The End of the Circus

Acknowledgements -- 1. Overture: Themes and Variations -- Introduction -- Whence and wither the 'traditional' circus? -- 'Death to the circus' -- Clowns on the wane -- The body: from ritual to spectacle -- The human tragedy: "You! Wretched Gypsies!" -- 2. First Movement, Andante Sostenuto: The Time of the Gypsies -- Who are the Gypsies? -- Where do Gypsies come from? -- Contrapuntal development #1 -- Being a Gypsy: the bane or bliss of difference -- A deeper time perspective -- The circus enters history: Was Philip Astley a Gypsy? -- The art of survival -- Contrapuntal development #2: What is a name? -- Our inner Gypsy -- An ode to resilience -- On the flipside -- The evolution of space, time, and cultures -- 3. Second Movement Vivace Furioso: Animals -- A memory -- Hunger rules the world -- The human animal: the game of life and death -- Bear power -- The hyena men of Nigeria -- Wolves -- The death of a tigress -- Hunger never stops -- From non-animal humans to non-human animals -- The cage acts of yesteryears -- What is a wild animal? -- The antiquity of the animal circus: the elephants -- The antiquity of the animal circus: the predators -- Wild utopia -- Ethos, ethics, and the Peterson effect -- A self-defeating strategy -- Cultural entropy and semiotic panic -- 4. Third Movement, Adagio Lamentendo: Clowns -- Perplexed clowns -- Masks -- What is a clown? -- A detour to India: the Vidûshaka -- A modern master: Charlie Chaplin -- Two kinds of laughter -- The twilight of the clown: off-limit humor -- The clown and its discontents -- The white-face clown: the waxing and waning of a cultural hero -- Black face matters -- The crucifixion of the clown -- Free speech and the clowns: Is Jordan Peterson a trickster? -- 5. Fourth Movement, Maestoso Appassionato: Bodies -- What is a body? -- Modes of survival -- Life on the brink of death -- Epiphanies -- The body brought into play -- Greatness and misery of acrobats' bodies -- Negotiating one's own body: benefit-to-cost…