Medium Version

Exhibit One: Welcome to National Zooveillance

Over the past thirty years, the governance of zoo animals has
shifted to total surveillance. This surveillance exists on three
levels:
First, the identification and naming of zoo animals,
Second, the use of database surveillance, dataveillance, as a
mechanism of governing zoo populations,
And third, the use of this information for the creation of animal
bodies.
We call this triple-form of surveillance zooveillance.
However, a shift is occurring with introduction of the Zoological
Information Management System or ZIMS, which has led to the
simulation, creation, and replacement of animal populations.
Having become the gold standard in the U.S. it is now at risk of
global adoption.
Braverman, 2012.
(Braverman, Irus. Professor. Law. Geography. SUNY Buffalo. 2012. Zooveillance: Foucault Goes to the Zoo.
Surveillance and Society. Pgs. 119-20. Accessed: November 14, 2015.
http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/zooveillance/PDF.)

The last three decades have witnessed a dramatic transformation in the project of
governing zoo animals. During this period, zoo animal governance has changed from
a physically, geographically, and technologically limited enterprise focused on the internal
management of individual animals, into an ambitious voluntary cooperation between North
American zoos that relies on a combination of animal genetics and demography to achieve the ultimate goal of
animal survival. My essay deliberately frames this story within the context of
surveillance, identifying three interconnected layers that work to produce captive animal surveillance in
North American zoos. Combined, these three surveillance layers are referred to here as
zooveillance.
First, the essay considers the most basic layer of zoo animal surveillance: the project of naming,
identifying, recording, and tracking zoo animals. Drawing mostly on the
scholarship of social sorting (e.g. Bowker and Star 1999; Foucault 2005; Friese 2010), this section
explores both the powerful human urge for order and the strong
normative assumption that the world can indeed be categorized
systematically and exhaustively.
Second, the essay examines the proliferation of global database systems
for governing captive animals and, most importantly, the recent introduction of ZIMS the
Zoological Information Management System into captive animal governance. This sophisticated computer
The move to
software systematically organizes and centralizes information about zoo animals worldwide.
ZIMS is both technical and qualitative: it marks the transition of zoos into a new
and different surveillance era, which focuses on simulation, on the
replacement of actual with virtual processes, and on various devices for
encoding and decoding information (Bogard 1996: 3). In this context, the body of the captive
animal is increasingly supplanted with its coded records (Braverman 2010b). By
enhancing the ability of zoos to collaborate on a global level, ZIMS is likely to become an
effective tool for the globalization of animal bodies.
Third, the essay discusses the recent emergence of a complex
administrative network. Operating under the auspices of the American Association of Zoos and
Aquariums (AZA), this network collaboratively self-governs certain captive animal
populations within all accredited North American zoos. Describing the
administrative committees and programs that underlie the project of governing captive animals, this part
documents the transformation in the governance of certain captive animals into a reproductive
enterprise that attempts the very creation of these animals. Put
differently, zoo professionals are moving away from their previous focus on merely naming
and identifying captive animals within individual institutions to collectively creating captive
animals.
The zoos triple mode of animal management elevates contemporary
surveillance into the real of zooveillance, a term that I have coined here to
refer to the project of intensely surveilling zoo animal populations in order to conserve them, which involves the
creation of some of these animals through various administrative mechanisms. For the purpose of zooveillance, all
AZA accredited North American zoos function as a single system, voluntarily self-administering zoo animals to
This North American model of governing zoo animals
optimize their sustainability.
has become the gold standard for governing captive animals in other developed regions
of the world (Boyle, interview), in effect globalizing the institution of
captivity.
This essay considers the uniqueness of captive animal governance in North America. Highlighting its underlying
ethic of care and comparing it with the governance of domestic animals, the essay contends that the project of
governing zoo animals requires a sophisticated and highly involved administration that is largely unknown outside
of the zoo community. Despite their disparate histories, cultures, and financial situations, zoos from
across the country voluntarily share resources to produce this collective form of
governance.
Exhibit Two: Constructing a Cage
Current definitions of surveillance fail to account for animals
creating a false human-animal distinction.
We critique this notion and recognize the connected nature of
human-animal surveillance.
Only the problematization of this distinction recognizes the use
of surveillance in the control of populations.
Braverman, 2012.
(Braverman, Irus. Professor. Law. Geography. SUNY Buffalo. 2012. Zooveillance: Foucault Goes to the Zoo.
Surveillance and Society. Pgs. 120-1. Accessed: November 14, 2015.
http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/zooveillance/PDF.)

