My Research

• Animals and Human-Animal Relations in Literature, Film and Culture since 1945

• Some writers/filmmakers I study– Margaret Atwood, Angela Carter, Alice Walker, J. M. Coetzee,

John Huston, Arthur Miller, James Agee, Michel Faber, Deborah Levy

• Specifically: I am interested in – questions about ‘the politics of species’

• what kind of ethical questions does literature ask about human-animal relations

• and how does it ask them in literary ways (through character, theme, narrative, style)

Context: Animal Studies

This vibrantly developing field has exploded since the 1990s• A mode of inquiry which is inspired by non-human

animals themselves and the lives that are lived with them• and tries to explain what is intriguing about ways of

thinking about animals, imagining them and living with them. – Broadly speaking, it is interdisciplinary across the humanities

and social sciences (Literature, History, Sociology, Philosophy, Fine Art, Anthropology, Gender Studies, Politics, Geography etc etc)

• Example: Killing Animals Book

Where does this interest come from?

• New real-world conditions and new knowledge around Human-Animal relations since 1945– Exponential rise in pet-keeping– Agribusiness and massive increase in meat consumption– Experimental technoscience/transgenic animals (nature/culture

breakdown)– Diversification/massification of animal-related leisure pursuits

(zoos/animal display; Disney; horseracing/gambling)– Conservation/Anti-cruelty (welfare)/Environmentalism/Animal

Rights– Zoonotic diseases– animal intelligence / emotion sentience etc (dolphins, elephants,

chimpanzees)

What is ‘animal studies’?• A good way of thinking about Animal Studies is to compare it to the interest

in questions of gender in education since the 1970s. • There was a rise in recognition out of the feminist movement (both radical

and more liberal) that there are systematic social inequalities between men and women

• These feed into:– the kinds of questions we ask about literature– the kinds of literature we think of as important etc.

• This then drives academic studies over a period of 40 years that try to make sense of how literature addresses (and also entrenches) these issues.

• What is being done with the category of gender here is carried across with animal studies to the category of ‘species’– And just as there are cultural articulations of biological gender (masculinity,

femininity) so there are cultural articulations of biological species (‘animality’; ‘beastliness’)

Some guiding ideas

• 1. Species differences are not naturally arranged into a hierarchy of value (i.e. any such hierarchy is ideological)– Their might be hierarchies of strength, but no species of

animal is straightforwardly better than another• 2. The idea of a fixed, essential and definable

boundary between the general concepts "the human" and "the animal" is obsolete – we should think of concepts like ‘animality’ and ‘humanity’

as no more than cultural constructs like gender or ethnicity.

Approaching Animals in Literature

• The first interpretive idea that critics turn to when thinking about animals in literary or cultural texts is “anthropomorphism”.

• The representation of animals in human form– often used also to mean the representation of

humans in animal form, though that is properly called theriomorphism

• Driven by an assumption that representations of animals are always, really, just about humans

Literary ‘anthropomorphism’

• Three definitions of anthropomorphism• attributing human form to something non-human (e.g. a God, an animal

e.g. in metamorphosis stories)• attributing supposedly distinctively human behaviours to non-humans

(e.g. animal beings in clothes, speaking etc)• attributing supposedly distinctive human qualities to non-human animals

(reason, self-awareness, intentionality, purpose, volition, imagination)

– Seen as taboo because it misrepresents humanity’s superior uniqueness and animals’ inferior uniqueness• But possibly OK because it seems to be inevitable if you are to imagine

animal experience (which both scientists who need to hypothesize and writers who want to imagine worlds need to do)

• I argue that we must be very careful about zero-sum discussions of literary representation in terms of anthropomorphism

Literary ‘anthropomorphism’ and animal symbolism

• Of course: anthropomorphic animal symbolism is a rich source of stories about human social world– This works by way of

• characterisation of animals in zoo-anthropomorphic form,

• and by way of metaphor and simile that draw on and reproduce cultural knowledges about animal life (whether zoological or folkloric etc)?

Often these show next to no interest in anything resembling real experience of specific animals.

This aids the presumption that all animal representations are fundamentally about humans

Literary Anthropomorphism

• Perhaps the classic contemporary example of this form of writing is Orwell’s Animal Farm– Animal Farm is almost unanimously agreed to be an allegory about

the pitfalls of Soviet communism as the response to the Bolshevik revolution of 1917.

• Allegory is a form of fictional text in which a consistent pattern of figuration maps one (human) story onto another (animal) one. – So in the case of Animal Farm’s allegory, we find:– various animal characters (and sets of animal characters) behaving

in such ways that we recognise them as symbolic representations of recognizably human people, traits, characteristics and actions.

