This site requires Javascript to be turned on. Please enable Javascript and reload the page.

Micro-Landscapes of the Anthropocene

The Border of Rationality

What does it mean to be human? Rationality and thought, commonly a deciding factor for humanity, comes into question precisely through its own advancement of the scientific. When the technology advances to a point that one can tamper with rationality and thought itself for clear purposes, would even N. Katherine Hayles' definition for the human to "create just societies in a transnational global world " be sufficient?

-Lai Kin Hang

Works Cited
N. Katherine Hayles, ‘Computing the Human’, Theory, Culture & Society 22(1) 2005

This page is referenced by:

PHOTO ESSAY
Can humans capture the natural world via photography? A journey across marginal worlds involving spaces, places and, atmospheres.   

Streets of Redfern, New South Wales   2017

When considering the notion of ‘the marginal’ from an ecological perspective, we often visualise the expanse of the ocean, the edge of the sea, as well as the connection of water to land, animals, and everything in between. American marine biologist Rachel Carson defines the edge of the sea as an ‘elusive and indefinable boundary’, with a dynamic relationship to the shore. A similar theme can be observed in the suburb of Redfern, which has contributed to the rich history of Sydney since its grant of 100 acres in 1817 by William Redfern. The construction of streets, Victorian terraces, housing and commercial developments constitute a community, akin to the way in which the interaction of ocean and land forms an environment where the sand, cliffs and sea creatures adhere to its movement and purpose. Town planning strategically positions certain plants, trees and various other features of the green environment in accordance to a scheme that does not disrupt human activity, thus providing pleasure and purpose to the flow of everyday life. Just like how the ocean nourishes and perishes its environment, the plants and the trees on the sidewalks of Redfern, while currently docile to their man-made surroundings, may eventually grow to overcome the design of man.  

Redfern Mural

However, over the course of the twentieth century, ecocritical scholars generated significant debate over mankind’s attempts to classify, signify and constrain the natural world. This discourse actively resisted the traditional inclination of a plethora of human cultures to express themselves by invoking elements of the material world. By overturning the conventional impetus to decipher “inherently voiceless” environmental objects in accordance to what human societies intended them to mean, we can apprehend the curious and mysterious possibility of ‘the material’ to speak on its own terms. In his seminal 2001 text Thing Theory, University of Chicago academic Bill Brown pondered the capacity of the natural world to “speak back” vis-à-vis the human actions which attempt to shape it. Brown’s idea of a symbiotic relationship between human and non-human spheres is paralleled by traditional Australian Aboriginal perspectives of land. Indigenous societies preached a spiritual, physical and social connection between its members and the surrounding world, in which aspects of nature – from rocks to trees, rivers to hills – are essentially derived of the same substance as their human ancestors who continue to exist through the environment. A stark cry from the contemporary view of land as a product to be developed and commodified. For example, the Aboriginal Flag mural in The Block, Redfern reflects this worldview, through its close placement of the signifiers of black (the Aboriginal person), red (the land) and yellow (the sun), therefore positioning the human and the non-human as co-dependent entities.



Recyclable aluminium 2018

Garbage – cans, metal, single-use items – is of paramount importance to recycling and environmental maintenance. However, the process of disposal is often overlooked and trivialised in our contemporary global capitalist system built on commodification. It is important to focus on the natural life cycle of manageable metals, thereby conceiving these materials as part of nature, in which their man-made elements constitute new paradigms of what nature can be and is. For example, the chemical and compound nature present in aluminium tins which store everyday kitchen foods and carbonated drinks encapsulate a considerable portion of our daily human waste. While the sheer number of cans, metals and single-use items in the photo above demonstrate the “ugly”, discarded economic view of nature, they may simultaneously be perceived as the basis underpinning a marriage between the everyday human world of commerce, life and enterprise with the non-human world of chemical reactions, cells and life. We too are connected and affected by a mundane, discarded aluminium can, sitting in a pile of garbage. This allows for a brutal and dim portrait of nature, evoking the chaos of human organisation.

Plane view  2018

The space in the sky, in which birds look down and ahead is a space inaccessible to humanity and presided over by airborne species. The view that our feathered friends enjoy everyday is commonly understood as a “bird’s eye view.” For us, the uncanny experience seems as if we are flying between worlds – the ground-world that feeds, nourishes and stabilises us, and the sky-world; the road of flying species. However, birds – just like humans – are confined in this earthly space, in the sense that if they were to travel further and further up, the oxygen would eventually not sustain them. The sky, the earth, water, air, land, places and spaces contain all forms of matter that connect us and everything until the boundaries of life are meshed and tied, formed and changed. The blue-greenness of everything is what the world as a whole bestows upon us: the further we zoom, the greater the two colours become a hybrid.

