Life is a zoo: a comparative reading of Albee’s The zoo story and Lispector’s “O bufalo”

Abstract

This work aims at analysing, from a comparative perspective, the play The zoo story by Edward Albee (1959), and the short story “O búfalo” by Clarice Lispector (1960). We will analyse, from Animal Studies (DERRIDA, 2002; MACIEL, 2008, 2011; BRAVO, 2011; SILVA, 2020; HARAWAY, 2021), the way the zoo is portrayed in each text, regarding its virtual presence in the play and the actual in the short story as well as the historical construction of this place, between control and preservation. Furthermore, we will investigate the interspecific relationship – mirroring and complementing – between animality and humanity in the formation of the characters, because there is, in each text, a distinct dialogue between humans and non-human animals by means of the looking. Besides, we will analyse the way fiction is presented while a form of bio-perspective speculation, which allows the readers to rethink their own animal condition e to destroy the speciesism of western thinking. Thus, we will defend the thesis the zoo may be read as a metaphor for life, since, in both works, there is social control by power relations and inversion between animals and humans by looking, in other words, by empathy.