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The Illumination of the Animal Kingdom:
The Role of Light and Electricity in Animal Representation
Jonathan Burt
This essay addresses the subject of animal representation via
an historical account of the place of the animal in visual
culture. It emphasizes the relationship between the animal as a
visual image and the technology that produces this image. It
explores three examples in a period covering c.1895 to the
1930s, in Britain, that analyze the relations between animal
representation, technology, and the public domain. These are
film, zoo display, and slaughterhouse practice. The overall goal
of the essay is to move away from emphasis on the textual,
metaphorical animal, which reduces the animal to a mere icon, to
achieve a more integrated view of the effects of the presence of
the animals and the power of its imagery in human history.
“[s]i l’animal a le temps, s’il est «constitué» par un «temps»”
[“[w]hether the animal has time, whether the animal is
‘constituted’ by a ‘time.’”] (Derrida, 1999, p. 273)
The history of animals is, among other things, the history of
the disappearance of the animal, and there are two slightly
different senses in which we might understand the idea of this
“history of disappearance.” The first relates to a process that
has been going on for a long time but in recent decades has
accelerated alarmingly, namely the gradual disappearance of
species of all forms of wildlife and the reduction in global
biodiversity.
The second sense, which might be expressed more accurately by
the term, "effacement" rather than "disappearance," concerns the
ways in which the representation of the animal- indeed the
history of animal representation- is limited to a human
framework or where the animals are depicted as if they were
quasi-human (anthropomorphism). In such instances, the animal is
overlaid with metaphors of human characteristics or becomes the
bearer of purely human concerns.
Clearly, the second sense of disappearance is not as absolute
and certainly is more partial than the first. However, modes of
representation have a widespread impact on the way animals are
culturally conceived and structure our attitudes to the real
disappearances of animals. Furthermore, and this is the main
concern of this essay, the way in which we portray animal
representation has a crucial bearing on how we portray the place
of animals in history and the trajectory such a history is
conceived to take.
One of the ironies of animals' not speaking is that so much
should be written about the animal as a symbol conveying human
meaning. Most of the relations humans have with animals and
their reactions to animals are founded in the realms of emotion,
instinct, and, in problematic ways, desire. There are
exceptions: Communication is significant in companion animal
care taking and, more directly, in the ape language projects.
Furthermore, many aspects of animal-human relations are bizarre.
One of the most commonly noted examples of this is the
inconsistency between the celebration of animals in, say, nature
films or pet-keeping and the simultaneous sanctioning of, or
presiding over, the destruction of animal life on an enormous
scale. It is, perhaps, to avoid the full implications of this
strangeness that we choose to find a place for them in a
well-organized cultural logic that divides the animal world into
categories like pet, vermin, threatened species, and expendable
species. Certainly, a logic of sorts can be identified at the
practical interface between animals and humans, but, in truth,
it is multi-faceted and the representations that arise there
usually over-determined and contradictory.
Generally, problems that arise in relation to the representation
of animals are exacerbated by the conceptual dyad of
human-animal and, by extension, culture-nature. These
oppositions concentrate on, in the sense of bringing into focus,
issues of symbolic difference and human identity, but there is a
temptation to make this the template, or dominant terminology,
by which we write about animals. This also leads to a tendency
to make animals fit in with the dominant concerns and anxieties
of a particular period, playing down the ways that they may be
read against the grain of an epoch or culture. A good instance
of this can be found in a study of the London Zoo in the
nineteenth century: “[A]nimals were to be viewed as metonyms of
imperial triumph, civic pride, and the beneficence of God or
scientific discovery” (Jones, 1997, p. 5). Such a remark ignores
other more ambivalent and contradictory discourses that
surrounded the Zoo at the time, such as those that saw the Zoo
as a site of animal indecency or cruelty. In addition, the
metaphorical or metonymic status of the animal leads to the
animal's being treated as a type of tabula rasa that can signify
anything we wish. A contemporary example of this can be found in
Lippit (2000): Animals “simply transmit … [they are] unable to
withhold the outflow of the flow of signals and significations
with which they are endowed.” (p. 21).
It is ironic that within the strictures of the human-animal
divide the animal should have such an arbitrary and shifting
representational status. It is a measure of how difficult it is
to escape from this pattern of thinking that even when the terms
“human” and “animal” are explored in ways that radically contest
their familiar meanings, as in Derrida (1999), the conclusion,
of this text at least, is a series of questions. They start
with, “What is an animal?” and end with a question about
self-identity, “Who am I?” (p. 301). Ironically, given the
conceptual radicalism of much post-modernist writing, Derrida
here follows a predictable path: the passage from the animal
that always leads back to the human.
