Book Reviews

Representation Cubed: Reviewing Reflections on Animal Imagery
Akira Mizuta Lippit. Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000.
Gregg Mitman. Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Randy Malamud. Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity. New York: N.Y.U. Press, 1998.
Jennifer Ham and Matthew Senior (Eds.). Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History. New York: Routledge, 1997.

Reviewed by Ralph R. Acampora
Hofstra University

What is the status of animal being in the culture of late-modern civilization? In Electric Animal, Lippit, a critical theorist of cinema, suggests in reply that "modernity can be defined by the disappearance of wildlife from humanity's habitat and by the reappearance of the same in humanity's reflections on itself: in philosophy, psychoanalysis, and technological media such as the telephone, film, and radio" (p. 2f). The first part of this thesis has been amply demonstrated by other observers in the steady stream of ecological literature decrying the literal extinction of species and diminution of wild populations worldwide. On the level of phenomenological significance and existential meaning, the marginalization of animality also has been well charted by culture commentators such as Berger (1980). Consequently, Lippit's real contribution in Electric Animal is to map out the second part of his thesis- the figurative resurrection of animal being in various forms of cultural mediation.

Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife

In effect, then, this book continues a modern discourse of "animal thanatology"- meditations on the literal passing of biological beings and the figurative demise of animality as a social force or agent- extending from Leibniz and Rousseau through Heidegger and Bataille, to the contemporary reflections of Derrida and Land.

Salient in this line of philosophy is the notion that nonhuman animals, lacking the fatal foreboding or dread of death, can never strictly be said to die- and so, if we are feeling charitable (or indulgent), might be considered immortal. By just perishing or simply vanishing, rather than performing or fulfilling the finality of mortal anxiety and anticipation, their presence lingers spectrally, and they take on the aspect of phantoms who haunt various projects of human self-consciousness and representation (pp. 33ff, 58, 187). What Lippit does with this idea is probe the theoretical and technical manifestations of such haunting. He does this in terms of (a) the unconscious (the bestial returning psychodynamically from the depths of Freudian repression); (b) literary machination (animal images spreading infectiously through fictional bodies of writing like tropic spores or rhizomes in the Deleuzean sense); and (c) celluloid cryptography (pictures of animals in cinematic and photographic contexts lending to animality an eerie, artsy afterlife).

Concretely, therefore, this book traces the re-emergence of animals into human experience by their occupying new niches in now technological environments of reproductive media (pp. 25, 184f). For example, wildlife relocates from outdoor adventure to indoor theater, from landscape to movie screen. On a more abstract level, Lippit tries to milk metaphysics out of this metamorphosis: In chapter 6, he writes that the ontology of animality has outlived or transcended the degraded and waning biological realm of nature by mobilizing "animetaphoric" apparitions in the industrial machine.

If such an interpretation seems far-fetched, it at least has the virtue of serving as a salutary heuristic. For instance, by thematizing the meaning of animal being under the aspect of mobility- by metaphorizing animality into animation- we create a critical space in which to reassess the ontological purchase of motion (or change) itself. Hence, if the Western tradition historically has devalued movement/alteration as such, a philosopher like Bergson might be appreciated anew for his attempt to overcome the traditional metaphysics of presence: "Being = rest or the immutable" (p.86). Thus, Lippit's emphasis on the cultural importance of what he calls "animetaphor" may be seen as valorizing an ontology of animacy in which both fauna and films aid, at once, our understanding of reality existing primordially on the move.

Whatever Electric Animal's metaphysical contribution, it might be suspected that morally the book represents a backhanded apology for the anthropogenic animal holocaust of the past two centuries. Diversity extinguished of late? No problem, Lippit could be misunderstood to be saying, we've got all the animals back in spades- reincarnated metaphorically in/at/as the movies, as prime movers of a redemptively artistic and technological imaginary. Reading Lippit this way- as the misguided Noah of modernity's cinematic culture- would ignore the grief that grounds his work. At one point, he even goes so far in lamentation as to claim that "modern technology can be seen as a massive mourning apparatus, summoned to incorporate a disappearing animal presence that could not be properly mourned because, following the [thanatic] paradox to its logical conclusion, animals could not die" (p. 188).

Still, the ethically oriented reader may legitimately wonder whether the volume at hand furnishes any moral upshot to the sad story of animality's diminishment. Certainly, it is not to Lippit's purposes to supply normative principles or to carry out exercises in casuistry. That said, however, I do believe a certain and relevant meta-ethics can be teased from Electric Animal's "rhetoric of wildlife": namely, that evaluations of our interrelationships with other forms of life are better pursued by attending to the functions of animetaphors in human cognition and culture than by extending ecological principles into bioethical theories. In this regard, it would not be off base to say that Lippit plays the part of a post-modern (rather than the original, Pleistocene) Shepard (1996), engaging us in aesthetic axiology of "minding animals" so as to prize and preserve their presence among and within us. The post-structural spin that Electric Animal puts on such an enterprise- including a writing style of fragmentary eclecticism- may annoy those hunting for analytical arguments, but aficionados of continental European thought can find in Lippit a congenial guide to the aporias of animality in the milieus of modernity.

Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film

For those who wish to go more deeply into the detailed history of animals' advent onto the lens of cinematic consciousness, Mitman provides a welcome opportunity to learn about many more particular instances of nature film and wildlife television than Lippit covers in his less empirical study. An historian of science, Mitman surveys the evolution of animality on American video from Disney and Flipper to Wild Kingdom and the Discovery Channel. Interestingly, this closer investigation into the nuts and bolts of animal imagery production and broadcast leads to a decidedly more negative conclusion than the (however ambivalent) affirmation of electrified animality proffered by Lippit. According to Mitman, the history of animal videography reveals a consolidation of ontological apartheid between the species:

By making animals into spectacle rather than beings we engage with in work and play, nature films and other recreations of nature reinforce th[e] dichotomy of humans and nature. In nature as spectacle, the animal kingdom exists solely to be observed, objectified, and enjoyed. We have our world, and they have theirs. (p. 206)
There is good reason to be worried about this observation because such separation interrupts the interaction that arguably is necessary to an appreciation of animality as such. "Conditioned by nature on screen," Mitman argues, "we may fail to develop the patience, perseverance, and passion required to participate in the natural world with all its mundanity as well as splendor" (p. 207).

Contrast Mitman's perspective with the assessment rendered by Malamud, and you will wonder whether the two authors are commenting on the same genre- perhaps, but then they probably have watched different exemplars. In Reading Zoos, Malamud claims that many nature documentaries "are of high quality, educationally profuse, sensitive to a range of issues about animals' lives and interrelated ecological concerns regarding the shared world of people and other species" (p. 254).

Is the difference between Mitman's and Malamud's evaluation a simple demonstration of the proverbial half-empty/half-full glass or, in this case, camera? Partially, yes, but for their readers to see it this way would be to lose sight of the authors' divergently critical foci: Mitman fixes his critique squarely on wildlife films as such, whereas Malamud is concentrating on zoological exhibitions and, in this context only, comparatively judges nature shows as better than zoos in terms of biological representation.

Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals in Captivity

Malamud starts out from the twin premises that it is ecologically and ethically important for us to learn as much as we can about natural states of animals- but that any learning process is going to be socio-culturally mediated. Given this, Malamud contends, "such mediation should be as unobtrusive as possible; if representations are destined to distort reality in some way, they should strive to do so as little as possible" (p. 257). According to Malamud's lesser-of-evils estimate, finally, (much) animal videography has been more successful here than (most) zoos have.

One can, of course, debate this last judgment- certainly, for instance, the rise on North American television of a channel such as Animal Planet ought to interrupt any easy acceptance of Malamud's view against Mitman's. Instead of settling the score between Reel Nature and Reading Zoos, however, I think it may be more fruitful for us to weigh the assumption- shared by both- that socio-cultural mediation of representation is an epistemically constitutive and (hence?) ethically corruptive influence on awareness of animals. Must we partake in this presumption, which runs the risk of placing all analyses of animality on a slippery slope into radically relativistic forms of idealism? Is it true, for example, that "the notion of a 'real animal' makes no sense" because "animals are human constructions"? (Mullan & Marvin, 1987, pp. 6, 3)

I would submit that these questions are most appropriately answered in the negative. Obviously and unavoidably, our representations of other organisms are socially constructed- yet, recognition of that does not commit us automatically to believing animals themselves (or any natural entities) are created by us. One cannot, of course, express anything about the bare world of nature without dressing it up in linguistic or artistic clothing; nonetheless, the postulate that another reality- besides myself or us- is subject and party to (not merely an object in or construction of) my/our discourse and deeds is more plausible than the idea that I/we make the world entirely out of words and/or actions. There is no need, it seems to me, to impale ourselves on the false dilemma underlying so much of the literature in animal studies; namely, regarding representation, either to insist on transparency of truth-as-correspondence or to charge complicity with construction-as-corruption. Overlooked by these polarities of interpretation is that it may be possible for "translucent" mediation of cognition to represent nature sufficiently well for us to arrive at value-laden yet non-arbitrary views of animals as they are- not "in themselves" but in relation to their human, organic, and geographic environments.

Although this is not the place for a protracted discussion of technical philosophy, it should be indicated at least that in advocating an ecological brand of "soft realism" I am not alone. Ecosopher Rolston, III (1997) reminds us, "[T]here is always some sort of cognitive framework within which nature makes its appearance, but that does not mean that what appears is only the framework" (p. 43).

What is helpful about Rolston's approach is his willingness to forego the polemical pendulum swing between foundationalism and relativism. "We may not have noumenal access to absolutes," he admits, and yet "we do have access to some remarkable [natural] phenomena that have taken place and continue to take place outside our minds, outside our cultures" (Rolston, p. 49). Of course, this access is not pure- neither purely objective nor purely subjective. It is a transactional dynamic of interrelationship. As such, it is best understood not as an impossible transcendence of perspective nor as some stultifying solipsism (whereby knowledge comes only in the first person) but rather as taking place between knower and known and capable of yielding enough awareness of the latter by the former to enable a negotiation or navigation of what phenomenologists call the lifeworld- a range of everyday experience shared with other forms of life (in both the cultural and biotic senses of the term).