Banaue Rice Terraces, Philippines,  Wikimedia commons

I tried to find images from the last time I visited my family's country, when I was fourteen. We took many photographs but now the images are lost somewhere. It’s interesting remembering a time when I was so physically close to my ancestor's location on the home they built and the land they maintained. The rice terraces surrounding the high mountain northern part of the country is understood to be carved by hand for generations and demonstrate a useful irrigation system that utilised the rainforests above the terraces. For this corner of the world, a history of years and years of farming demonstrates a mark of human presence and harmony with the land and its resources. Rice is a staple food in which it is not just eaten but is also a part of the people's culture and life. Through the land I am connected to my ancestors and through the image I am connected to the memories of my experience. I understand that there is a point of origin that I am a part of and it is the earth, through which there is a kinship with my bloodline and the soil, as well as all its resources. Nature touches and remembers all of us – all our ancestors and our future families. We are connected by blood, places, and nourishment which is a form of nature, for natural time is not linear.

Eiffel Tower

The relationship between the ground-world and the sky-world is an interesting one to consider. Human beings pride themselves on having effectively colonised the entire scope of the ground-world, transforming all its living things, creatures and elements into viable commercial objects for the sake of capitalist exchange. However, despite the inventions of planes and satellites, the sky-world remains a formidable and impenetrable terrain. For example, an important question to ask is if whether satellite views of the world are truly created by and for humans, or instead our perceived material, technological under-class (i.e., computer programs such as Google Earth). Photographs ‘made by and for us’ through such programs ironically promote the idea of the ‘human’ world we own as one purely created for image-taking by non-human, technological species. Furthermore, Bill Brown’s notion of material objects asserting their autonomous existence vis-à-vis human supremacy through the sky-world – such as being bopped on the head by a falling nut – articulates the sphere above us as an unpredictable threat. This notion gains deeper significance in tandem with a 2017 Harvard University study which proclaimed that a solar flare within the next 100 years could potentially cause a technological wipe-out – from the grid, to the internet – effectively returning our advanced, superior societies to the medieval or stone age period. Therefore, by identifying both all aspects of the world we live in – from the haptic elements that human beings can touch, as well as the uncertain,
Animal Worlds: Critical Reflection and Bibliography
From the early conceptions of this project, we sought to better understand the human / animal dichotomy and endeavoured to bridge the gap between this species divide. Yet to our dismay, the very language available in conceptualising the ‘animal’ is rooted in an anthropocentric logic that actively obstructs any potential for cognitive connection within interspecies communication. Our examination of theory and literature demonstrated a pervasive attitude of superiority in humanity, and subsequently inferiority in animality. To be ‘animal’ is to be villainized as a ‘beast’, ‘savage’, ‘brute’; an individual who is governed by senses rather than reason. To be classified as an animal is to be separated from that which is not human. When we refer to people who lack those human attributes of morality or intellect, aspects that we hold in such high esteem in our species, we degrade them by saying that “they are acting like animals.” This active dichotomy of animal / human that is directly paralleled to feeling / thinking, became the crux of our engagement with the Animal Worlds project.

The anthropocentric nature of language enables human beings to mistreat and use animal bodies in ways that entirely alienate the cognitive, emotional and feeling capacities of non-human beings. The ongoing language of ‘animal’ and its associated connotations of inferiority, based on a criterion of rationality, permits humans to degrade animals. This is a constant exploitative rhetoric that is proliferated by the English vernacular. Employment of such anthropocentric measures have produced greater global inequality where authoritarianism, hierarchism and communitarianism disregard individual (animal) freedom. This degradation thus blinds humans to alternative modes of communication found within the animal world. We often ignore or devalue the semiotic processes that exist outside organised human language. These modes of reasoning have conditioned the continual exploitation of animals throughout human history.

It was our increasing awareness in these biased patterns of thought that inspired us to propose a new benchmark towards animal human relations. Drawing on the thoughts of Calarco, Derrida and Haraway, we seek to propose that, rather than perpetuating the human/animal dichotomy, we should recognise the ‘human-animal’ or the 'humanimal'. We must see that humans are not apart from animals, but rather with them, sharing the same ecosystems in a horizontal relationship. Our aim in the Animal Worlds Project is to restructure the ongoing conditions between humans and animals, and employ an ecologically sustainable framework.