Despite the broad definition of surveillance as involving the

collection and analysis of information about populations in
order to govern their activities (Bogard 1996: 3), scholarly endeavors
on this topic have tended to limit the prospect of surveillance
to humans (Rule 1973; Lyon 2001; Dandeker 1990). Conversely, this essay argues that it is
instructive to explore the project of captive animal management as an
instance of surveillance.
Current definitions of surveillance do not suffice to reflect the
inherently intertwined nature of human and nonhuman surveillance.
The essay draws on a more radical and explicitly inclusive definition of
surveillance as encompassing all forms of monitoring and control of
human and nonhuman subjects, from individual people and things to groups, ecosystems,
and planetary processes (Donaldson and Wood 2004: 375). Within this broader surveillance framework, the
project ofgoverning zoo animals is unique in three ways: in the
merits of this pursuit (creating a sustainable captive population for at least one hundred years);
in the technologies of governance utilized (a sophisticated collaborate professional
network); and in its subject population (animals rather than humans). Within the broader
surveillance framework, zooveillance pertains to the particular niche of collectively surveilling zoo animals for their
care and conservation.
Surveillance is often perceived as a negative practice that involves an intrusion into the privacy of the surveilled.
This essay broadens the scope of surveillance to include the monitoring of populations (here, animals) in the name
of their protection (here, conservation). This application draws on the
Foucauldian tradition and especially on its later emphasis on pastoral power as a power of care
(Foucault 1977, 2009) as well as on the more diluted realms of societal
control hinted at by Gilles Deleuze in his influential Postscript on the Societies of Control
(1992).
An inclusion of zoo animals within the scope of surveillance thus
contributes to our understanding of surveillance as an
expression of care (Gad and Lauritsen 2009: 55). Although care and technology may seem
contradictory at first glance (Mol et al. 2010), this essay rethinks both to illuminate their inherent connections.
Zoo people care about animals [and] they care about the places where these animals come from, AZAs Senior
Vice President Paul Boyle tells me in an interview. What drives the extensive administration of zooveillance is the
desire to save animals, both in zoos (ex situ) and in the wild (in situ). Finally, the project of zooveillance also
diverges from traditional surveillance accounts in that despite the fracturing affects of dataveillance, zooveillance
very much relies on the spatial and physical properties of animals.
The Smithsonian National Zoo is part of the United States
federal government and is under the purview of Congress.
Smithsonian, No Date Given.
(FAQ | OHR | Smithsonian. No Date Given. Retrieved November 23, 2015, from http://www.si.edu/OHR/faq)

The Smithsonian is a Trust Instrumentality of

Is The Smithsonian Part of the Government?
the United States. The Board of Regents is the governing body and consists of the
Chief Justice of the United States, the Vice President of the United States, three
members of the United States Senate, three members of the United States House of
Representatives, and nine citizens. The Smithsonian receives an annual
Congressional appropriation that accounts for approximately 2/3 of our total budget. Are
Smithsonian Federal Employees the Same as Employees at a Regular Federal Agency? Generally, yes.
Smithsonian federal employees are regular civil service
employees. The Smithsonian does not have political appointees.
Thus, my partner and I stand resolved that,
The United States federal government should curtail its
domestic surveillance of zoo animals through the Zoological
Information Management System at the Smithsonian National
Zoo.
Exhibit Three: Surveilling Creation, Creating Extinction
ZIMS redefines the mechanisms of surveillance. While the
International Species Information Systems or ISIS gave
zookeepers the flexibility to input the information, ZIMS
universalizes and globalizes the system.
This information system globalizes the ownership of animal
bodies as well reducing their existence to the sole purpose of
reproduction. This is the real ISIS we should worry about.
Braverman, 2012.
(Braverman, Irus. Professor. Law. Geography. SUNY Buffalo. 2012. Zooveillance: Foucault Goes to the Zoo.
Surveillance and Society. Pgs. 124-5. Accessed: November 14, 2015.
http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/zooveillance/PDF.)

