ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the material spaces nonhuman animals occupy and are contained within before, during and after experiment. I argue that this spatial confinement of experimental nonhumans is gendered. Their incarceration is shrouded in conscious and unconscious misogynistic relations which are historically contingent. Like the law, ‘confinement technologies’ are inherently patriarchal. This patriarchal relationship between nonhuman animals in the lab and their ‘caregivers’ (scientists and technicians) signifies a discrete set of power relations which both discipline the nonhuman body and contain it. Gender, particularly notions of the ‘feminine’ and ‘female,’ interacts on a psychic and material level in the lab, to produce docile bodies. Containment historically plays out as a maternal-esque facilitating environment, where power masquerades as care. At the same time, the ‘feminine’ is patriarchally exploited as a ‘container’ for the physical and psychic lives of nonhuman animals. To illustrate this patriarchal containment and exploitation of nonhuman bodies and ‘the feminine,’ I draw on the research of Science and Technology Studies scholar, Zoë Sofia. She will be used to help me draw out the unconscious gendered dimensions of such ‘containment technologies’ used in laboratory animal welfare.