At each stage of the ‘Animal Worlds’ chapter, we explore the different ways in which we can re-conceptualise animality. Our photo-essay attempts to expose the violence that we commit on animals in the name of science. Our exploration of ‘Flowers for Algernon’ encourages empathy and recognition of the unique individuality of all living beings. Our short film seeks to represent the non-human subject’s perspective as valuable. Through these, no longer can we say that the animal is an inferior being relegated to the background. ‘Human’ and ‘animal’ are one and the same.

Bibliography

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.

IntlForum. “Eileen Crist: Confronting Anthropocentrism” Youtube. 2014. Web. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZkFj9uPKXo

Keio University. “Pigeons Show Superior Self-recognition Abilities To Three Year Old Humans” Science Daily. 2008. Available at: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/06/080613145535.htm

Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2007. Web.
Roy-Faderman, Ina. "The Alienation Of Humans And Animals In Uplift Fiction". Midwest Studies In Philosophy, vol 39, no. 1, 2015, pp. 78-97. Wiley

Larson, Charlie. “With Affection and Humour, Patricia Piccinini probes the boundaries of human and other” The Conversation. 2018. Web. Available at: http://theconversation.com/with-affection-and-humour-patricia-piccinini-probes-the-boundaries-of-human-and-other-94026

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

Main, Douglas.“Why Koko the Gorilla Mattered.” National Geographic. 2018. Web. Available at: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2018/06/gorillas-koko-sign-language-culture-animals/

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

Regalado, A. (2018). Pig-human chimeras are being gestated in the U.S.. [online] MIT Technology Review. Available at: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/545106/human-animal-chimeras-are-gestating-on-us-research-farms/

Scishow. “The First Human-Pig Chimeras.” Youtube. 2017. Web. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCM3UpkRms8

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.

Science and Cocktails. “Animal Emotions and Empathy with Frans De Wal” Youtube. 2017. Web. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=leCDilISCEc&t=41s&list=PLaIbAMDa6qjz-Mh9kdfigwms8DJDOyRMo&index=13

Ted. “What Animals and Thinking and Feeling | Carl Safina” Youtube. 2015. Web. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9KeyKVuLHU&t=71s&list=PLaIbAMDa6qjz-Mh9kdfigwms8DJDOyRMo&index=14

Turner, Lynn, Ron Broglio, and Undine Sellbach. The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies. Edinburgh University Press, 2018.

“Genetic Scientists now creating Human Animal Hybrids.” Youtube. 2017. Web. Available at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8QUf5_kOko

“The Story of Wounda the Chimpanzee and her hug to Jane Goodall during her liberation” Youtube. 2014. Web. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Mw8uXDRTIw

“Human-Pig Hybrid Created in the Lab-Here Are the Facts.” National Geographic, National Geographic Society, 26 Jan. 2017, news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/human-pig-hybrid-embryo-chimera-organs-health-science/.
A Correlationist Fantasy Morton derives his theory of 'correlationism' from fellow contemporary philosopher Quentin Meillassoux, who describes it as a quality of thought that maintains that we, as humans, will only ever have access to the correlation between thinking and being, but never to either state independently of the other (5). In that way, understandings of 'being', the correlationist argues, will always ever be dictated and mediated by the nature of human thought.

Take for example, the garden lawn. In a house without children or an avid gardener or backyard cricketer, lawns become perceived as a classic Augéan non-place (in the other examples, they become purposed as leisure space). The lawn is subconsciously envisaged (and laid) as an area that is bereft of any particular characteristics other than its embodied, self-reflexive purpose as a medium through which one transits. Sure, it's prettier than an airport or escalator but it is still often conceived in human-logic as merely the space you cross to get between street and front door threshold, or back-door and compost bin. In ecological thinking there would be no non-places, or for that matter, spaces falsely endowed with a specific purpose.

The 'correlationist fantasy', which Morton theorises, is founded on his belief that human society has long been blinded by a fantastical human-centred ontology. Why, he asks, should things only become meaningful when defined by their relationship to the human (39)? In the presence of the non-human, particularly the hyper-object, other beings have made themselves known - ones that are decidedly foreign to the human thought in their affective temporal and spatial vastness, but oh so enmeshed in our beings.