Initially, animal record keeping by zoos was an internal institutional endeavor. As such, it focused on the individual
database systems have
animal and varied from zoo to zoo. Recently, developments in computer
enabled the design of an increasingly global and standardized animal
record. The transition from the first to the second layer of surveillance is intrinsically tied
to the parallel transformation of North American zoos from independent local
institutions that focus on entertainment into a collective administrative
network with a focus on conservation. This section explores the transition from the Animal Records Keeping
System (ARKS) to the Zoological Information Management System (ZIMS).
Until recently, ARKS was the central animal database for much of the world. Established by the International
Species Information System (ISIS), the ARKS database system contains the most basic information about the
captive animal: its scientific and common names and identifiers, its sex, and its birth date. The ARKS database
provides public access to this information worldwide. For example, using this system, anyone could find out, in a
matter of seconds, how many bighorn sheep are currently held in zoos in the North American region.
Under the ISIS model, individual zoos performed an indispensable role. A zoo could record as much or as little onto
the system as it wished. For the most part, the reliability of this information was not confirmed by any other
agency. Furthermore, each zoo could decide whether to make the full institutional record of the animal not
uploaded to the standard ISIS format available to other zoos through manual reports that were transported
together with the animal.
As a result of the growing need for more information about captive animals, international efforts concentrated on
modifying the ARKS model of the captive animal database program. In March 2010, ISIS released ZIMS. By the
end of 2012, most ISIS members are expected to have switched from ARKS to ZIMS (ISIS website,
http://www.isis.org/Pages/zims.aspx). According to Miller, over 700 zoos the majority of accredited zoos
worldwide will participate in ZIMS.
Instead of using the zoos internal identification process and institutional records to create the global database,
ZIMS assigns animals an international form of identification.
Registrars explain that the purpose of this global identifier is to create a less
cumbersome and more reliable recording procedure. It will also be much easier, they say, to track
animals when they are transferred between zoos. In most cases, such
transfers occur when zoos comply with the recommendations issued by AZAs animal programs (discussed in the
next section). By tightening the control over the animals identity, ZIMS is expected to increase the efficiency and
animal records will thus
reliability of animal transfers between zoos. The globalization of
facilitate the globalization of animal bodies.
The globalization of records is also expected to open up new
prospects of collaboration between zoos worldwide. Whereas previously,
international collaboration required using informal means to acquire information, it will soon be
possible to determine the identity, location, genetic, and
demographic properties of zoo animals worldwide by a simple click of a
mouse. If, for example, we need new cheetahs in our North American zoo collection, tells me AZAs Vice
President Paul Boyle, we [will] check on ZIMS and find out that Copenhagen has a large group of cheetahs. Once
mostly confined to animals in North American zoos, the documentation of zoo animals is increasingly expanding in
geography and capacity to include all accredited zoos in the world.
Yet the prospect of administering animals on a global scale is also daunting, says Boyle, mostly because it involves
a complicated permit process (see also Braverman 2011a). In my vision of the future, Boyle continues, zoos will
be exempt from this complicated permit process because they work for the public good and for conservation. At
science is advancing much faster than regulatory
the same time, since
regimes, it may soon be unnecessary to move the entire animal;
instead, freezing and transporting the animals gametes will suffice.
ZIMS manifests ultimately with the conservation ethic that
seeks to save through managed reproduction. The
teleological goal of genetic diversity culminates in the breeding
for extinction.
Braverman, 2012.
(Braverman, Irus. Professor. Law. Geography. SUNY Buffalo. 2012. Zooveillance: Foucault Goes to the Zoo.
Surveillance and Society. Pgs. 129-30. Accessed: November 14, 2015.
http://library.queensu.ca/ojs/index.php/surveillance-and-society/article/viewFile/zooveillance/PDF.)

