In the introduction, she talks about all the contradictions in our relationships with animals, saying they are both "loved and eaten" and this reminded me of Pinchy on the Simpsons and how the moment where Homer is eating Pinchy because he accidentally boiled him for dinner while trying to give him a hot bath on the stove is perhaps one of the greatest jokes and chyrsttalline representations of animal-human relationships I can think of.
"Pinchy would have wanted it this way!"
"Oh god, he's so delicious. I wish Pinchy were here to enjoy this!"
(Here's the full, poorly recorded segment, on youtube)
She begins her first chapter, "Visible and Invisible: Questions of Recognition", with the story of Ham, the chimpanzee who went up in a spacecraft to test any potential problems before the first humans were launched into space. Her telling at the beginning is delightful, noting how NASA folks described him as being a "loveable fellow" and in "good spirits" when he was recovered from the spacecraft, and that he lived 20 years after his flight and was honored with a gravestone at the International Space Hall of Fame. The cover of the book, actually, is his iconic image, huge smile, reaching for an apple.
She immediately illuminates the story with a counter-description of the events, showing how Ham wasn't even a real name, but an acronym, and before he was just a number. His pioneering flight was just a "final check to man-rate" the craft, and he doesn't really even get credit for going to space the way Alan Shepard did a few months later. She also points out that his "smile" could easily be us seeing what we want to see, since teeth-barring is common in chimps for many reasons, including fear, and that there were numerous problems with the flight including the fact that he experienced longer weightlessness than planned, landed in the ocean a ways off from his projected place, and had to wait "100 minutes" to be rescued, while water had entered his capsule. She notes how Ham was a counter to Laika, the Russian dog sent into the space "who died . . . in 1957 when her oxygen supply ran out" . . . and uses these examples to show how we often conveniently mis-interpret animals, or fail to recognize them at all.
In the process of investigating these issues of recognition, she discusses pets, and asks the question of whether they are really an animal at all. It's an interesting question, because she points out that we can easily attribute what we want pets to be thinking to them (the idea that your dog never judges you, unlike your spouse or friends) and that they are comforting because of this, but that we will never know if they are judging us, and we simply get to say whatever we want. (She describes it, not as a refusal to judge but a "breakdown in communication" -- we'll never know what they mean) So they aren't really an animal because we think that they decided not to judge us, that they choose not to, and therefore in some way they are an "ideal human" . . . better than the others around us. This was particularly searing to me as I can recognize my own deep desire to imagine the kindness or purity of dogs and their unconditional regard for us. I, too, desperately want them to love us, just as we want others to love us, and since dogs can't "tell us things we don't want to hear" they are this refuge. But just because we don't hear it, doesn't mean those criticisms aren't there. So what are we to make of this? I also think, in this way, we continue to mold and create dogs into beings of our desire and design, even beyond the very physical notion of breeding them a certain way. We not only have created them to be the animals they are, but we actively create them when we interact with them, to be the kinds of conscious beings that we want them to be. We make their inner world as well.
"About our failure to be god"? I wonder? This always makes me think about love itself -- if we could dismiss their presumed emotions for us as something either generated by our own imaginings, or created through breeding, that they were made to love us, then how is our own sense of love and companionship any different? Weren't we made to love each other, in the sense that we evolved to form lasting, stable bonds in order to best survive? It all seems so very sad to me.
She next discusses the situation, a notably British one I think, created by rabbits, because unlike many animals, which have clear roles within a culture as "edible slash inedible", if you will, rabbits are both food AND pet. She describes how, as a child, her mother re-named rabbit pie "chicken pie" so as not to disturb her daughter, who had rabbits as pets. "A dog is not for eating. . . " she says, but points out the strange paradox of feeding bits of pork to a dog at the tableside.
