies” (Wolfe), “zoopolis” (Wolch), “petropolis” (Olson and Hulser), “carno-phallologocentrism” (Derrida 1991), even “zooanthropology” and “anthrozoology” run the gamut of disciplines and suggest a shared program of creative disciplinary disturbance.