The project of governing populations through selective breeding is not unique to zoo animals. Most obviously, zoos
have adopted studbooks and kinship charts from agriculture and pet industries (Friese 2009: 378). Moreover, AZAs
goal of 90 per cent genetic diversity for 100 years is based on an assumption adopted from the context of farm
animals (Reininger, interview). The reproductive control of captive and
domestic animals shares a common history, uses similar technologies and, more recently, also
strongly relies on genetics and includes forms of global surveillance (Haraway 2003; Derry
2003; Ritvo 1995; Franklin 2007).
But the reproductive projects of captive and domestic animals also differ in many respects. A first major difference
lies in the purposes of these projects. For the most part, the breeding of domestic animals has been an aesthetic
zoos perceive selective
and financial pursuit (Ritvo 1995; Haraway 2003). Conversely,
breeding of captive animals as motivated by wildlife
conservation. Other purposes, such as the animals financial value and the zoos own survival, are
usually seen by zoo professionals as relatively marginal in comparison to the protection of wildlife (Conway,
interview), although in practice all are inherently linked (Friese 2009: 384). As Donna Haraway points out, the
use of the term survival in the context of SSPs already exemplifies just
how thin the line is between a secular crisis and a sacred
apocalypse in American discourse (Haraway 2003).
Secondly, while domestic animals are bred for perfection (Derry 2003) for creating super-animals, so to speak
zoo animals are bred for the almost opposite purpose of enhanced
(Haraway 2003)
genetic diversity, which is largely irrelevant in the domestic context. Indeed, selective breeding of
domestic animals has traditionally focused on reproducing the desired physical traits of certain individual animals,
Zooveillance, on the other hand, focuses on
symbolized through their lineage.
reproducing animals that embody certain genetic and
demographic traits. This shift from the phenotype to the genotype denotes a new
form of managing evolution (Friese 2009: 384).
Thirdly, reproductive scientists previously legitimized their work by producing animals, which was in line with
purely demographic approaches. However, the animals reproduced today are evaluated according to the logic of
genetic management. If an animal is genetically redundant, it will take
up valuable zoo space without contributing to the diversity of
the population (Friese 2009: 378). Consequently, certain zoo animals the generic
tiger (tigers that are inbred, crossbred, or otherwise not considered purebred) being a current example are
bred for extinction (Boyle, interview). AZAs Wildlife Contraception Center helps scientists
facilitate controlled pairings a kind of high-tech matchmaking while still allowing individuals to live in natural
social and family groups (http://www.stlzoo.org/animals/scienceresearch/contraceptioncenter/, last viewed August
15, 2011). Breeding to extinction, and extinction models at large, are largely missing from the domestic animal
context. Strongly linked to the third difference, whereas captive animals are administered according to scientific
models, domestic breeders usually reject such models (Haraway 2003).
Zooveillance fundamentally underlies the destructive
environmental ethics of anthropocentrism.
The breeding for extinction, anthropogenic climate change,
mass extinctions, and planetary imperialism are merely the
manifestations of the underlying logic of the zoos reinforced
super-alpha status invoked in the hierarchy of people over
animals.
Chrulew, 2011.
(Chrulew, Matthew. Visiting Fellow. School of Humanities & Languages. University of New South Wales. May 2011.
Managing Love and Death at the Zoo: The Biopolitics of Endangered Species Preservation. Australian Humanities
Review. Issue 50. Accessed: November 24, 2015. http://www.australianhumanitiesreview.org/archive/Issue-May-
2011/chrulew.html.)

