I would like to propose a
kind of brief introduction to the historical analysis of different modes of
theoretical representation of the animal. A critical genealogy of the
discourse of animality in its philosophical, aesthetic and political
aspects reprises the metaphysical tradition, which is based on the humanist
model of subjectivity. The hidden figure of the animal occupies a truly
strange place in the shadow of this tradition from antiquity to modernity.
To tell the truth, I came to
this subject matter recently and in a roundabout way – when I was working on my
PHD thesis and then afterwards on my book on eroticism in George Bataille.
Trying to answer the question, ‘what does the word eroticism mean for
Bataille?’, I noticed that he constantly repeats one formula: eroticism is
something that distinguishes a human being from an animal.
Bataille is original in this
point: as a rule, philosophers have always considered rational thought,
language or, for example, consciousness of death as the criterion for such a
distinction. But I should say straight away that I’m not involved in a search
for the true criterion of distinction between humans and animals. What is much
more interesting for me is how this borderline is produced in one or another
discursive system.
One can indicate two types
of classical philosophical discourse that focus on the animal. The discourse of exclusion starts
with the ethical and ontological predominance of the “human,” whereas the
discourse of inclusion insists on the affinity of all levels of
being. But these two discourses are related and their function is the same: to
establish or to conserve a certain order of things. As Bataille pointed
out, the base of this rational order is the transcendence of the “human,”
requiring the sacrifice of irreducible “animal” nature.
Regarding madness, Foucault
says that animality is its internal truth, which shows the limits of the
“human.” Animality is like an unthinking, unthinkable mirror-twin of
subjectivity. According to Lacan, looking into the mirror, the human being
appropriates its own image as “human” from without. But it is the animal that
exists outside the mirror, where the human being has to recognize itself and at
the same time cannot do so. Re-reading Lacan, Derrida specifies that the enigma
is to be found not in the human being looking at itself, but rather in the
animal that stares back at it.
The play of inside and
outside, of inclusion and exclusion, is a sort of device, which Agamben calls
an “anthropological machine”; it establishes a kind of borderline between
the self and the “animal” other. This is not only a metaphysical
but also a political operation: sometimes, certain humans marked as animals
find themselves abandoned beyond the border. So, according to Agamben, the
question of the animal is not the question of its essence, but the question of
the human/non-human distinction as such, which has certain political
implications. The examination of this borderline passes through concepts such
as power, sovereignty, order and law.
The question of the animal
is therefore the question of subjectivity and power, and it demands a
historical analysis. It is important to note, in this respect, that there are
no animals in official history, because animality has traditionally been
consigned to non-historical nature.
Nevertheless, it has its own
historical materiality, at least as a labor force. From my point of view, there
is a kind of injustice in this neglect of the animal in history, which is why I
intend to produce a peculiar “history of the animal”. This is precisely the
name of the book, with regard to which I would like to start my brief and
tentative reconstruction.
In his work “History of
animals” Aristotle describes animals’ habits, using the anthropic principle.
His animal world is clearly humanlike. Human beings are not only part of this
world, but also its universal model. Other creatures approach this model to a
greater or lesser extent, and are endowed with certain human merits –
friendliness or aggression, slyness or simple-mindedness, nobleness or
baseness, audacity or timidity.
Animals are not only
humanlike, but they imitate humans. Thus, a swallow building itself a nest
imitates a human building a house. As Aristotle points out, in arranging twigs,
the bird keeps the same order. I have to say that the word “order” is really
important here. Keeping order, Aristotle’s swallow imitates human
reasonableness. Because of course human beings, too, keep a certain order in
their life. It is as if a bird and a human kept some general order, as if they
shared some reasonably ordered world.