One little side note in here is her explanation of the origins of the fact that we call live cows "cattle" but their meat "beef" and so on . . . and apparently this came from the Norman invasion, when the people who tended animals spoke English (because they were Saxons) and the people who chiefly ate these animals were French, whose words were adopted into English. I thought that was kind of fascinating. I always assumed that was some kind of intentional trick to separate living animals from food, but it appears that it was a happenstance that simply "aids" in our distinction (36)
She goes on to talk about the example of veal cows -- byproducts of the dairy industry -- that were shipped from the UK to the "mainland" where raising veal wasn't illegal. There, the little calves are kept in crates for like 6 months and fed this iron and fiber-deficient diet, so that they are tender and pale. She describes the uproar of protests about these animals, which I think very much parallels the story of the military testing on beagles described in Singer's Animal Liberation, in contradiction to overall attitudes about meat. She then speculates as to why this curious self-contradiction exists, pointing out that "Fish and chickens, for example, do not have big eyes and long eyelashes, and this is perhaps one reason that the battery farming of eggs is often protested against only by those who have a wider influence in animal welfare." (40) This is going to sound dumb, but I really really really want to make a mounted fish with huge, beautiful taxidermy cow eyes and enormous lashes.
Later in the chapter, she describes a "new anthropocentrism" that has emerged in response to these kinds of protests -- an attitude that vehemently embraces a human-centered standpoint. The examples of this are really obvious, I think, (like PETA . . .people for the eating of tasting animals) and somehow seems to overlap, to me, with a similar reclaiming of manly ideas too . . . like "I like meat! Men like meat!" Tim-the-toolman-taylor style meat consumption . . . the in-your-face-giant-turkey legs of the state fair? I can see the appeal. I think I sort of eluded to it in my essay about taxidermy -- that there is something appealing about reverting to a time period in which it was not necessary or expected to be sensitive to animals or to think morally about your food, when meat eating was celebrated, when you could dismiss concern for animals as an overly sympathetic or sentimental mindset. Like the shark drawing. There is something manly, masculine, strong, empowered, powerful about taking charge and doing-with-what-you-want that has some real origin, I think, and that holds some attraction. Having said all of that, I don't necessarily think that's a good thing, of course, but I admit its appeal and think the term "new anthropocentrism" is a good tag for it. It also seems to align with the same reactionary conservative politics . . . if leftys are veggies, then conservatives love them some meat. Stereotype. So many ways this is reinforced, though, with regard to big business and factory farming and its relationship to conservative politics. Arg.
Anyway, that was a bit of a rant. Back to the book :)
She recounts Peter Singer's very logical argument for a reduction of meat consumption, which I could probably just read myself, but I haven't yet, so I'll say here . . . basically he says that since grains product 10 times as much protein per acre as meat, if Americans were to reduce their mean consumption by only 10%, the grain saved (from being used to feed animals) from all the affluent nations would be enough, "if properly distributed", to essentially end world hunger. I have heard this calculation repeated many times, so I don't think his figures are inaccurate, even though they are very optimistic. She brings this up to show how Singer demonstrates that a very logical argument based on ineffective use of resources is very possible to make without being susceptible to the criticism of "sentimental" attachment to animals or animal cruelty. I like this, partly because it seems less refutable, but also because it helps to free us from the very uncomfortable position, I think, of trying to sort this out on an emotional level. Though I don't necessarily think basing one's decision on emotional responses deserves as much criticism as dismissal as it gets, I do think it can be problematic to keep emotions in check and to understand them. This seems more manageable, and also somewhat more flexible in terms of how to live one's daily life as a less-meat-eating person rather than a strict vegetarian or vegan (at least for the time being in our current state of affairs).
56 - She brings up the question that I've wondered about before regarding fur and indigineous cultures that depend on fur trade (or here, I suppose we could insert whaling, or some other 'cruel' animal practices) and the tenuous position we have put ourselves in as people who feel both obligated to respect native cultures AND obligated to protect animals. She does not offer a solution, and I agree with her that it doesn't seem likely that we'll arrive at a very satisfying one either. But it does seem to be an important question.
70 - on the issue of children and animals, she quotes Freud, who said "Children show no trace of the arrogance which urges adult civilized men to draw hard-and-fast line between their own nature and that of all other animals." Freud seems to say that kids are more akin to animals, anyway, in terms of bodily functions, etc. Though I think this is a good point in that the need to categorize, or the basis for our current taxonomy, is not readily apparent, it must be learned, and so association of human wtih animal is not such an affront to a child, but becomes such to an adult.
