Editor: Wendy Woodward Publisher: Witwatersrand University Press Johannesburg, 2008 ISBN: 978-1-86814-462-4 Paperback, 15x22 cm, 192 pages Many humans do not regard animals as complex beings. Instead, they objectify animals, relate to them as 'pets', or see them simply as spectacles of beauty or wildness. By contrast, the southern African writers whose work is explored in The animal gaze, including Olive Schreiner, Zakes Mda, Yvonne Vera, Eugene N. Marais, J.M. Coetzee, Luis Bernardo Honwana, Michiel Heyns, Marlene van Niekerk and Linda Tucker, represents animals as richly individual subjects. The animals - including cattle, horses, birds, lions, leopards, baboons, dogs, cats and a whale - experience complex emotions and have agency, intentionality and morality, as well as an ability to recognize and fear death. When animals are acknowledged as subjects in this way, then the animal gaze and the human response encapsulate an interspecies communication of kinship, rather than confirming a human sense of superiority. This volume goes beyond Jacques Derrida's notion of the animal gaze which still has animal as the 'absolute other', and suggests a re-conceptualising of animals as 'anothers.' The animal gaze engages with the writings of Jacques Derrida, J.M. Coetzee, Val Plumwood and Martha C. Nussbaum, as it brings together Animal studies, ethics, literary studies and African traditional thought, including shamanism, in a way that compels the reader to think differently about nonhuman animals and human relationship with them. Wendy Woodward is a Professor in the English Department at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town. She is widely published in the fields of gender and colonialism, and Animal Studies. Introduction: Margaret Daymond, University of KwaZulu-Natal: This book is not just about animals (in the conventional sense of 'animals'), for the issues it raises apply to our understanding of our own identity, our own subjectivity, and of our relations to other people as well as to other animals. As such, the book offers important insights, challenges and stimulation to our thinking about the rights we claim for ourselves and grant to others. Acknowledgements Introduction: The animal gaze Animals and African knowledges Feline predators and sacred spaces Baboons, colonial discourses and moral agency The emotional lives of dogs Dogs in alliances and as embodied souls Whales, clones and sacrificial nature Conclusion: Beyond the endings Notes Select bibliography Index This book is about looking - the ways an animal looks at a human and how a human responds to such a gaze. Animals watch humans constantly, monitoring us for whatever comfort, affection or threat we might embody. In turn, we look at them, regarding them as spectacles of beauty and wildness or relating to them as fellow occupants of our homes. But the kind of animal gaze examined and explored in this book is different. It has more substance and significance. It is a gaze, initiated by the animal, meditative in its quietness and stillness and which compels a response on the part of the human, as it contradicts any assumed superiority of the human over the nonhuman animal. It is the gaze of a being who actively claims his or her own subjectivity, looking at another who takes her human subjectivity as a given. A cat may look at a queen, then, as the saying goes, but does the queen look