A few of my particularly favourite quotes are:

On the idea that nature is infinitely dynamic, malleable and plastic-
"Infinite malleability sounds great until one confronts a large enough entity, such as a black hole, or entropy. Malleable Nature is a dream about a certain tiny set of objects, a set that is malleable enough to maintain the stability of the dream. Since to be an entity at all is to be vulnerable to 1+n entities that can destroy you (there is always some externality, as I shall argue here), this dream must be limited. It cannot talk about the entire set of objects in the universe. To be physical is to be fragile. Dreams end somewhere" (40).

On the idea, that in recognising the plurality of worlds that are evoked and understood by each one of the Earth's agents (as per von Uexküll's Umwelt) there is not real 'pure', 'unfettered' nature, just as there is no infinitely malleable nature either -
"The very notion of pristine wilderness is just the reified inverse of the infinite plasticity of things [...] If we subtract human specialness and the uniqueness of human agency, we see that every entity in the universe is ruthlessly at work reifying every other object to suit its own nefarious ends" (40).

Perhaps next time you walk across that lawn of yours, consider what else it might look like to who-else.

RELATED CONCEPTS: flat-ontology, thing-theory, hyperobjects, entanglement, intra-action, eco-skeleton, post-humanism, post-human ethics, vibrant matter, umwelt, bioblob

Meillassoux, Quentin, et al. After Finitude: An Essay on the Necessity of Contingency. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/unsw/detail.action?docID=742294.

Morton, Timothy. ‘From Modernity to the Anthropocene: Ecology and Art in the Age of Asymmetry’. International Social Science Journal, vol. 63, no. 207–208, 2012, pp. 39–51. primoa.library.unsw.edu.au, doi:10.1111/issj.12014.

- Bridget
Animal Worlds: Photo essay "chimera"
an organism containing a mixture of genetically different tissues, formed by processes such as fusion of early embryos, grafting, or mutation.
from the Oxford English Dictionary.

A hybrid organism containing animal and non-animal cells becomes an unrecognisable beast living amongst the natural order. This new generation enables bio-medical research to advance investigations, and transform them into existence through the creation of chimeras.
Photo essay
Photo Essay This photo essay investigates the notion of 'marginal worlds' in relation to 'subterranean worlds'; envisioning marginal worlds as 'worlds beneath'. 'Subterranean', refers to something existing, occurring or done under the earth's surface. Secret; concealed.

According to Kathrin Huppop: “Subterranean environments are characterized not only by continuous darkness but also by a reduced variability in the number of specific abiotic conditions such as moisture, temperature, and water chemistry, as well as by isolation and restriction in space” (Kathrin Hüppop, in Encyclopedia of Caves (Second Edition), 2012)

Subterranean worlds are clearly marginal worlds due to their isolation and sense of separateness from the mainstream world; the ‘underside’ of a town, an 'underworld', the ‘underbelly’ of a city. They exist as under-spaces with limited supply and variability such as caves, sewers, and drains.

The Roden Crater, located in the Painted Desert region of Northern Arizona, is a large-scale artwork created within a volcanic cinder cone by light and space artist James Turrell. The artist acquired the dormant cinder cone in 1977. Reflecting human visual and psychological perception, Turrel's Roden Crater establishes a controlled environment for experiencing and contemplating light within a highly designed subterranean, marginal world. Situated within the tradition of American landscape art beginning in the 1960s, requiring a pilgrimage through the remote desert at night as an integral part of the art viewing experience.
In this work, Terrel has drawn upon and adopted principles of 'naked eye observatory'. The precariously precise nature of this project is evident through the artist's painstaking process of calculating the excavation and alignment of the crater's tunnels and apertures to make sure they reveal the sky, filter the direct sun, and project vivid celestial visions into the subterranean space.
"The east portal, the alpha (east) tunnel and the sun/moon chamber act in concert as a monumental camera obscura, or pinhole camera." (https://www.designboom.com/art/roden-crater-james-turrell-skyspaces-north-arizona-desert-02-15-2016/)
With a limited invasion of its surrounding environment, only the subterranean space has been transformed: "internally the red and black cinder has been transformed into special engineered spaces where the cycles of geologic and celestial time can be directly experienced." (http://rodencrater.com/about/)

