Panoptifox is an ongoing research project, initially started in January 2020, that examines the largely forgotten history of the North American fox farming industry (1880s-1940s). It is particularly focused on efforts to raise genetically rare silver-black colored “red” foxes (vulpes vulpes) in panopticon-shaped pens. It is informed by science and technology studies (STS), surveillance studies, feminist technoscience, Foucauldian biopolitics, and critical analysis of human-nonhuman relationships.
It is also, by extension, interested in other efforts to domesticate foxes or otherwise use foxes as a kind of “narrative prosthesis” (a disability studies term) to help fix or make sense of human lives.
About the Author:
J. Walton
Jonathan Walton is a PhD Candidate in Communication at UC San Diego, as well as an indie/experimental game designer and a former surveillance and human rights policy researcher.
Panoptifox 