76 "We might argue that the desire to comprehend and communicate with animals is infantile, but if we do not have these narratives of communication (and not all of those narratives are written down, of course) then we will lose contact with a large part of our world." She makes the case for anthropomorphism as possibly the only route to which we can have some kind of access to animals, and without the possibility of communicating with them, what is to make us think about how we treat them?
84 - She talks about several movies and books that represent classic children's stories about animals, and one of them, Old Yeller, I had nearly forgotten about. Watching that movie at an early age cemented my extreme desire to be around dogs and probably also firmly first introduced me to a sense of loss and death. Her interpretation of what Old Yeller is meant to teach us is, I would say, not very generous, and I definitely thought differently about its take-away lesson when I was a kid. But what she suggests is really interesting. So, the backdrop is of course that the 15 year old boy, Travis, is left in charge of the farm and his mom and little brother, Arliss, when their dad goes off to fight in the Civil War. The dog arrives, first as the companion of Arliss, but then becomes Travis' dog. "Travis, gains a workmate, and at the end of the film, Travis's shooting of the beloved dog is kind of a liminal moment between childhood and adulthood. Travis has passed the test set by his father, he has run the farm and protected the family, and his helper is no longer needed. . . . To emphasize Travis' journey into adulthood, at the very end of the film, we see that his pup, Young Yeller, comes to replace the lost companion. . . . This disturbing film . . . also recognizes that that relationship cannot last [between child and dog]. At the end of Old Yeller, Travis has learned that all dogs are interchangeable, that an animal may die, but animals live on." Later, she says its about keeping things in perspective: "There is a real (as opposed to fictional) relation to the animal [ comparing it to Lassie Come Home ], this film seems to say, and it is always as well to keep that real relation firmly in mind. The trained dog may be talented, just as the brave dog may be valuable, but dogs, like all animals, serve, and then they die." (Remember, Old Yeller gets rabies after fighting off a rabid wolf to protect the family, and this is why Travis must shoot him.)
Now, my interpretation of this, as a kid and even now, is that being a grown up means taking responsibility for the well-being of something else. That, even though it is hard and painful to have to kill something, a grown up knows then that is what is best for that thing. In other words, its about mercy killings, and knowing that the dog will suffer and eventually die anyway, the right and adult thing to do is to take that responsibility . . . even if it will hurt you more than them. Erica Fudge's interpretation is rather more calous, I think, but might really be accurate. At the least, it does seem to say that the attachment to animals is sentimental.
(side note: This is more or less exactly what I imagine James Herriot to be, perhaps with a little Jimmy Stewart in there for good measure)
Anyway, she goes on to have a refreshingly generous response to Babe (or The Sheep-Pig, as it was originally called in Dick King-Smith's novella). I kind of thought that Babe was great for a number of reasons, but it always seems to be given a critical eye, focusing mostly on that problematic visual comparison to the holocaust. Thankfully, Fudge doesn't even mention this. Instead, she gives a nod to the fact that the story tries to teach "inclusivity" (all animals talk to one another), manners ("Babe wins sheep over through his politeness), "the importance of merit (a pig can be a sheep dog if it can herd sheep; it should not be limited by its species), and, most tellingly, of acceptance. The apparently innate hatred of dogs for sheep, and sheep for dogs, is shown to be based upon a complete lack of understanding on the part of both species." She suggests a parallel between sheep-dogs and sheep and humans and other animals, a notion of "shepherding" or "stewardship" that really means dominance. She also makes mention of language: "At the end of the story, when farmer Hogget and Babe get full marks in the sheep-dog trials, the world is full of noise--from Mrs. Hogget watching it on television at home, from the sheep-pen, from the crowd. King-Smith writes, 'In the hubbub of noise an excitement, two figures stood silently, side by side.' The silence is broken by true words from the monosyllabic farmer, "That'll do." [Which, as an aside, actually made my cry when I read it, and threatens to make me cry now, and I don't know why.] "Saying nothing, but saying everything, the farmer and the pig are an image of a perfect relationship between human and animal; the words are few, mean little, but speak volumes." . . . "an adult who communicates with animals, not through anthropomorphism but through understanding." (87)
There is an interesting discussion, of course, of the role of eating meat in this story as well, and of the function of animals. She talks about the sub-plot of the duck, Ferdinand, who takes it as his responsibility to start crowing, like a rooster, so that he has a function. If he has a function, he reasons, he won't be eaten for dinner. ("Christmas means carnage!!") I also think this idea of becoming a living clock is really great in comparison with the "like clocks" issue. (90)
Also, just the mention of the word "animatronic" . . . somehow it slipped my notice before that the root word of being animated is animal . . . and as we discussed the definition of what exactly we think an animal is the other day, I wonder what roll motion or "animation" has in that definition. It seems . . . seminal? Is that the right word? And yet, other things move and are not even alive, and not all animals really have great control over their motion . . .