back? In this scenario, if the cat's gaze demands it, then the queen has no choice but to return the animal's gaze. In acknowledging the cat as a subject capable of looking at her, the queen is, implicitly, questioning or even undermining the typical sense of human superiority over an animal as well as decentring the human self. In doing so she challenges the human-self and animal-other divide, by responding to the cat as a fellow being, rather than as an inferior one. Such moments of interspecies communication recur in the southern African writing I consider in this book. They are moments which do not take place in a romanticised, timeless zone but in a historicised culture which animals inhabit as humans do. Western philosophy has only recently been able to accept that such an interchange may be possible. As Peter Singer points out, philosophers throughout '[wjestern civilization' thought of nonhuman animals as 'beings of no ethical significance, or at best, of very minor significance' (2004: xi). For example, Rene Descartes, the seventeenth-century French philosopher, mathematician and scientist, experimented on live dogs in the assured belief that they were unfeeling machines who could not suffer. In his wake, philosophers denigrated 'the animal' or animality until the utilitarian philosophers, Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill and Henry Sidgwick 'insisted that the suffering of animals mattered in itself (Singer 2004: xi). Even so, human concerns have predominated over those of animals. Only in the last thirty or so years, as Singer confirms, has the traditional western view of nonhuman animals begun to change: [Philosophers from a variety of ethical traditions] have argued that the interests of animals deserve equal consideration with the similar interests of humans, or that animals have rights. They have sought to bridge the ethical gap that has hitherto been perceived to exist between members of our own species and members of other species (2004: xi, emphasis added). Important as the discussion on animal rights certainly is for the lives of animals, my purpose in reading southern African narratives is to elucidate and, I hope, to contribute to debates which focus on ethics and the intersubjective relationship between human and nonhuman animals. SHIFTS IN TRADITIONAL WESTERN VIEWS OF NONHUMAN ANIMALS In his 2002 essay, 'The Animal that therefore I am (More to Follow)', Jacques Derrida contradicts Cartesian philosophies of animals as creatures lacking sentience or feeling, and posits human ontologies or theories of being in response to the gaze of an animal. His essay has been central to my practice of reading. Comically, the naked Derridean persona is embarrassed by the consciousness of his nudity because of the gaze of his small cat. She not only embodies a specular purpose like a mirror, but has a point of view and a self, although she is without 'the knowledge of self (374). Derrida's cat, in his assessment, is not just 'an exemplar of the species' but a specific 'irreplaceable living being' (378). In his essay, Derrida reframes the Genesis myth so that the animal embodies a moral agent who brings the human to awareness of good and evil rather than an unthinking creature who is ultimately responsible, like the Edenic serpent, for human shame. The animal looks back, which is what, Derrida reminds us, 'philosophy perhaps