The problem that arises for the study of animals in history is
that treating the animal as an icon, paradoxically, places the
animal outside history. The role is purely symbolic; it reflects
historical processes without truly being part of them. Being
detached from what might be called the historical dynamics of a
culture makes it difficult to assess the manner in which animals
influence these dynamics. This is one of the reasons why the
animal often is associated with the archaic and nostalgic rather
than change, “progress,” or even modernity. Historians who have
tended to focus on the human meanings conveyed or embodied in
animals have reinforced this sense of the ahistorical. Kete
(1994) describes the bourgeois pet in 1860s and 1870s Paris as
the “counter-icon of the scientific, and dehumanised, age”
(p.7). French (1975) considers the anti-vivisectionists of the
late nineteenth century in England to be protesting at the
“shape of the century to come” (p. 212). Ritvo (1987 describes
the early nineteenth century attitude to nature as one of
sentiment and nostalgia because nature has “ceased to be a
constant antagonist” (p. 3).
To associate the animal with types of conservatism emphasizes
that many histories of animal representation also are subject to
the same structural principles as the ones they are describing.
In addition, the choices of themes such as pedigree and
breeding, civic values, and empire give animals a formidable
cultural weight while reducing their role to one that is merely
totemic. (I hasten to add that these studies are invaluable, and
it is more a question of supplementing than rejecting them.)
To supplement such studies with an account of representation
that is driven more by the idea of animals as figures in their
own right does not mean writing a more optimistic or sunnier
history of human-animal relations. In this particular study,
which involves looking at the impact of electricity and
illumination on various aspects of animal representation, the
animal has a prototypical status derived from being an
experimental object. Although this status evolves from its role
in science, the technological aspects of animal representation
that derive from this science are very much part of the popular
domain. Thus, animals have complicated roles to play. Animals
become central figures in the presentation of new and
“progressive” technology. They are represented as acting beings
in their own right. They are locked into discourses of health,
moral improvement, conservation, and vitality.
These discourses, to a large extent, are future oriented and
concern the improving paths society needs to take. In this
instance, animals do not lead back to the human in quite the way
they do in anthropomorphic discourse. Instead, the animal has a
more ambivalent role because these technologies entail other
ramifications such as social control and efficiency. It also is
important to note that the media of animal representation are
crucial to its analysis; in such a context, whether we are
dealing with the twentieth century or earlier, the relations of
animal to technology are just as important as relations to the
human.
Changing Configurations of Animal Visibility and Invisibility
The disappearance of species and the effacement of the animal in
anthropomorphism have no intrinsic relation to each other as
such. . However, there is an important argument famously
proposed by Berger (1980) to suggest a causal relation between
the disappearance and extinction of animals and an increasing
diffusion of animal imagery, particularly given that they
coincide historically during the nineteenth century (p. 24). In
other words, animal representation comes to compensate for the
growing absence of the animal in daily life.
At one level, Berger (1980) is incorrect, given the widespread
variety of animal representation. Furthermore, the growth of
animal representation in film, photography, and print, which is
particularly noticeable toward the end of the nineteenth
century, coincides with the expansion of the animal welfare
movement and nature conservation (Kean, 1998; Grove, 1995).
Berger, however, does point us in an important direction,
because the ways in which the animal is seen and not seen- the
connection between presence and absence- do change in the
nineteenth century and, thus, have a direct bearing on animal
representation. Changes in configurations of animal visibility
and invisibility not only determine the style of presentation of
animals in the public domain but also demarcate the boundaries
of how animals should be treated in a civilized society.
Unfortunately, as I shall now show, the interaction of animals
with the technologies of visual culture, which in many ways
determine their representation, cause these boundaries to be
highly porous.
The link between vision and cruelty already was an important
component in the history of animal welfare from the early years
of the nineteenth century on and has considerable impact in
making the animal, in certain moral and political contexts, a
powerful visual image. A great part of animal welfare history in
the nineteenth century, both at the level of state legislation
and the activities of societies such as the Royal Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSPCA), dealt with the
question of how animals were seen to be treated and implicitly
linked the issue of cruelty to the visual order. This was
manifested in a succession of bills beginning with the 1809 Act
to prevent malicious and wanton cruelty to animals.