The 24 May 1968 issue of Time magazine featured a short article with the title Animal Behavior: Love at the Zoo.
Its topic was the breeding of animals in zoological gardens, but unlike the puff pieces featuring neonate mammals
routinely fed to media by zoo publicity departments today, this story sought to highlight the unique dilemmas
encountered on the way to such happy successes. It may not have broached the precise mechanics of rhino
husbandry or the numbers of elephant miscarriages, but it did recount the frustrations of managing reproduction in
these peculiar institutions, from storks, emus and tortoises attempting to mate with their caretakers, to the
dangers of provoking a lions jealousy. Zoos insistence on absolute visibility has often revealed elements of animal
sexuality disruptive of their bourgeois tranquillity, but these even more unseemly behind-the-scenes anecdotes,
behind their facade of
from the embarrassing to the pathetic, expose the extent to which,
naturalism, zoological gardens control all aspects of animal life,
not only diet and habitat but even the tawdry details of procreation divulged here
with such obvious delight.
Given this situation of utter dominance, we can hardly take the articles closing advice to zookeepers with anything
To prevent from being harmed by impudent captives, it is
but irony.
suggested that one assume a super-alpha statusa position of
ultra-authority naturalised as an extension of animals innate
need for hierarchy. Of course, attacks by animals potentially expose zoo workers and
overeager visitors to grave injury, but such acts (just like refusal to breed) are the
last form of resistance available to a caste of creatures entirely at
the whim of their kindly protectors, sheltered in artificial, regimented enclosures, whose
emblematic behaviour was for a long time the stereotyped pacing of a neurotic. In our historical
moment of planetary imperialism, mass extinctions and
anthropogenic climate change, the natural world is said to have been
completely absorb[ed] by a rationalising culture (Adorno 115).
Zoological gardens, where living animals are displayed for the edification of human visitors, are
for many the very epitome of this process, the animals within a
living monument to their own disappearance (Berger 24). It is safe to say
that super-alpha status has long since been assumedand achieved.
This round must be determined by the attempt to overcome the
logic of exclusion founded in the ontological separation and
hierarchy of humans over animals.
The anthropocentric gaze, with its focus upon surveillance for
the purpose of reproduction, seeks the destruction of pity for
the other, employing the fundamental logic of Auschwitz.
Bell, 2011.
(Bell, Aaron. PhD. Candidate. Social Philosophy. SUNY Binghamton. The Dialectic of Anthropocentrism in Critical
Theory and Animal Liberation. Pgs. 171-2.)

To return, now, to the anthropocentric gaze, we find that it too looks out upon the world and,
like the radically evil individual, sees nothing but its own reflection. The rest of nature
is reduced to "the chaotic stuff of mere classification,"33 to be organized by the subject of logos in order to attain
actuality and meaning. Like the radically evil subject, a sort of megalomania motivates the anthropocentric subject,
which understands itself as the sole point of reference in an otherwise meaningless universe. Furthermore, as
the anthropocentric subject, like the radically evil
Derrida notes,
individual and its indeterminate freedom, is defined by an emptiness or lack;
and "from within the pit of that lack, an eminent lack, a quite different lack from that he assigns to the animal,
man installs or claims in a single stroke his property . . . and his 34 superiority over what is called animal life."
However, unlike the radical evil of the individual in Hegel's account, anthropocentrism is culturally sanctioned,
hence persists through time as an institutionally stabilized phenomenon. The many practical limitations that finally
render (individual) radical evil self-subverting have been either defused or omitted by the formal structure that
anthropocentrism has evolved into over the history of Western civilization. Perhaps it is the historical scale of
anthropocentrism that has allowed it to thrive while individual radical evil necessarily fails. A grandiose narrative
scaled down to the life of an individual quickly becomes problematic; when inflated to the size of a society or
civilization, however, it becomes a thing of truly awesome power, taking on the appearance of a "second nature."
On the individual level, the deep irrationality and impractical nature of radical evil's egoism come to the fore almost
immediately, whereas on a cultural level this sort of species-narrative has been able to persist and develop in a way
that obscures and leaves latent these issues. As Goebbels remarked, the bigger the lie, the more it will be believed
(a matter he knew something about).
By comparing Hegel's conception of radical evil to humanist anthropocen- trism I have tried to show the way in
which violent irrationality is implicit in the grandiose narrative and the logic of ontological exclusion of Western
anthropocentrism. But I want to push this claim further stillto suggest that humanist
anthropocentrism is not simply analogous to Hegel's conception of radical evil, it is evil. The
logic of exclusion deployed in the ontological distinction of
human and animal and the radical evil of anthropocentrism
have been the implements of unimaginable violence. The
express, intentional purpose of anthropocentrism has been not
only a "war of the species" but a war on empathy. As Derrida
claims, the conflict "accelerating, intensifying, no longer knowing where it is going, for
about two centuries, at an incalculable rate and level" 35 is "being waged
[by] those who violate not only animal life but. . . compassion" itself. This radical
evil is not content with the rationalized destruction of the lives of animals in infernal industrial farmsit
works to eradicate pity for all that is other. Of all the things that Adorno meant
when he said, "Auschwitz begins wherever someone looks at a
slaughterhouse and thinks: they're only animals," perhaps this destruction
of pity was what he meant to warn against most. The use of the same train cars designed to transport cows, the
same crematorium ovens originally designed to burn animal bodies, the same electrified barbed wire enclosures
used to intern animals before slaughter, makes the denial of the material similarities between the two events
The denial of the
absurd, but the 37 affinity between the two events is much more fundamental.
significance of the others suffering because she is "only an
animal" is inextricably linked to indifference because she is
"only" a woman, a black, a Jew, and so on. The "bare life" of
the camps is the everyday existence of every factory farmed animal in
the world. But the horror of the violence against animals is a
kind of impossible genocide, a perpetual violence:
[T]he annihilation of certain species is indeed in process, but it is occurring
through the organization and exploitation of an artificial, infernal,
virtually in-terminable survival.... As if, for example, instead of throwing people
into ovens and gas chambers (lets say Nazi) doctors and geneticists
had decided to organize the overproduction and overgeneration
of Jews, gypsies, and homosexuals by means of artificial
insemination, so that, being continually more numerous and better fed, they could be destined in always
increasing numbers for the same hell, that of the imposition of genetic experimentation, or extermination by gas or
by fire. In the same abattoirs.
Exhibit Four: Breaking the Cage
Engaging in the legal structure and in specific policy actions is
critical to recognize the ways in which law constructs the zoo
and the relationship between people and animals.
The zoo exists in state of legal and political exemption intended
to maintain the separation and superiority of people over
animals.
Only such an examination reveals the fluidity of law, its role in
the construction in animal identities, and its fundamental
reliance upon its subject.
Braverman, 2011.
(Braverman, Irus. Professor. Law. Geography. SUNY Buffalo. March 20, 2011. States of Exemption: The Legal and
Animal Geographies of American Zoos. Environment & Planning A. v. 43. Pgs. 1703-4.)