forgets' (380), for in having the cat responding rather than reacting and being capable of addressing the human, Derrida contradicts philosophers from Aristotle to Lacan (400). Literally, then, a cat can look at a philosopher which stimulates his questions about (human) being in the gaze of the animal. The'bottomless gaze' (381) of the animal demonstrates 'the naked truth of every gaze, given that that truth allows me to see and be seen through the eyes of the other, in the seeing and not just seen eyes of the other' (381). The cat is agentive, with her observant eyes, and has brought the speaker to an awareness of himself through his acceptance of the point of view of the cat. Derrida goes on to suggest that there are two possibilities: discourse by those who have never countenanced the possibility that an animal could look at them in a way which challenges their ideas of subjectivity (382); or discourse by those who (potentially only prophets or poets) can imagine engaging with the 'address' of an animal. The Derridean (playful?) provocative claim that he knows of no such poets or prophets, implicitly suggesting that they cannot exist, is a spurious one. Most of the texts which I discuss in this book attest to writers who have imagined such interchanges. Still, Derrida's consideration of the animal gaze which might (or might not) bring the human to a consciousness of being 'near what they call animal' (380) is central to this discussion in its profound challenge to the tenets of humanism or how being human has been imagined. Whether the gaze is literal or metaphoric is unimportant: the central issues here are whether the human acknowledges subjective kinship with animals and what potential emerges. KINSHIP BETWEEN HUMANS AND ANIMALS Even Jacques Derrida's commentary has its limitations, however, in relation to the subjectivity of animals. Instead of the ontological shame that is elicited by the gaze of the Derridean cat, I would like to suggest further and more relevant significances for this gaze. Derrida is inspiring, but the cat remains the 'absolute other' (380), whereas my reading of southern African fiction suggests that many writers imagine kinship between humans and animals so that their knowledge productions become 'relational epistemologies', a useful phrase from Carol J. Adams (1995: 155), referring to related theories of knowledge. [...] Abram, David 20, 94 Adams, Carol J 3, 133, 135 agency (of animals) 3, 30, 52, 60, 62, 69, 80, 83, 86, 91-92, 98, 104, 106, 112, 131, 139, 149, 159-161 moral agency 66-68, 70-72, 77-78, 83, 90 Allen, Paula Gunn 20, 160 animal subjectivity 5, 7-8, 11, 13-16, 28-29, 46, 55, 66, 78, 88, 90-93, 100, 104, 130, 151, 165 death 7, 9, 13, 32, 34-39, 41, 71, 89, 107-109, 114-117, 127, 131, 137, 140-141, 160-162 dignity 11, 124 intelligence 7, 14, 29,42, 69-72, 79, 85-87,91,93,98, 104, 106, 110, 111-117, 123, 126, 131, 133, 141 intentionality 7-8, 30,42, 51, 63, 80, 87, 91-92, 98, 106, 112, 128, 137, 139, 149, 153, 157-158, 161 sentience 2, 6, 7, 9, 12, 16, 18, 33, 47, 66, 90, 106, 115, 130, 135, 137-138, 149-150, 155 Animal Studies Group 9 Animal Voice 12 animals, rights of 2, 9, 11-12, 67-68, 78, 81,90, 136, 138, 166 abuse of 14, 40, 66, 115, 134-135 Animal Care and Protection Policy 12 Animal Protection Act 10, 12 Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) 9, 11 anthropocentrism 5-6, 22, 42, 47, 87, 120, 132 