Turrell’s artwork forms a ‘naked eye observatory’ that extends the normal capacity for seeing of the human eye to witness the constant movement of earthly and celestial events, as well as subverting the human-centric notions of the ‘artist’s hand’ or the ‘artist’s genius’ through creating a work based around direct natural, geological experience. Post-humanism is a critical approach displacing anthropocentric, Western philosophical notions of the ‘human’ with its implied, hierarchical conceptions of gender, class, ethnicity, and rationality.
Myths surrounding the New York sewers, their origin and existence, especially the presence of albino crocodiles, reflect the association between subterranean (marginal) worlds and cultural associations with abnormality, as well as the connection between limited environments and mutation. Some say that New Yorkers bought allegators and tried to flush them when they grew disconcertingly large.
Tales of mutant crocs state that they: "...would live the majority of [their] life in an environment [without] sunlight, and thus it would [eventually] lose its eyesight and the pigment in its hide and that the reptile would grow to be completely albino, pure white in color with red or pink eyes. Another reason why an albino alligator would retreat to an underground sewer is because of its vulnerability to the sun in the wild; as there is no dark pigment in the creature's skin, it has no protection from the sun, which makes it very hard for it to survive in the wild." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sewer_alligator)

The Great Stalacpipe Organ is an electrically actuated lithophone located in Luray Caverns, Virginia, USA.
A custom console produces the tapping of variously sized ancient stalactites with solenoid-actuated rubber mallets to make corresponding sounds. A solenoid is a type of electromagnet that generates a controlled magnetic field. When a key is pressed, an electrical pulse is delivered to the striker before vibrating the natural formations.(http://mentalfloss.com/article/75920/stalactite-organ-worlds-largest-musical-instrument).

Able to operate without a player, the stalacpipe organ reflects post-human notions 'recognising the specific abilities and capacities of anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic beings alike...(an) expanded definition of life (that) also allows for the inclusion of and interaction with technological artefacts and thus accounts for technological mediation ('mechanic autopoiesis').' (Rosi Braidotti, 'Posthuman Critical Theory', The Postman Glossary (2018)

The volcanic interior that was purchased and reconfigured by Terrel, and the cave that houses the Great Stalacpipe Organ, embody an autonomous quality that sees a rejection of the ‘human’, as well as subverting dualisms between the human and the nonhuman, the living and the nonliving, the animal and the technical. Both of these engineered marginal spaces use contemporary science to challenge traditional understandings of human embodiment.

The great stalactite organ harnesses the affordances of small, isolated, controlled environments to produce subterranean sound, culminating in an other-worldly subterranean experience. It is the largest musical instrument in the world, built by the inventor, mathematician and scientist Leland Sprinkle.

This image of Mexican giant crystal caves exhibits the miraculous growth enables by the controlled environments of marginal-subterranean worlds. Giant Crystal Cave is connected to the Naica Mine at 300m deep, in Naica, Chihuahua, Mexico. The cave is largely unexplored due to extreme heat conditions. The isolated, 'marginal' situation of the crystals allowed their slow crystallisation process over the course of at least 500,000 years.

Underground railways reflect the hybrid term 'nature-culture' that embodies the concepts contained within the 'brook in the city' poem. Underground railways exist as a result of human tunnelling underground to form man-made marginal, subterranean environments that exist below cities. Whilst the poem is about a brook that is thrown beneath a city in the process of development and construction, the earth around the negative space of a dug-out tunnel of earth is lined with brick to make it feel like an urban space.

"I walked across the marble star map that traces a sidereal revolution of the equinox and fixes forever, the Reclamation man had told me, for all time and for all people who can read the stars, the date the dam was dedicated.
The star map was, he had said, for when we were all gone and the dam was left.
I had not thought much of it when he said it, but I thought of it then, with the wind whining and the sun dropping behind a mesa with the finality of a sunset in space. Of course that was the image I had seen always, seen it without quite realizing what I saw, a dynamo finally free of man, splendid at last in its absolute isolation, transmitting power and releasing water to a world where no one is." (Joan Didion, 1970, 'At the Dam')
The Hoover dam is a concrete arch-gravity dam, located in the Black Canyon of the Colorado Rover, and can be described as a 'marginal world' due to its position of in-betweeness on the border between the US states of Nevada and Arizona.
"The bronze sculptures at the dam itself evoke muscular citizens of a tomorrow that never came, sheaves of wheat clutched heavenward, thunderbolts defied. Winged Victories guard the flagpole. The flag whips in the canyon wind. An empty Pepsi-Cola can clatters across the terrazzo. The place is perfectly frozen in time."
Joan Didion's descriptions of the Hoover dam enforce its connection to the concept of deep time, or geologic time, through her sublime vision of the dam as a 'dynamo finally free of man, splendid...in its absolute isolation'
"I used to wonder what it was about the dam that made me think of it at times and in places where I once thought of the Mindanao Trench, or of the stars wheeling in their courses, or of the words As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end, amen."
Like the statacpipe organ, Didion's vision of the dam highlights posthuman notions recognising the individual potential of non-human elements, post-humanism being "(an) expanded definition of life (that) also allows for the inclusion of and interaction with technological artefacts".

