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Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

De-centring human subjectivity as a response to "aggressive othering"

This point in the critical review aptly highlights the dichotomous construction of Human/Animal, in which all nonhuman forms are subsumed into an 'Other' philosophically maintains Cartesian duality, the supremacy of the human subjects and thus sanctions the use of violence against animals. I was interested in how this idea is conceptualised by Derrida, who gave us most of the foundational thought on animal studies and this 'asinine' practice of subsuming all animal forms into a singular 'other'. He argues that speciesism has become fundamental to Western subjectivity and relies on the "tacit agreement" that the full transcendence of the human requires the sacrifice of the animal. This creates a 'symbolic economy' in which we can enact violence or murder on other beings without it being criminal (pp 96–119).

However, what also interests me, and what has been raised so well in the discussion of 'zoological connection' in this critical review is the way in which posthumanist theory offers alternatives to this socially-sanctioned violence. Building upon Derrida's theorising on the power of recognising the animal gaze, Guerlac has explored the importance of the reciprocity of this gaze - when humans recognise animals as other subjects and create an inter-subjectivity rather than a relationship of dominance, and the subject/object binary. In order to properly return this gaze, we must do away with the humanism of capabilities such as language and rationality (see my discussion of this idea in another note) and bear witness to other modes of subjectivity and phenomenology. As noted by Wolfe (p 120), we owe this type of thinking to Jeremy Bentham, who observed that the central question regarding the ethical standing of animals is not "can they talk?" or "can they reason" but "can they suffer"? Bentham calls for an understanding of shared vulnerability, rather than subscribing to the view that animals are only deserving of a place in an ethical relationship if they are "like us".

This theorising has really helped me in the development of my essay, which I am writing on how animal studies has changed the schema of the knowing subject, which is achieved in Woolf's novella Flush, by disrupting the hegemonic human subject in a narrative.

Another text I think is really interesting to link to this idea is Thomas Nagle's famous thought experiment: 'What is it like to be a Bat'?, which explores the alternative phenomenological experience of a bat in shaping understandings of consciousness. I would argue that the willingness to recognise the fundamental alterity of the animal experience is the first step in a posthumanist attempt to de-other animals. We need to do away with validating notions of human capability and the privileging of the human vision in order to deconstruct the homogenising and aggressive 'othering' of the animal.

- Amelia Loughland

References:
Derrida, Jacques. “‘Eating Well,’ or The Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida”. Who Comes after the Subject? Edited by Eduardo Cadava, Peter Connor, and Jean-Luc Nancy, Routledge, 1991.

Wolfe, Cary. "Learning from Temple Grandin, or animal studies, disability studies, and who comes after the subject". New Formations, issue 64, Summer 2008, pp. 110–123.

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Animal Worlds: Literature Review Authors of animal literature often find themselves caught within the paradoxical process of writing about animals as a way to disrupt the binary division of humans and animals while simultaneously being restrained by the language itself, which inherently contains its own human centred lexicon. In Daniel Keyes, ‘Flowers for Algernon’ (as discussed in the close reading chapter) the author displays an awareness of the linguistic restraints of human language by directly experimenting with the written form; depictions of literacy and illiteracy, self-recognition, progress of rationality, and scientific testing are all exposed as methods in which humanity actively places markers of difference and inferiority, on both human and nonhuman beings, as a way of distancing any similarities we share with other species. While human language, both spoken and written, is a mode of communication between the human species, by its very nature, it is also the thing that perpetually isolates us from communing with and understanding animals, therefore when writers attempt to speak or write on behalf of the animal, a series of impossibilities arise.

The very nature of this oxymoron is what many have labelled as a sure sign of ‘anthropocentrism’ or ‘human exceptionalism’, the belief that the human species is the most significant entity on earth. Such ideals are instilled within Aristotle’s ‘History of Animals’ which contains his observations and recordings of nature under a lens of human exceptionalism. Firstly, Aristotle generated divisions of the realm of living creatures in plants, animals and human beings by investigating outward differences and features of species. In conclusion of these basic categorisations, Aristotle ultimately debates that animals are ‘below’ humans because only humans can reason and therefore we can use animals without the same consideration we would give to people. Due to their failure to speak, Aristotle classifies the non-human inferior to human. Yet ideas such as these have been met with much criticism in environmental, sociological, scientific and literary communities alike. Indeed, the empirical sciences of Darwinism were paramount in undermining this traditional dichotomy. Those traditional human traits which enabled us to distinguish ourselves from animals, such as our speech, knowledge of death, consciousness, etc, have either been proven to exist in similar forms in animal behaviour or to not exist in a manner that we could traditionally recognise.