In this world, there is a
sort of continuity, which extends to every living thing. Plants imitate
animals, animals imitate humans and humans imitate gods. Mimesis makes it
possible to organize an interchange between different levels of being. Animals,
humans, plants – everyone is involved in a cause, which could be described as
“maintenance of a cosmos”. And everyone has his own way to maintain general
world order. This order was not established by humans, but it is measured by
humans. And we might note that everyone in his own way already conforms to some
general laws and prohibitions, which seems too human.
I would like to draw your
attention to one story that Aristotle tells. Somebody says that a Scythian king
had a thoroughbred mare which always gave birth to good foals. In order to
produce the best offspring, the king’s grooms decided to couple one of them
with his mother.
The studhorse didn’t want to do this, and then grooms covered
the mare’s head. When, after the coupling, the head of the mother horse was
uncovered, the studhorse run away and threw himself off a cliff.
Of course, this strange
story refers us to a well-known myth. I could say that the gesture of a groom
covering up the mare is a kind of parody of the blind fate that brings Oedipus
into his mother Jocasta’s embraces. The scene of animal suicide is really
impressive: let’s try to imagine this lonely, absurd figure of a fast horse
flitting to the brink of an abyss… What impulse of the “animal soul” pushes it
on?
Apparently, the theme of the
prohibition of incest is so widespread in ancient Greek culture that it’s easy
to project it onto animals. But I feel I should specify that what is
frightening is not incest per se, but a breach of a certain world order
provoked by it. Don’t forget that the Oedipus-horse was born in a reasonable
ordered world. The stability of the harmonious structure of this world is
guaranteed by the participation, even if passive, of all its functional
elements. A local failure imperils the system as a whole.
At any point the frail
cosmos can lose its balance, and this is the main danger posed by a breach in
the order. And a breach in the order, violence, a failure has to be considered
not as a crime, but rather as a fault or an error, because it is made through
ignorance, blindly. Nobody will do ill of his own volition, because the
reasonableness of Aristotelian humans and humanlike animals consists in looking
for a good. Those who do ill just don’t understand their good, or they are not
reasonable enough, or they are blinded by passion, or they don’t know the law.
As concerns the highest good
and highest laws, one might suspect that they are known only by the select few,
and these few are at the head of the state. The hierarchical state system,
according to Aristotle, corresponds with human nature itself, according to
which the soul rules the body and the mind rules the feelings. Animals, as more
foolish, must be subordinate to humans, because through humans they join the
highest good.
In turn, an obscure god’s
will has power even over those at the top of society. It may seem absurd or
unjust, but it has the force of law. Thereby, observing laws[,] which are
beyond their understanding, both the king and the king’s horse participate in
the maintenance of cosmos, which is – for the Greeks – more or less common, and
which is still not finally appropriated by men.
Aristotle’s human recognizes
himself in the animal and sees in animals’ behavior a kind of parody of his own
gestures. He feels a deep affinity with the animal. This feeling obviously
relates both to the rest of totemism and to the ancient Greek belief in
metempsychosis, that is the fantastical circulation of anima, living soul,
between vegetable, animal and human bodies.
One can imagine the
unanimous ensemble of creatures being involved in the kind of common production
of the strong effect of unity of the ancient cosmos. And the horse occupies a
really important and honorable place in this ensemble. It is even represented
on the obverse side of Greek gold coins. In his essay “The Academic Horse”
Georges Bataille reflects upon this representation and emphasizes the
mathematical precision and nobility of the equine expression of harmony.
Bataille compares the
academic horse as the embodiment of eidos with improbable, demented
horses represented on Gallic coins. Approximately from IV century B.C. (before
Christ) the Gauls began to mint their own coins imitating Greek originals. But
the image of the horse has been seriously deformed, and its deformations,
according to Bataille, are not random. Crazy barbarian horses are the
illustration of a disordered life, which is alien to the high ideals of harmony
and perfection. For this life, full of excess and danger, such ideals appear as
something like police surveillance for a den of thieves.