zoos display, promote, and fix a juxtaposed relationship between

American
humans and animals. While housing wild, at times even dangerous, animals of various sizes and
needs, zoos also accommodate large numbers of human visitors and zoo personnel. Yet, despite their hybrid
nature, zoo animals and zoo goers are typically kept strictly apart. The
main point of human-animal contact is established through sight,
which both embodies and reifies human domination over animals.
What is true of the zoos' physical structures is also true of their legal status: official laws that pertain
to American zoos almost always ignore either the animal or the human
components of this hybrid space. On the one hand, animal welfare and conservation
laws such as the AWA and the ESA are aimed mostly toward animals, thus largely
disregarding the zoo's human component. On the other hand, official laws
pertaining to the human elements in zoos typically disregard the
animals in this space. Building laws are not designed to accommodate elephants, and energy conservation
codes are not configured with giraffes in mind. Official law, the paper has claimed, not only reflects the
already strict animal-human divide performed by the zoo but also establishes this divide as
the prevalent norm.
Alongside their many differences, official laws that pertain to zoo animals and those that
pertain to zoo facilities also share something in common: they often approach zoos through a
regime of exemption. For example, many zoo animals are not included in the provisions of the
AWA and the ESA, the Lacey Act and CITES. Similarly, zoo facilities are subject to a range of variances and
redefinitions.
The paper has considered the reasons behind the frequent exclusion of zoos and zoo animals by official law. The
reason for this regime of exemption, I have argued, is the perceived
first
captive-wild hybridity of zoo animals and city-nature hybridity
of zoos. Law seems to handle such hybridities by construing
exceptions outside of its ordinary framework. The fragmented state of zoo law
and its myriad exemptions for zoo animals and facilities are also the result of
the particular political and historical evolution of animal law in North
America, and specifically the constant pulls and tugs between the AZA and animal protection groups. In other
words, law's reflection and reiteration of the already fragmented animal-human relationship performed at the zoo,
on the one hand, and the particular historical development of zoo laws through struggles between the two
ideologically opposed groups, on the other hand, have both contributed to the creation of an awkward body of
fragmented and anomalous zoo laws.
the law- animal-space nexus is quite
Situated in the geographic context,
instructive. First, it illuminates some important properties of law that law is not
fixed and pre-ordered and that it depends on the very materiality of its
subject matters. It also demonstrates that the formation of animal
identities is not only physical or cultural but that it is also very much legal. Ultimately, beyond their
physical identities, zoo animals are also legal and political entities
shaped through and by their mostly exempt zoo geographies.
It is critical to explicate the scope of the critique. Failing to do
so regulates us back into the dominations of surveillance,
mooting any attempt at activism.
The resolution asks the moral question of Should the USFG
curtail its domestic surveillance?
The appropriate critical response then is to frame the
perspective around the violence inherent in the USFG and its
surveillance actions.
Thus, the question isnt whether we solve all anthropocentrism
or bio-politics in all its forms, globally or in all zoos but rather
in areas of specified responsibility.
Namely, the plan must answer the question Should the USFG
end its employment of zooveillance in the only zoo it is directly
responsible for?
Nayar, 1999.
(Nayar, Jayan. Professor. Transnational Law & Contemporary Problems. University of Warwick. Fall 1999. Re-
Framing International Law for the 21st Century. Order of Inhumanity.)