One of the inspirations behind the formation of the RSPCA in
1824 was the sight of animals being driven to Smithfield Market
in London. The issue of visual order was an important factor in
increasing control exercised over all sorts of different domains
of animal-related practice- including bear baiting, vivisection,
slaughter, or the clearing of the city streets of strays. An
interesting feature of a Bill in 1857 was that children under 14
should not be permitted in slaughterhouses to witness killing
(See Figure 1). In the 1876 Act laying down the rules for
vivisection, public lectures involving vivisection were banned
and restrictions placed on its use in illustrating lectures in
medical schools. If cruelty was to take place, it was to be
behind closed doors and under license. Vialles (1994) describes
parallel events in France. Napoleon’s reforms of the meat trade
in 1806 slowly led to slaughterhouses being moved from the
centers of towns and made increasingly anonymous
architecturally. This transformation was paralleled textually in
the twentieth century in successive editions of the Larousse
encyclopedia in which pictures of activities within the abattoir
were replaced in the 1982 edition by a diagram of its functions.
(pp. 24-27).
Figure 1 (figures not available online)
In all these instances, the emphasis is not just on visibility
but also on what might be called the appropriate seeing of the
animal. In the context of some remarks on the early nineteenth
century, Kean (1998) writes,
[C]hanges that would take place in the treatment of animals
relied not merely on philosophical, religious or political
stances but the way in which animals were literally and
metaphorically seen. The very act of seeing became crucial in
the formation of the modern person. (pp. 26-27)
I would like to extend this remark by adding the phrase, “and
the modern animal.” What this also means is that the seeing of
the animal becomes, in certain circumstances, a complex act that
combines a preoccupation with the humane alongside codes that
sanction animal killing or experimentation in areas outside the
field of public vision. Where animals are seen, they become in
some respects- to adapt a book title (Rose, 1986)- bearers of
morality in the field of vision.
The contemporary counterpart of this can be found in the
centrality of visual imagery to animal politics. Jasper and
Paulsen (1995) emphasize this in a comparative study of
anti-nuclear and animal rights protesters whereby the image of
the animal is understood as a powerful condensing symbol for a
range of human emotions and reactions: “[T]he visual images used
in animal rights recruitment have a simple but effective
structure based on good versus evil” (p. 505).
The historical background that links the visual to the moral is
important in explaining the power of animal imagery, but it also
needs to be considered in conjunction with the technology of the
media that articulatesthese images. Not only are animals linked
in to a progressive, or improving, framework of civilized
behavior, they also are, in a parallel manner, integrally
related to the development of a technology that will enhance
their visibility. I am now going to take two examples of this:
moving film and changing contexts of animal display at the
London Zoo in the early twentieth century.
Film
In the early decades of moving film, from 1895 on, animals
appeared in an extraordinary diverse and flourishing medium.
Striking examples include (a) Edison’s “Electrocuting an
Elephant” (1903), (b) the microscopic insect films and stop
motion studies of Percy Smith, (c) Cherry Kearton’s hunting
films from Africa, and (d) the racy entertainments of Colonel
Selig.
In these instances, the novelty of film was reinforced by the
novelty value of animals as well as birds and insects. However,
the significance of the animal was due not only to imagery as
such but also to the integral links between the powerful
potential of representing animals and the technological
challenges such a complex object for depiction presented.
Animals were an important motive force in driving the new
technology of moving film as well as being, in some senses, its
inspiration. Historically, the sequential photographic work of
Eadward Muybridge, Jules-Etienne Marey and Ottomar Anschütz in
the 1870s and 1880s depicted all manner of living creatures and
explored techniques important to the development of moving film;
namely, increasingly refined timing mechanisms, fast film, and
precision in camera design to capture the rapid movement of
animal and human bodies.
It could be said that, until recently, the tremendous
significance of the representation of animals in moving film and
still photography was in inverse proportion to scholarly
interest in the topic. To some extent, this has been due to an
emphasis on the textual animal at the expense of the visual
animal and explains the predominant focus on animals as
metaphors or signs. This does not mean that these symbolic
elements are absent from animal representation on film. The
power of the film image, however, and its relationship to the
visual status of the animal in public contexts means that this
type of animal representation relates much more to collective
aspects of the field of human-animal relations than to
particular instances within it. In fact, film straddles a number
of cultural fault-lines-most notably those that relate to
entertainment and education- as well as crossing back and forth
over the dividing line between the humane and the cruel.
In line with the idea that the good treatment of animals in
public connotes a decent standard of civilization, early animal
films also were seen as improving. A National Council of Public
Morals (1917) report was primarily concerned with the need to
raise the tone of cinema programs. Educational films, such as
nature studies, were considered an important tool in this
process. But the report also recognized that these would not be
able to compete with, say, Charlie Chaplin films or the exploits
of Elaine, unless they, themselves, were in some ways
entertaining (National Council of Public Morals, p. lix).