Icebergs are natural formations aligning with the closely associated ideas of the subterranean and the marginal. An iceberg is a large chunk of freshwater ice, floating freely in open water after becoming detached from its original glacier. About 80-90% of an iceberg resides below sea level, causing them to drift with the currents rather than the wind.
"iceberg" originates from the Dutch word ijsberg, meaning 'ice mountain'. I think that this etymological connection between icebergs and mountains highlights their similarities- both having a 'secret', 'concealed' underside that is hidden from view; an opposing, conversely situated, 'marginal world'.

The deeply meditative appeal of marginal worlds, which frequently provide perspective into the nature of ‘deep time’, is articulated by Carson who describes the allure of ‘the edge of the sea, where the drama of life played its first scene on earth and perhaps even its prelude; where the forces of evolution are at work today, as they have been since the appearance of what we know as life; and where the spectacle of living creatures faced by the cosmic realities of their world is crystal clear’

Marginal worlds are particularly illuminating spaces in regards to the concept of ‘deep time’, seeming to exist as pure spaces that act as microcosms for cosmic events on greater scales, is evident through Didion’s description of her sublime encounter with the Hoover dam which has a stately presence of timelessness. The transcendental appeal of the marginal is also exemplified with Terrel’s Rodin Crater where the internal space of a red and black cinder has been transformed into meticulously designed spaces conducive to the direct experience of geologic and celestial time.
Animal Worlds: Close reading
Flowers for Algernon
I put Algernon's body in a cheese box and buried him in the back yard. I cried.
In Flowers for Algernon, the trope of the animal is used to criticise human exceptionalism and raise ethical questions of how we treat other living beings; both animal and human. The role of Algernon, the laboratory mouse, is utilised to highlight thematic considerations of how intellect is used to separate humans from non-humans and consequently exposes how the human standards of measuring intelligence, which relies on language and quantitative data, block any empathetic understanding of consciousness within animal forms. When Charlie introduces the mouse, it is an emphatic statement, ‘They called the mouse Algernon’. Through the name, the mouse is personified. Yet, Keyes draws on science fiction motifs of experimental elevation on non-human beings, demonstrating that Algernon remains an object for the human to own and master. Through the labeling of Algernon and manipulation of his intelligence, the scientists are able to maintain human-animal divide. Consequently, the recognition of the other is constrained by the imbalanced value granted to rationality, enabling the dehumanisation of and violence towards other beings.

However, the dichotomy of intellect versus animality becomes blurred when Keyes explores the relationship between Algernon and Charlie, two individuals who for a time, both share the same metrics of intelligence (according to the scientific experimentation they are both subjected to). Charlie states, ‘Everyone identifies me with Algernon’, reflecting that idea that the animal is used to allegorise the marginalised other, who falls outside the standard conception of what it means to be human (p. 300). Algernon is used to foreshadow the tragic fate of Charlie, compelling audiences to contemplate the consequences of human interference in nature. When Charlie surpasses Algernon he is able to comprehend both the ethical and intellectual spheres of consciousness that his other human peers cannot. As Mrs Kinnian remarks, “for a person who god gave so little to you done more then a lot of people with brains they never even used.” (Pg.n. 7)

In narrating the relationship between Algernon and Charlie, Keyes calls his readers to possess deeper notions of understanding, empathy, and reverence to all living beings just as Charlie is able to conceptualize. The simultaneous development between the two represents a form of intra-action as the hierarchy between human and animal is subverted by the humanisation of the test subject. He examines the treatment of human (Charlie) subject and mouse (Algernon) subject as independent beings; not giving primacy to one organism or the other by dissecting the concept of non-human animal (NHA) ‘Uplift,’ (Faderman, 2015) that painfully engages the animals to enhance their abilities to fit human standards. The concerning process disrupts the biological order and reminds us to acknowledge the importance of all forms of life where non-human animals are equal to every part.
Bibliography
Keyes, Daniel. Flowers for Algernon. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 2007. Web.
Roy-Faderman, Ina. "The Alienation Of Humans And Animals In Uplift Fiction". Midwest Studies In Philosophy, vol 39, no. 1, 2015, pp. 78-97. Wiley

Written by:
Amy Huang, Rose Rzepa, Natasha Stavreski