anthropomorphism/humanisation of animals 14-15, 61, 70, 84, 91, 93, 112, 121, 123, 128 apartheid 21-23, 47-48, 65-66, 76-77, 81-82, 90, 92-93, 109, 111, 122, 130 post-apartheid 11, 13-14, 47, 66, 76, 90, 120 Ardrey, Robert 70 Aristotle 2, 6 Atterton, Peter 6 Attwell, David 13 baboons 7, 13, 15, 17, 49, 59, 65-92, 117, 119, 151-152, 166 Baker, Steve Picturing the Beast: Animals, Identity and Representation 15, 80, 87 Balcombe, Jonathan Pleasurable Kingdom: Animals and the Nature of Feeling Good 5-6, 93 Basson, Dr Wouter 66 becoming-animal 4, 17, 54-56, 59-60, 68, 72-75, 87, 119-120, 132-133, 156 mother-child connections 73-75 Bekoff, Mark The Emotional Lives of Animals 5-6, 15, 68, 93 Bentham, Jeremy 2, 6 Berger, John 33, 118, 138, 166 Bergson, Henri 42 birds 37-42, 54, 144 Bosman, Herman Charles 'Unto Dust' 18, 93, 109, 116 Buchan, John Presterjohn 18,94, 108 Buddhist tradition 8, 130, 137 Calarco, Matthew 6 Carruthers, Jane 20 Cartesian philosophy of negation 3, 7, 50,144-145 human dominance over animals/ nature 118-119, 129, 131, 144-145, 159 Cartwright, Justin White Lightning 18, 67, 76-77, 82-90, 92, 120, 128, 160, 165-166 cattle 19, 21-34, 41, 43, 54, 166 Cattle Killing Movement 21-22, 24, 26, 33-34 and creation myths 19, 32 lobola 27, 31 Nongqawuse, prophecies of 21-22 chimpanzees 5 Christian/Judaeo-Christian tradition 20, 31, 96, 128, 130, 137, 140, 160, 162,164 Genesis myth 2, 20-21 Coetzee, JM Age of Iron 18,93, 112-114 Disgrace 13, 18, 117, 120, 128-141, 160, 165 The Lives of Animals 6-9, 13, 31-33, 74, 86, 115, 118, 126, 131-133, 138, 140, 149-150 Cohn-Sherbok, Dan 31, 137 colonialism 19-25, 34-38,40, 43, 54, 65, 70, 75-76, 82, 89, 92-94, 101-102, 106-109, 116, 135-136, 147, 159 post-colonialism 13, 23-24, 37-38, 45, 67, 76, 83, 89, 91 pre-colonialism 20, 24-25, 37, 166 commodification/exploitation of animals 6, 9, 27, 30, 32-33, 41, 47, 49-51, 111-112, 118, 136, 139, 152 canned hunting 46, 48-49, 64 eco-tourism 4, 47-50, 53, 62, 73, 150, 154 factory farming 150 Conrad, Joseph 21 Convention for International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) 66 Copeland, Marion 16 Couto, Mia Voices Made Night 17, 19, 21,23, 30, 37-40, 42-43,45,85, 159 Darwin, Charles 15, 68, 94 Deleuze, Gilles 4, 54-56, 84,119,128, 156 Derrida, Jacques 'The Animal that therefore I am (More to Follow)' 2-4, 6, 11, 20, 30-32, 56, 85, 89, 92, 115-116, 150, 153, 159, 161, 165, 167 'Aporias: Dying-Awaiting (One Another at) the 'Limits of Truth' 6, 162 '"Eating Well," or the Calculation of the Subject: An Interview with Jacques Derrida' 7, 9, 87, 165 Descartes, Rene 1, 7, 87 Desmond, Jane 47, 49, 150 dogs 1-2, 13, 18, 91-141, 153, 165-166 Africanis 107, 110 as pets 84, 86, 92, 117-128, 140, 167 in discourses of race 92-93, 103-104, 106-107, 109-112, 122-123 Doniger, Wendy 8, 124 donkeys 143, 146, 150-152 Douglas, Mary 36 eco-centric 24,41 eco-psychology/philosophy 4-5 ecological consciousness 41-42, 79, 83, 160-161, 166 destruction/global warming 143-148, 150, 153, 163-164, 166-167 imperialism 21, 24 indigenous/traditional ecology 21, 23, 164 elephants 15,17, 45-46,48, 50, 52 ethology 5, 68, 93 hedonic 5 feline predators leopards 17,45-46,49-52, 59-61, 63-64, 67, 72 lions 17, 38,45-46, 48, 50-59, 62-64, 67, 69, 72, 117 violence of predation 48-50 Fitzpatrick, Sir Percy Jock of the Bushveld 13,18, 93, 102-103-109, 112, 116, 166 Gaita, Raimond 115, 139, 149 Garber, Marjorie 92, 