In theory, however, humane concerns were to balance the needs of
entertainment. From the inception of the British Board of Film
Classification in 1913, animal cruelty was one of the grounds
listed for cutting or banning a film. This category became more
detailed in subsequent years specifying activities like
cock-fighting, branding, and- more bizarrely- animals gnawing
men and children (Robertson, 1985, pp. 20-21; Low, 1997, p. 91).
However, the inevitable tension between the need for
entertainment and the humanitarian and educational potential of
nature films was never resolved, and this was reflected most
profoundly in the occasional examples of animal death on film.
Nor did this rule out instances in which the making of film
entailed fatal consequences for animals. When death did occur,
however, it usually was treated as the consequence of a natural
process, not something unnecessarily contrived for the camera.
The killing of animals on film has a long precedent. One of the
first films made was of a Seville Bullfight in 1896. The
limitation of short lengths of film in the early motion picture
cameras meant that only snatches of the bullfight were captured-
but enough to see a horse being gored and, at the end of the
film, the dead carcass being dragged from the arena. Other early
examples include Cherry Kearton’s Lion Hunting in Africa (1910),
in which the Masai kill a lion. Some scenes of animal death were
more contrived, such as the setting up of artificial animal
combat, a photographic tradition that goes back to Muybridge, or
the provoking of wild animals to charge onto the camera and then
shooting them. This marked a number of safari films in the 1920s
and 1930s (Bousé, 2000, pp. 42-43; Imperato & Imperato, 1992, p.
112).
The comparison with pornography that Bousé (2000) makes when
discussing the issue of animal death on film highlights the
particularly charged nature of animal imagery. Taking the
parallel further, it also draws attention to the combination of
repulsion and fascination that marks a response to certain kinds
of animal representation and relates, in turn, to the
problematic negotiation between co-existing humane and cruel
impulses. Even with the most worthy of intentions, such as in
the cause of animal welfare, the photographic exploration of
cruelty has a strong voyeuristic streak. In 1914, the Times
(Anonymous, 1914) reported a film made by the RSPCA to protest
at decrepit horse traffic. Toward the end of the film,
[B]y way of an argument in favour of a humane killer, the film
shows a primitive method of slaughtering the unfortunate beasts
by driving a knife into the chest. As the blood surges out the
animal’s death struggles are seen with repulsive realism. The
Society itself admits that these pictures cannot be shown in
public, however vividly they prove the need for some improvement
of existing conditions. (p. 6)
As the above example shows, the issue of voyeurism is determined
also by the rules of what should be seen publicly, creating
taboo imagery and associating the idea of animal cruelty with
concealment and invisibility. Hence, as an ironic repetition of
the secret filming of wildlife from hides, present day secret
filming in laboratories and other institutions by animal rights
activists is a further consequence of a long process that has,
in so many contexts, saturated the visual animal image with
moral connotations.
Zoo Display
These considerations are not confined to film. Another example,
which again relates animal representation to technology as part
of a vision of historical progress, concerns changes in zoo
display at the London Zoo during the 1903 to 1935 secretaryship
of Peter Chalmers Mitchell. In a similar situation to film- and
it was a parallel of which the Zoo was well aware- the Zoo
needed to achieve a balancing act between entertainment and its
interest in animal welfare. Under Mitchell, programs were
instituted to improve the health and longevity of animals in
captivity, which Mitchell saw as the main purpose of the Zoo
(Mitchell, 1911, p. 545). An important example of this was the
creation of displays exploiting fresh air and light,
particularly for primates.
Because the health anxieties of the Zoo were comparable to those
of the population at large- especially with regard to rickets
and tuberculosis- the solutions explored, such as improved
ventilation and exposure to sunshine, also were similar.
Exposing animals to increased doses of ultra-violet light using
either quartz bulbs or a special window glass- labeled
appropriately as “Vitaglass”- that did not filter out
ultra-violet rays from the sun, was another feature of this
process.
As discussed above, there are a number of respects in which this
policy had a direct bearing on the issues of visual
representation. As with film, the significance and
attractiveness of the animal in the zoo was that the animal was
not simply an object but also an event. From an entertainment
point of view, the more dynamic the event the greater the
interest, and the need for dynamism was directly related to the
issue of animal health. Mitchell (1929) claimed that some of his
ideas concerning fresh air had derived from the work of Hill, a
one-time colleague of his at the London Hospital Medical School
(p. 189). Hill had published a number of studies that promoted
the idea that bodily vigor and good health were derived from
exposure to sunlight and fresh, preferably cold, air.
Confinement in “still, warm atmospheres and lack of open-air
exercise dull the fire of life and, together with lack of
sunlight, produce the deleterious effects of city life on the
physical development” (Hill, 1925, p. 107).