Animal symbolism/allegory and ‘anthropomorphic’ representation

• Orwell’s text is justly regarded as a masterpiece of the anthropomorphic form– it works an allegorical technique very subtly to generate

meaning effects that are imaginatively very rich. – In his case, the literary technique is a form of playful satire,

which is excellent at conveying a kind of befuddled, accepting, not-quite-comprehending tone• this ironises the way a population succumbs to tyranny through

being gullible• It also captures the sense that all utopian movements involve

human zealotry which is inherently self-centred.

• Close reading can bring this out.

Anthropomorphism and Animal Farm

• Anthropomorphic characterization satirizes tendencies in the revolutionary movement. Look for these as I read out the passage.

– the functional similarity between anti-religious and religious worldviews– that a new freedom from tyranny is quickly codified into a set of rules to be

followed, dogma rather than honest expression– human social groups splitting into cleverer and less clever, with cleverness

satirized as compliance and sycophancy– the fact that working for an organised commune involves completing as if it is

your own desire even harder work than you were forced to complete– the irony that zealous or utopian desires often means overlooking very pressing

realities – the tendency towards selfishness in people who conceive of themselves as

special (with piggish greed the anthropomorphism par excellence here)– the persistence of a quizzical resistance to dogma whatever happens– the duplicity and misdirection techniques of the privileged to retain their

perogatives/pleasures– the nagging truth of the persistent reality of corruption

THE SEVEN COMMANDMENTS

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy. 2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend. 3. No animal shall wear clothes. 4. No animal shall sleep in a bed. 5. No animal shall drink alcohol. 6. No animal shall kill any other animal. 7. All animals are equal.

It was very neatly written, and except that "friend" was written "freind” and one of the "S's" was the wrong way round, the spelling was correct all the way through. [A pig called] Snowball read it aloud for the benefit of the others. All the animals nodded in complete agreement, and the cleverer ones at once began to learn the Commandments by heart. "Now, comrades," cried Snowball, throwing down the paint-brush, "to the hayfield! Let us make it a point of honour to get in the harvest more quickly than Jones and his men could do."

But at this moment the three cows, who had seemed uneasy for some time past, set up a loud lowing. They had not been milked for twenty-four hours, and their udders were almost bursting. After a little thought, the pigs sent for buckets and milked the cows fairly successfully, their trotters being well adapted to this task. Soon there were five buckets of frothing creamy milk at which many of the animals looked with considerable interest.

"What is going to happen to all that milk?" said someone. "Jones used sometimes to mix some of it in our mash," said one of the

hens. "Never mind the milk, comrades!" cried Napoleon, placing himself in

front of the buckets. "That will be attended to. The harvest is more important. Comrade Snowball will lead the way. I shall follow in a few minutes. Forward, comrades! The hay is waiting."

So the animals trooped down to the hayfield to begin the harvest, and when they came back in the evening it was noticed that the milk had disappeared. (Orwell, Animal Farm, pp. 23-24)

Dangers of literary ‘anthropomorphism’

• As I said: I think that this process can be aesthetically very satisfying. • but: there is a tendency to overstate the way in which literary texts are

‘anthropomorphic’. The issue is presented as either/or:– you can either capture animal experience accurately or you can’t;– and in fact you can’t, because representations of animals always say something

about the human • (because, of course, they are made by humans because only humans can make

representations)

• The result is the presumption that every representation of animals in literature is somehow anthropomorphic.– this presumption draws on the culturally powerful scientific taboo on

‘anthropomorphism’ which exploded in the early mid-century • Which reproduces a much older opposition between scientific (empirical)

and aesthetic (imaginative) knowledge– so the defense of literary writing about animals goes like this: of course we know

the truth that all other animals aren’t like humans, but through the literary imagination we can pretend otherwise for a while (and that’s fun, or instructive)

Anthropomorphism and Animal Farm

• Look again at that example from Orwell

“But at this moment the three cows, who had seemed uneasy for some time past, set up a loud lowing. They had not been milked for twenty-four hours, and their udders were almost bursting.”

