UCLA Library

Tracking how red foxes have been constituted by humans though sound, specifically through articulations of voice, this project locates the fox as a liminal figure in the Western cultural imaginary, subject to conditional appraisals of personhood. Interpreting three disparate cultural sites wherein red foxes come to be “voiced” by humans – via representation in early twentieth-century opera, the listening practices of a New Jersey foxhunting community, and recent discourses around internet videos featuring rescued fur-farm foxes – I ask how the voice is mobilized to demarcate, police, and legitimize boundaries of non/personhood along and across species lines.