'When the animal cannot keep up a good appearance it had better go out of the room': vivisection and theatricality in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Issue 2 (4th May 2018)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Alonso Recarte, Claudia
• Is Part Of: Studies in theatre and performance. Volume 38:Issue 2(2018)
• Page Start: 190
• Page End: 205
• Publication Date: 2018-05-04
• Subjects: Vivisection -- experimental physiology -- nineteenth and early twentieth century -- theatricality -- entertainment -- pro- and antivivisectionist narratives; Drama -- Periodicals; Theater -- Periodicals; Performing arts -- Periodicals; Acting -- Periodicals; Drama; Performing arts; Theater; Periodicals; 792.05
• DOI: 10.1080/14682761.2018.1451943
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1468-2761

Abstract

Abstract: The nineteenth century represents the consolidation of the field of experimental physiology in medical training, first in continental Europe and then in Britain. As vivisection became more widespread as the preferential method of research, the controversy surrounding the ethics of such practice became both immersed and aestheticized within a discourse that dealt with the blurring of the boundaries between science and theatricality. The aim of this article is to analyse how certain aspects and semiotics associated to theatricality and performativity are rhetorically applied, on the one hand, by physiologists themselves to conceptualize and visually present the craft of vivisection and, on the other, by antivivisectionists seeking to expose the immorality of such procedures. By examining a number of key texts that range from scientific studies to newspaper reports and antivivisectionist literature and pamphlets, I show how the formats of the public demonstration and the academic lecture hall adopted a series of dynamics traditionally associated with theatrical entertainment and how antivivisectionists subsequently used such patterns to construct narratives that vilified experimental physiology.