• The bodily reality of the cows is realistically represented here. This moment picks up on Old Major’s earlier comment:

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals. He sets them to work, he gives back to them the bare minimum that will prevent them from starving, and the rest he keeps for himself. Our labour tills the soil, our dung fertilises it, and yet there is not one of us that owns more than his bare skin. You cows that I see before me, how many thousands of gallons of milk have you given during this last year? And what has happened to that milk which should have been breeding up sturdy calves? (p. 9)

Beyond ‘anthropomorphism’

• As I read it animal representation here is not either/or but both/and: both about humans and about animals– this moment is about cows, the bodily reality that for

cows, managed pregnancy and forced withdrawal from suckling produces a surfeit of milk that causes pain

– it is also works allegorically, as I said: it captures the irony that zealous or utopian desires often means overlooking very pressing realities

• Here, it is interesting to reflect on Orwell’s own account of the genesis of Animal Farm:

Beyond ‘anthropomorphism’

“On my return from Spain I thought of exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone and which could be easily translated into other languages. However, the actual details of the story did not come to me for some time until one day (I was then living in a small village) I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge cart-horse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.” (George Orwell, Preface to the suppressed Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm, 1947)

An example of my current work• Shaped by a broad claim

– Human cultures must continually tell and retell themselves a story about• what animals truly are• what value they have, what humans can and should do with them, and

why that’s OK• what animality is and what it means• how humans are not the same as all the other animals

– This is going on all the time in different cultural sites (the law; the media; public/social life, private life; the arts)

– This is how we tell a story about ‘what it means to be human’• ‘Humanities’ study should actually analyse this process: try to understand it,

not act as if it is a given that we know what ‘to be human’ is

• The topic that interests me most is how these ideas play out when writers, thinkers or politicians are explicitly trying to respect/care about animal life

Animal Welfare and the ‘Big Society’

• The postwar period (1945-70) saw a huge raft of animal welfare legislation on both sides of the Atlantic– Wild prey animal protection (hunting regulation)– Domestic animal protection (Humane Slaughter regulation)– Feral Animal and commodity animal protection (animal

experimentation regulation)– Biodiversity protection (endangered species regulation)

• I am analysing how literary and filmic texts tell stories about these topics and sites– I am especially interested in how the stories they tell about animal

life are different from the stories politicians, animal protection lobbyists, journalists and lawmakers tell

John Huston’s The Misfits (1961)

• An infamous flop: last completed film of Monroe and Gable; Miller’s only filmscript; lost a fortune

• Tells the story of Roslyn (Monroe) who is trying to escape a sleazy city life in the east by living with Gay (Gable)• He is an aging cowboy who hunts mustangs for pet

food . • When she sees the reality of this she fights against him

and he eventually gives up.

Marilyn noticed that the trussed horse was bleeding from a cut in his chest. Arthur Miller told her the horse had cut himself on the fencing of the temporary corral, and Marilyn fell completely into character as Roslyn by asking John Huston if he wouldn’t just let the horse up and forget the scene that was being shot.

--James Goode, The Story of the Misfits (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), pp. 237-8.

Location shot, The Misfits, 1960

John Huston’s The Misfits (1961)

• My research uncovered the film’s close ties to the 1959 legislation to ban mustang hunting. Monroe’s character repeats the campaigning work of Velma Johnston, who led the public campaign.

• Research via many sources (congressional hearings; New Yorker journalism; contemporary reviews; biographies of Monroe and Miller’s autobiography; rare photographic archives; popular magazines; environmental history)

Photographs of Hugh Marchbank and Bill Garaventa’s mustang hunt taken by Gus Bundy in 1951; reproduced in Tom McKnight, ‘The Feral Horse in Anglo-America’, Geographical Review, 49.4 (1959), 506-25 (pp. 517-18).

John Huston’s The Misfits (1961)

• My argument is that Monroe’s work in the film seeks a kind of alliance with animal life and freedom that develops the work of the animal welfare campaigners.

• It also challenges them because even they cannot imagine (as she does) a world without the control and killing of animals.

• I’ll let her have the last word• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkPo6_EwSZ0

Work with students• Teach a module called ‘No Animals Were Harmed in the Making of this Module’ to

think through some of my questions with students– Looks at animals in film genres (Western, Sci-Fi, Animation, Screwball comedy, Horror, etc)

• Animals in Film is a new area of inquiry for me and is also a very new area of research generally.

• Realised that an encyclopaedia of animals in film would be a great resource for scholars of film but also in other disciplines who use film to teach human-animal relations

• Devised ZooScope archive with students to meet this need– Benefits: – Creative responses inspire good work– Visual imagination in their work extends students’ critical thought about their ideas– Student research lasts rather than going in a file and has public value– Practice-based skills (deadlines; self-review and editing; peer-support; collaboration and

learn from their fore-runners)– Every student makes valuable contribution