119, 128 gender 25, 68-70, 72-73, 77, 93, 96,98 animalisation of women 40 femininity 101-102 masculinity 48, 101-104, 108, 114-116, 134 paternalism 71 stereotypes 72 Gordimer, Nadine Burger's Daughter 14 Gordon, Cosmo Duff 7 Gordon, Rob 106, 122, 134 Gowdy, Barbara 17 Guattari, Felix 4, 54-56, 84, 119,128, 156 Haraway, Donna 17, 50, 65, 73, 76, 117, 145 Harlow, Barbara 13 Hearne, Vicky 15, 105, 118 Heyns, Michiel The Reluctant Passenger 18,67,76-82, 85, 87, 90 homo-centric 24 Honwana, Luis Bernardo 'We killed Mangy-Dog' 13, 17-18, 93, 109, 114-117, 120, 136 horses 7, 21, 35-37, 54, 99-100, 105, 118 Hughes, Ted 126,149 human-animal continuum 5, 7-8, 16, 21,23,25,34, 42, 78, 150, 165 human-self/animal-other dualism 4, 19, 33, 38, 42-43, 45,47, 54-55, 57, 60, 69, 76,81,93, 100-101, 126, 131, 139, 145, 156-157, 159-163, 166-167 absolute other 3, 32, 51, 57, 150, 167 hyperexclusion/hyperseparation 1, 8- 9, 14,47, 57, 69, 79, 81, 83, 85, 89, 102-103, 131 human subjectivity 1, 6, 16, 74, 79, 84-86, 89, 165-166 decentring of 1, 6, 84,117 humanism 3, 6, 49, 51, 64, 84, 86, 89, 92 identity appropriation of 5, 20, 49-50, 60-63, 80, 84, 159-160, 162 blurring of self and other 3-5, 69 cultural/traditional 10-11, 17,24 deconstruction of 45-46, 51, 82, 85, 120, 124 deterritorialised 4, 54, 58, 73, 120, 126-128, 131, 133, 140, 145, 156, 166 human 87,91-92, 109 master consciousness 5, 20, 35, 66, 130, 141, 145, 160 racialised 9, 65, 75-77, 81, 88, 90, 92-93, 101-102, 106-107, 109-112, 122-125, 135 insects butterflies/moths 143, 148-150, 158-159 praying mantis 150, 158 intersubjective/interspecies relationships 1-3, 28, 37, 46, 50, 58, 76, 84, 87-89, 91,98, 110-111, 117-119, 121, 127-128, 131, 155-156, 166-167 interconnectedness/Universal Unity 4, 53, 59, 96, 100-101, 108-109, 132 relational ontologies 2-5, 16, 19, 31-32,35,41,83,92, 115, 119-120, 125, 128, 130-131, 136, 157 sexualisation of 50-51, 73, 78-79, 125, 156-160, 166 Irigaray, Luce 150 Jabavu, Noni The Ochre People 17, 19, 21, 23, 29-31,45, 110 Jahme, Carole 73, 79 Jordan, AC Tales from Southern Africa 20,154,164 Kapleau, Roshi Philip 137 Khosa, Maria 7, 52, 54-57, 62-63 kinship between human and nonhuman animals 3, 7, 14, 17, 45, 59, 64, 68, 70, 84, 105, 140, 143 kinship, traditional African beliefs about 19-23,27-28,31,34, 38, 40-43, 45, 52, 67, 76, 85, 87, 144, 163, 166-167 amaXhosa 19, 21-22, 24, 26, 30-32, 34-36,41,54, 166 ancestors 20-24, 26, 53-57 Australian Aborigine 155 Khoikhoi/San 24, 26, 154, 167 ownership, concept of 25, 36, 118, 120, 130, 136 shamanism 4-5, 7, 17-18, 38, 45, 52-63, 117, 141, 143, 156, 160, 163-164, 166 Shangaan 52, 54, 56 Shona 52-53, 67 Kristeva, Julia 42, 73 Kruuk, Hans 48-50 language/communication 6-8, 15, 52, 62,71,74, 105, 114, 119, 124, 151, 155-158, 160, 162-163, 166 animal silence 6-7, 40, 59 Lawrence, Elizabeth 36 Levinas, Emmanuel 155-156, 159 Linzey, Andrew 31, 137 Livingstone, Douglas 29 logocentrism 6 magic realism 23, 30 Marais, Eugene My Friends the Baboons 17, 66, 69-72, 74-75, 78, 83, 90 The Soul of the Ape 13, 17, 66, 68-72, 74-76, 78 Marais, Michael 83, 86 McNeill, John 35 Mda, Zakes The Heart of Redness 7, 17, 19, 21-26, 33-37, 40-43, 45, 54, 110, 120, 144, 153 The Whale Caller 7, 13, 18, 143-145, 154-166 meerkats 15 Mhlongo, Elmon 46, 52 Midgley, Mary 14-16, 33, 84, 118, 133, 137 Mkhize, Isidore Bandile 47 modernism 22 modernity 9, 13, 20, 28, 32 59, 67, 73, 78, 80, 85, 87, 127, 143-144, 164-167 postmodernism 8, 144, 154. 