In her final chapter, about animals and intelligence, she investigates a lot of the standbys in animal research, including Clever Hans, Kanzi, Nim Chimpsky, sweet-potato washing in Japan, Alex, etc. She points to previous discussions which make the distinction between the "capacity to make sound" or even to communicate feelings or intetions and the capacity to actually have "articulate speech" . . . which I suppose somewhat comes down to the issue of syntax?
In terms of language research (128), she reminds us that it is indeed odd that our efforts only go one way -- that these animals seem so dumb for not being able to understand human language, but if we are so smart, why are none of us fluent in any animal languages at all? Why do we not try to learn their languages instead? This also reminds me of the idea, probably already written about or imagined, of conceiving of the history of primates in research or primates in science from the perspective of THEM being the explorers. That They come to a foreign place where the language is indiscernible, and good-naturedly try to participate as best as they can within the native culture, trying to set up the table for a meal, following the customs of sharing (as Savage-Rumbaugh was describing in Kanzi: Ape on the Brink . . . ) and how truly flexible they have been at acculturating themselves to a strange way of being. So much like early ethnographers or something. So there are all these pioneers, those who first broke the code of human gestural language, who first understood the way we use signs, etc. Its sort of like the way JM Coatzee, via Elizabeth Costello - walks us through the possible thoughts and logic of a chimp faced with the bananas on a string problem: "Why would they put them up so high? Do they not want me to have them? What have I done to make them mad at me and put my food so out of reach? Did I do something wrong?"
133 - In her discussion of culture, she brings up various definitions, and includes Imanishi's "proposal that culture should be defined 'not by technical achievements or value systems, but simply as a form of behavioral transmission that doesn't rest on genetics." I do agree with this, and really like that definition a lot.
138 - Hey, look, a quote of Noam Chomsky! "If you want to find out about an organism, you study what it's good at. If you want to study humans, you study language. If you want to study pigeons, you study their homing instinct." Fudge talks about the issue of us designing our experiments to test only the kinds of intelligences that we as humans posses, and also about the problematic idea that to call something an "instinct" immediately removes any possibility of us considering it as an intelligence (even though we could never get home without a compass or a map, but a pigeon can, easily)
152 - In her discussion on animals in art, she suggests that depicting animals is within this idea of gaining control or dominion over them (which I think I've kind of heard before) and says the intriguing statement, "Framing, in this sense, equates to caging." Not something I'd thought about before.
155 - Discussion of monkey paintings (really, ape paintings). She talks about how Thierry Lenain, someone who studied primate paintings, noted a few important differences between them. "Lenain writes, 'it is not aimed at created a tangible object that will have continuing visible presence after the act of producing is over. Monkeys are totally indifferent to their paintings the moment they're finished.' Later in his study, Lenain argues that 'monkey art is primarily an aspect of play." This is interesting to think about with regards to our inability to approach painting in the same way -- as children, we are capable of that kind of play, but we very quickly develop concern for the "aesthetic qualities" of the finished object. Apparently, an artist named Ranier, investiaged this idea by attempting to re-create paintings done by Chimps to mimic them. (156)
In her conclusion, which she flatly begins with "We should think about animals as animals" which seems awfully concise . . . she makes a really well-said point on 160: "We must have in our minds the fact that our perception is based on our limitations, and the fact that their lives exceed our ability to think about them."
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