Animal Acts: Configuring the Human in Western History

Beyond realist-constructionist controversy, it should be pointed out, there runs another line of animal studies that deconstructs debates on the nature and scope of representational knowledge in an effort to refocus attention on what animal imagery says about us humans. Animal Acts is a show case volume that gathers an impressive variety of such studies- the essays therein are authored by several kinds of humanities' scholars, chiefly literary theorists and comparative critics. As I cannot do justice here to the collection in its entirety, two exemplary contributions should suffice for present purposes.

The first piece, "Audubon's Ornithological Biography and the Question of 'Other Minds,'" is written by James Armstrong (pp. 103-126) and illustrates the afore-mentioned deconstructive maneuver. Any who view Audubon's avian portraits cannot help feeling something almost Rockwellian in the endeavor to embody a classic/iconic personification. Not merely attempting to re-present biological morphology, these birds are painted by Audubon in a manner at once contextual and narrative-so as to effect in the viewer a sentimental identification with the birds' subjectivity. The problem for Armstrong is that because so-called other minds (especially those of other species) are, by definition, private entities and, hence, inaccessible as strict objects of putative knowledge, Audubon's artwork cannot achieve its ultimate representational ambition. In this way, Armstrong casts a skeptical shadow over the epistemic pretensions of animal imagery.

Were we to take cognitive success as the only measure of value (and limit ourselves to a correspondence theory of truth), we would have good reason to condemn some of what are usually considered the best-wrought pictures of animals. The editors of Animal Acts, however, exhort us to move beyond the positivist paradigm of judgment and to replace the program of biological representation with a writerly or artistic performance of animality. "The project of the animal act," according to Ham and Senior, "is to con-figure the human with the animal, to write [or produce] zoomorphically and anthropomorphically, to define zones of animality in the human and zones of humanity in the animal" (p. 2).

One of the best exemplars of this enterprise is the Gary Larson strip series of cartoons, The Far Side. In "Humanimals and Anihumans in Gary Larson's Gallery of the Absurd," Charles Minahen (pp. 231-252) interprets Larson as a late-modern shaman who- rather than enforcing an epistemo-logical subject-object relationship between humans and animals- institutes an ontology of interpenetrating species identifications. Take a look at the frame reproduced below, "The Beast Boy." Here, as Minahan clearly demonstrates, the presentation is not to be read as an attempt to accurately portray the insect-in-itself- no, Larson draws us instead into a satirical subversion of humane perspectives that comically compels us to reconsider the nature of our own inhumanity and the personalities of "lesser" life forms.

Figure 1. Far Side Gallery 4: 54 (Kansas City: Andrews McMeel, 1993)
(figure not available online)

Some readers might be put off by Animal Acts' performative approach to animality. What licenses Ham and Senior's group of authors and critics apparently to abandon (the representation of) actual animals and valorize (the production of) imaginary ones? Animal advocates especially could find themselves wondering whether such a move amounts merely to mental masturbation, effectively dodging a duty to correctly portray and champion the genuine interests of other organisms. Oddly enough, given his otherwise realist/bioethical compunctions, Malamud explicitly has defended building "bestiaries of the mind." In this connection, he favorably cites the poetry of Marianne Moore and the engravings of Albrecht Dürer (the famously impressive but scientifically inaccurate woodcut, Rhinocerus) claiming that, " an animal of the imagination is a more fitting thing to expect from artists, from people and for people, as a representation of nature than an imperial appropriation of the thing itself" (p. 340). Of course, if attracted to the idea, one then needs to brush up on the aesthetics of animal artwork- and for that task, I would commend to your attention Steve Baker's latest offering, The Postmodern Animal (London: Reaktion, 2000).

Afterword

Curiously and coincidentally, just as I am finishing the present set of reflections, two of the reviewees have been quoted in the current issue of a leading academic newspaper. Invited to comment on the significance of zoötic clothing designs, Lippit points out that they "serve a totemic function" in allowing us to "take on some of that animal's properties," while Malamud states that they "are culturally dangerous because they blind us to the reality of the real animals" (Anonymous, 2000, p. 4). Animal act and authentic animal: The dialectic of performance and representation continues…

References

Acampora, R. R. (in press). Real animals? An inquiry on behalf of a relational zoontology. Human Ecology Review.

Anonymous. (2000, December 1). Deconstruct this- animal prints: In this year's fashion jungle, beastly patterns are the sincerest form of fakery. The Chronicle of Higher Education, S. 2, p. 4.

Berger, J. (1980). Why look at animals? About looking. (1980). New York: Pantheon.

Mullan, B., & Marvin, G. (1987). Zoo culture. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Rolston, H., III. (1997). Nature for real: Is nature a social construct? In T. D. J. Chappell (Ed.), The philosophy of the environment (pp. 38-64). Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.

Shepard, P. (1996). The others: How animals made us human. Washington, DC: Island Press.

 

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