164 Monbiot, George 16 Mphahlele Es'kia 'Mrs Plum' 18, 93, 109-112, 116 Murphy, Patrick 3, 24 Mutwa, Credo 7, 46, 51-52, 54, 55, 57-58, 64, 67 Landsman, Anne The Devil's Chimney 18, 125 national parks/private game reserves 48, 50 Amboseli 49 Kruger National Park 46-48 Londolozi 46, 63 Luangwa 61 Mosdene 69 Timbavati 46, 56 nature, scientific manipulation of clones 143-148, 151-154, 164 Ndebele, Njabulo 'Let's Declare 2007 "The Year of the Dog"' 16, 18, 134-135 'The Prophetess' 18, 112, 116 Nussbaum, Martha C Frontiers of Justice: Disability, Nationality, Species Membership 8, 11-13, 15,67-68, 78, 84, 89, 136, 162 Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions 93-94, 97, 112, 116 Palmer, Clare 136 Patterson, Gareth 48 Payne, Katy Silent Thunder: The Hidden Voice of Elephants 17, 45-47, 49-53, 57-58, 60,62-64, 67, 69, 117 Pechey, Laura Charlotte 83 phallogocentrism/order of phallus 9-10, 42, 165 Pickover, Michele Animal Rights in South Africa 9,66,77 Plumwood, Val Feminism and the Mastery of Nature 5,20, 42,47, 58, 127, 159-160 Poland, Marguerite Recessional for Grace 17, 19, 21-23, 27-29,31,34,38,43,45, 150 Pratt, Mary Louise 35 representation (of animals as subjects) 8, 13, 15-17, 19, 21,43, 52, 60, 70, 77-81, 83-85, 87, 89, 91, 93-95, 97, 104, 109-110, 112-113, 115-116, 123, 127-129, 131-132, 150-152, 165-168 Rodd, Rosemary 121 Rooke, Daphne Mittee 18, 86 Rorke, Melina Her Amazing Experiences in the Stormy Nineties of South-African History 18,93, 101-102 Rosenthal, Jane Souvenir 18, 143-154 sacrifice/killing of animals 9-13, 31-33,82,87-89, 114-116, 120, 128-141, 144-145, 152, 158, 160-162, 164-166 meat-eating 9-10, 33, 133-134, 165 Tony Yengeni's bull 9-10, 15, 32-33, 153, 160 Saks, Karen 49, 69, 72-76, 87, 90 Sapolsky, Robert A Primate's Memoir: Love, Death and Baboons in East Africa 79-80 Schreiner, Olive 'The Adventures of Master Towser' 93-95 The Story of an African Farm 13,18, 93,95-101, 103-104, 108-109, 112-113, 116, 166 self-reflexivity 50-51, 59, 71, 75, 82, 152 Serpell, James 118 Shapiro, Kenneth 16 Singer, Peter 1-2 Smuts, Barbara 59, 74-75, 87, 118-120, 131, 140 soul/spirituality (of animals) 3,4, 6, 19-22, 26-28, 33, 35-39, 40-41, 45, 49-50, 53-54, 56-59, 62, 70, 100, 114-118, 128, 137-138, 140-141, 144, 157, 160, 165 South African Constitution 11, 18, 67, 77, 80, 90 Spencer, Herbert 96 Spretnak, Charlene 53, 59, 62 Swart, Sandra 8,91-92, 106 Taylor, Jane 138 textuality 8 intertextuality 83-85 therianthropy (shape-shifting) 40, 54 Tiffin, Helen 61 Truth and Reconciliation Commission 66 Tucker, Linda Mystery of the White Lions 4, 7, 17, 45-47, 49-57-60, 62-64, 67, 69, 73, 89, 117 unknowability of animals 29, 82, 85, 87, 150, 165 van Houten, Gillian The Way of the Leopard 17, 45-47, 50-54, 57, 59-61, 63-64, 67, 73 van Niekerk, Marlene Triomf7, 18, 117, 120-128, 141, 166 van Riel, Fransje Life with Darwin and Other Baboons 17, 49, 66, 69, 72-76, 87, 90 van Sittert, Lance 91-92, 107 Varty, John 46, 52 Vera.Yvonne Nehanda 17, 19, 21, 23-25, 35-38, 42-43,45, 54 vivisection 66, 77-79, 81, 90 Western philosophical tradition/natural imperialism 1-2, 4, 6, 43 whales 7,13, 18, 38-39, 143-144, 154-167 'wilderness' 4, 47, 49-50, 64, 158, 160 'wildness' 17, 20-21, 37, 64-65, 83, 155, 157, 167 Winterson, Jeanette 'The 24-Hour Dog' 18, 118, 141 Wood, David 58, 87, 89, 90, 167 Yeld, John 66 |