Bataille describes the
aesthetic degradation of the horse image as the form of a transgression and a
rebellion against arrogant idealism. This is the material trace of the process
known as falling into barbarism or as a return to the “animal condition”. In
the so-called civilized world the least allusion to the possibility of such a
process legitimates even the strongest forms of maintaining order and the
social hierarchy.
For sure, those who are at
the top, represent chaos as the single bad alternative to the status quo. Were
it not for wise police measures, the world would cease to be intelligible and
anthropomorphic, and sweet humanlike Aristotelian animals would be displaced by
maddened barbaric monsters.
Fear of entropy brings
people to make plentiful rites. There is an impression that reproduction of the
conditions of human life requires permanent efforts. And harmonious ancient
forms are the illustration of such efforts. But it seems that once the forces
of chaos, such as floods, invasions, war, revolution, epidemics or volcanic
explosions, win the day. Thus, the same harmonious forms illustrate the
fragility of the cosmos and the difficulty of maintaining its order.
The academic horse,
represented on the golden coin, is allied to the Oedipized horse from the
Aristotle’s book. However, the initially “good” Aristotelian horse transgresses
the order, turns mad and becomes the absurd self-murdering animal. There is no
place for him in this glorious police world obeying the laws that he ignores.
Generally speaking,
Aristotle’s animals are nevertheless man-like and therefore inoffensive. As I
mentioned, the Aristotelian ontological system supposes a kind of unity, due to
which the world can be rationally explained. This system functions owing to the
inclusion of all the elements. But it makes no provision for a situation where
the animal fails in imitating the human. In this case, the system will not be
able to cope with the maintenance of cosmos. If the mass of creatures which are
unable to maintain the order becomes critical, this world may collapse.
This is rather the logic of
another mode of protective thinking, based on the distrust of the alien. Here
unpredictable animal nature is often represented as a source of danger. Animals
are suspect. They come from outside. They represent another, inhuman world.
Thus, the Aristotelian human
recognizes himself in the animal as in the mirror. This is a kind of mirror
stage, when he starts to acquire his humanity. Recognizing himself in the
animal, he starts to distinguish himself from it. So, the optical device, which
Agamben describes as an anthropological machine, has a two-way action.
Recognition is attended by misrecognition. The Aristotelian human recognizes
himself in the animal until the common anthropomorphic world breaks up into two
parts and the mirror stands between him and his other.
Philosophical systems
supported by exclusion represent the animal as a being having another nature
than the human. This fundamental distinction starts from the idea of exclusive
human access to such things as logos, the good, truth or being.
But before the ethical and
ontological dualism could appear, our moral laws had to be unsuccessfully
imposed on animals as universal laws, and the animals had to be judged by these
laws. Every time the beasts are banished from the human world to the wild
madness of nature, but every time they return and they try again to live here,
to observe our laws and proprieties. And every time they meet with failure.
Absurdist Kafkian animals
are striking examples of the efforts of becoming-humans. The hunger-striking
dog performing a biological experiment on itself, the nervous burrow-dweller
coming to the idea of the social contract, mice as music lovers, the monkey
becoming human in his desperate attempts to escape the cage, and, of course,
the academic horse, that is the former battle horse of Alexander the Great, now
become a lawyer.
Imagine an animal in front
of the gates of the law: is it standing beyond or on this side? According to
Derrida and Agamben, the animal, and the sovereign as well, are apparently
outside the law. Agamben’s animal is a kind of bare life, that is, as contrasted
to the human, it cannot be sacrificed, but can simply be killed, slaughtered
without ceremony. But I would like to clarify that this is not the eternal
condition of animality.
As I already said, animals have
a history. But the logic of this history doesn’t conform, in my view, to the
optimism of the humanistic discourse of progressive liberation and emancipation
of animals finally securing their rights. Nowadays we are dealing really with
Agamben’s latent figure of bare life, deprived of any right, and this figure is
exactly the seamy side of the official ideology of according rights to animals.
But long before the institution of “right”, animals were already the subject of
law, and animal killing was prohibited.