The description of the continuities of violence in Section II in many ways is

familiar to those who adopt a critical perspective of the world.
"We" are accustomed to narrating human wrongs in this way.
The failures and betrayals, the victims and perpetrators, are familiar to our critical understanding. From this
position of judgment, commonly held within the "mainstream" of the "non-mainstream," there is also a familiarity
of solutions commonly advocated for transformation; the "marketplace" for critique is a thriving one as evidenced
by the abundance of literature in this respect. Despite this proliferation of enlightenment and the profession of so
however, "things" appear to remain as they are, or,
many good ideas,
worse still, [*620] deteriorate. And so, the cycle of critique, proposals for transformation and
disappointment continues.
Rightly, we are concerned with the question of what can be
done to alleviate the sufferings that prevail. But there are necessary prerequisites to answering the "what do
we do?" question. We must first ask the intimately connected questions of "about what?"
and "toward what end?" These questions, obviously, impinge on our vision and judgment.
When we attempt to imagine transformations toward preferred human
futures, we engage in the difficult task of judging the present. This is
difficult not because we are oblivious to violence or that we are numb to the resulting suffering, but because,
outrage with "events" of violence aside, processes of violence embroil and implicate our familiarities in ways that
defy the simplicities of straightforward imputability. Despite our best efforts at
categorizing violence into convenient compartments into "disciplines" of study and analysis such
as "development" and "security" (health, environment, population, being other examples of such
compartmentalization)--the encroachments of order(ing) function at more pervasive levels. And without doubt, the
It is necessary, I
perspectives of the observer, commentator, and actor become crucial determinants.
believe, to question this, "our," perspective, to reflect upon a
perspective of violence which not only locates violence as a
happening "out there" while we stand as detached observers and critics, but is also
one in which we are ourselves implicated in the violence of ordered
worlds where we stand very much as participants. For this purpose of a
critique of critique, it is necessary to consider the
"technologies" of ordering.
A. Technologies of Ordering: The Regulation of Truth, Imagination and Action
In my identification of what may be regarded as the technologies of ordering, I have consciously omitted sustained
Regulation, as the coercive agent of
discussion of one--the regulation of regulation.
ordering, means to be "included," kicking and screaming, into
the global market-place, to engage in "free-trade" and be subject to the decisions of the WTO,
to be persuaded of the necessary good of the Multilateral Agreement of Investment, to be "assisted" by the
to be good "subject-citizens"
prescriptions of the "experts" of the World Bank and the IMF,
and be willing (or unwilling--it does not really matter) objects of "security"-
related surveillance, to be modernized, trained, moved, developed. Regulation, then, is for the
"critic" an obvious focus of analysis. My omission of any further discussion of the violence of the regulation of
regulation, therefore, is not because I consider it unimportant, but rather, because this is the aspect of world
(mis)ordering which has already been the subject of much sophisticated discussion. n39 For the purposes [*621] of
the present discussion, I take it as a given that we stand informed by the effective repudiations of much of
contemporary regulatory endeavors aimed at the coercive "integration" of human sociality into a universalizing and
violent "order" of destructive globalization. Having said this, I wish instead to invite reflection on what is perhaps
less often the focus of critiques of "ordering."