Mathew Calarco, a key animal philosopher and author writes in his book Zoographies (2008) on the variety of disciplines that intersect within Animal Studies (Biology, Cognitive Sciences, Social Sciences) and proposes that while there is no standard for what defines the field, each individual who pursues this area of research are driven by two central concerns; firstly, an exploration of animality, what it means to an animal and secondly, what are the distinctions of the human / animal divide and how are they defined. The concept of animality has had many theorists question if animals have a "shared essence" yet much like critiques of essentialism in gender studies, most theorists see this idea as an easy way to divide humans from animals. In reality, the extensive array of beings we refer to as 'animal' is in itself a way to reduce those beings under a set of blanket characteristics. Calarco later writes in his book Thinking through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction (2015) that in order to establish justice for animal life we have to create continuity amongst species (both human and non-human beings) to grant animals equal access to the ethical and political community. Calarco believes that the human / animal divide can no longer and should no longer be maintained, that it is our anthropocentrism that has enabled political, legal and moral criterions to govern the continual exclusion of animals; consequently much of our understanding of animals is shaped by the limits of these societal norms.

Similarly, Latimer’s article ‘Being Alongside: Rethinking Relations amongst Different Kinds’ (2013) compels readers to challenge the normative divisions between humans and animals. Latimer seeks to redefine what makes us human by exposing the asymmetry between consciousness and physicality. In reference to Donna Haraway whose proposal that there is a need to be ‘with’ rather than ‘alongside’ other species, through the co-construction of human and non-human worlds; Latimer’s essay calls for connection between species, rather than siloed co-existence. In exploring encounters with animals as something that inhabits the life the human, Latimer’s position is evidently critical of the ‘aggressive othering’ that results in violence towards animals. Conversely, Kay Peggs writes in ‘The animal advocacy agenda’ from a sociological perspective and provides insight to how animals are socially implicated in the human world as well as how historically, they have been silenced and oppressed in academia and literature. Peggs questions the sociological field’s tradition of exploring the discontinuity between human and animals, based on social organisation and meaning making. Specifically, she closely analyses Mead’s proposition that animals are not relevant to sociology due to their lack of perception, imagination and language. To oppose this, she instead draws on ideas of the ‘zoological connection’ and how animals play an important social role within human life. Ultimately, the agenda is thus to propose that sociology is an appropriate field to give voice to animals, due to their intertwinement with human life.

Considering animals in a sociological frame is also echoed in the words of Strommen, in her article "Animals in Literature and Theology” explores animal studies within a theological conceptual frame, referring to both traditional narratives relating to animals and contemporary examples of animal research that has signalled a shift in perspective on the cognitive capacities of non-human entities. With increasing recognition of the complexities of animal consciousness revealed through ethological sciences, such advances in our understanding of the animal realm has led many to question the animal/ human divide and created an increased sense of urgency in animal rights, especially given the hyper industrialised treatment in which agricultural animals are subjected to for human purposes. In contrast, previous conceptions of animals have represented the animal as an oppressed other. Ideas from biblical creationism have insinuated that humans occupy a higher symbolic plane than animals because they are made in ‘God's image’, and therefore justifying any ill treatment to them. For Strommen, as well as other aforementioned writers and critics, it is not enough to deem animals as examples of metaphors for the 'other'; we have to recognise animals in our midst as creatures that also share sight and consciousness, and therefore rethink our notions of compassion, ethics and justice in response to animals when we have undeniable proof of their ecological and cognitive significance.

References:
Aristotle. History of Animals, Book 1,Translated by Richard Cresswell, St Johns College, Oxford, 1887, pp. 1-23. Web.

Calarco, Matthew. The Question of the Animal: On Philosophy and Animal Studies (Introduction). Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. New York, Columbia UP. 2008. Print.

Calarco, Matthew. Thinking through animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction. Stanford University Press. Vol. 11. No. 2. 2015. Print.

Latimer, Joanna. ‘Being Alongside: Rethinking Relations amongst Different Kinds’. Theory, Culture & Society, vol. 30, no. 7, 2013, pp. 77-104. Web.

Peggs, Kay. ‘The ‘animal-advocacy agenda’: exploring sociology for non-human animals’. The Sociological Review, vol. 61, 2013, pp. 591-606. Web.

Strommen, Hannah M. "Animals in Literature and Theology (Special Section" Literature & Theology. An International Journal of Religion, Theory and Culture 31.4. (2017) 383 - 471. Web.