I refer not only to the
totemism of so called “primitive” societies, where animal sacrifice is a ritual
transgression, and where animals have the sacral status of a patron or a
forefather of man (rock paintings in the grotto of Lascaux, for example,
represents huge animals and a small man, the latter is under the musk of a
beast). I mean also, for example, the medieval world. Are you familiar with
such phenomena as animal trials?
Nowadays people are
astonished by the idea of trying animals according to human laws. But the point
is that the medieval animal lived in the same universe as medieval man. That
was the universe of God’s creation, and we find a lot of animals with human
faces presented in the galaxy of medieval painting as a part of a “family
portrait”. If in totemism animals could be sacrificed, then in the Middle Ages
it was possible to execute or to excommunicate them. Animals were put on trial.
This means that they were recognized as responsible. Formally, juridically they
were given almost the same status as humans. A cat or a mouse could be accused
and punished.
I just mentioned Dr.
Bucephalus, a character in Kafka’s novel “The New Advocate”. Of course, the
figure of the animal-advocate is fantastic, but advocates of animals were
really present in the medieval legal system. Advocates of accused animals are,
among others, the inventors of the humanistic discourse. Their principal
argument that one cannot try animals because they don’t have minds opened the
way to modern rationality. The paradox is that it was precisely this humanism
that became the basis for the future treatment of animals as things, for
excluding them because they lack human dignity or special human merits.
Advocates of animals established to the satisfaction of the court that we
cannot charge them because we cannot speak to them.
There was also another
argument presented in animals’ favor, more medieval in a sense. According to
this argument, animals are innocents. They are unaware of sin, of good and
evil. They had never left the Kingdom of Heaven. But if they are
unaware of a sin, then they are at the same time unaware of the Christian
message, the Gospel.
Of course, everyone
remembers the aspiration of Saint Francis of Assisi to talk to them
and to teach them. He really wanted to give them access to the universal divine
law. He was preaching the word of God to animals, and the success of his
preaching depended on how much nearer he could come to their innocence. In
order to speak to animals it was necessary to cleanse himself of sin, to become
poor like beasts and birds. Preaching to animals was possible in an era when
poverty and misery were qualified not as a crime but rather the opposite, as a
sign of sanctity.
A little bit later, with the
strengthening, to adopt Max Weber’s definition, of the spirit of capitalism,
virtue becomes measured by property and labor. And then animals, as poor and
non-working, find themselves outside the law. Now their place is next to lower
classes and to society’s outcasts.
In the first part of his
“History of madness” Michel Foucault describes how in the course of the
Reformation, in connection with the growth of the moral value of work, idleness
starts to be exposed to blame, how poverty loses its halo of sanctity and
becomes treated as a crime against the “bourgeois order”. According to this
order, such a strange man as Francis of Assisi would easily find himself in a
detention centre together with beggars and vagabonds.
According to Foucault, in
the Classical era the figure of the madman combines criminal poverty and
idleness with the animal, inhuman principle. Because as you know, the human of
the Classical era is one who is thinking. The one who doesn’t think is not
human. Madness reveals the absurdity of the animal nature of man. That’s why,
as Foucault says, madness actually acquires the same status as animality.
Places of isolation set aside for madmen look like zoos or menageries. The
purpose of isolation is to secure the mind against madness and the human
against the animal, who now bears no resemblance to the human. And of course, Cartesian
exclusion is the theoretical side of this process.
A bright artistic cross
point here is the “Meninos” by Velasquez. The foot of jester is lifted over the
dog sitting on the right. Just one movement – and the dog will be kicked,
turned out of this family portrait (but, in fact, the dog is still here:
Picasso). At the era of the Cartesian exclusion (not only of madness, but also
of animality as of the absence of a reason) the status of animality is
absolutely different. Its place is now at the anatomical table of Descartes, or
in the butcher shop, or at the plate together with fruits and wine.
