Abstract

This article concerns the related ideas of "presentation" and "representation" with regard to animals and suggests that the prefix "re" indicates a directing agent with its own concerns about the nature and status of animal presence. It further suggests that the representation of animals is perhaps always an expression of human concerns, desires, and imaginings. As with other domesticated nonhuman animals, foxhounds are not present in the world to fulfill their own purposes but there to fulfill these human desires and imaginings and are celebrated as the realization of a complex engagement of humans with the world of animals. The foxhound is central to English foxhunting and is given cultural meaning because of this context.The article offers a close anthropological interpretation of the production of this animal - a complex, cultural creation based on a canine form