The show-piece manifestations of this thinking at the Zoo were
bare environments that, in the interests of cleanliness, avoided
clutter and gave clear passage to the elements deemed important
for health. They also served to make the animal even more
starkly visible. In the Experimental Monkey House, a temporary
building erected in 1925 and designed to exploit the advantages
of fresh air and ultraviolet light, all the surfaces were made
of some form of impermeable material- whether glazed bricks,
concrete, or asphalt. The Monkey Hill, a display of a community
of Hamadryas baboons on an artificial rockscape separated from
the public by a ditch, was another example of this. Inside the
Hill were heated quarters containing quartz bulbs for
ultra-violet lighting. Opened in 1925, this exhibit placed no
obstruction such as bars or mesh between the viewer and the
animals and intended to highlight the animal as living in a near
natural state.
Many aspects of the Monkey Hill lent the display to
anthropomorphic readings- particularly in the treatment given to
it by the popular press- but it is worth highlighting the way
the display was peculiarly like film. Given that there was no
need to forage for food, which takes up a vast amount of time in
the wild, the baboons became hyperactive socially, spending
disproportionate amounts of time in sexual behavior and
fighting. Rather in the way that film cuts down on the mundane
to focus on the exciting, so a significant part of baboon
behavior had been effectively edited out.
There also was a stage-like quality to the rockscape with its
small semi-concealed entrances leading back into the rock, and
it is no coincidence that another theatrical display, the
chimpanzee’s tea party, was introduced a short time afterwards
in 1927. It also exploited its prototypical quality as an
expression, or representation, of the healthy community in an
urban environment. Some newspapers picked up on the implications
of the display for human health, asking why monkeys at the Zoo
should be given a treatment that was not made widely available
to children and slum-dwellers. “Should baboons have the sun and
air that babies are denied?” (Saleeby, 1926). It was suggested
that the design principles at the Zoo should be extended to the
dwellings of human beings However, Monkey Hill also combined
these utopian intentions, as far as issues of collective health
were concerned, with tragedy. The fighting due to pressure of
space and sexual dominance conflicts led to numerous fatalities,
mainly among the female baboons (Zuckerman, 1981, pp. 219-223).
As with film, the baboons represented the idea of social
improvement while suffering from the framing structures that
illuminate such representation.
Invisibility and Humane Killing
My final example, which concerns the history of electrical
stunning in slaughterhouses, relates to concealment and
invisibility. Although this subject has a different relationship
to representation in the public domain from film and zoo
display, in many respects the practices in all these examples
are structured in similar ways. Historically, animals were
crucial both to the exploration of the properties of electricity
and its conceptualization. Apart from rudimentary experiments
exploring the effects of the electrocution on animals and birds,
the first significant experiment that incorporated part of the
animal body into an electric current was performed in 1753 by
Giambatista Becaria. He demonstrated the stimulation of muscular
contractions by passing an electric spark through the exposed
thigh muscles of a live cock (Rowbottom & Susskind, 1984, p.
34). Toward the end of the eighteenth century, Galvani and Volta
made significant contributions to the development of electrical
theory, particularly through their debates on the nature of what
was termed “animal electricity,” basing much of their work on
the electrical stimulation of parts of animal (and human) bodies
(Pera, 1991; Galvani, 1953). Through its use in medicine in the
later eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, electricity came to
be seen as both cathartic and rejuvenating. Paralyzed limbs
could be revitalized, and, later, as electro-convulsive therapy
(ECT) appeared to demonstrate from the late 1930s on, obstacles
to sound mental functioning could be cleared. In fact, the
experimental groundwork for working out the dosages for ECT was
conducted by Ugo Cerletti on hogs in a Rome slaughterhouse. From
a cultural point of view, the cleansing aspect of electricity
incorporated both moral and physical connotations. However, the
most significant historical episode in the development of the
electrical stunning of animals was the development of execution
by electrocution, and two elements of this particular story
concern us here.
First, electrocution was seen as a “cleaner,” and hence morally
more acceptable form of killing. Second, it reflected a shift
from what was seen by some as the barbarism of public hangings
to something more private and efficient. In other words, it was
a process in keeping with a more civilized and technological
modernity. Again, animals were crucial to its development.
Alfred Southwick, a dentist from Buffalo and an important
promoter of this mode of execution in the 1880s, excited the
interest of the head of the Buffalo Society for the Prevention
of Cruelty to Animals, who had been looking for an alternative
to drowning unwanted pets and strays (Brandon, 1999, pp. 20ff).
In the 1880s, animals, particularly strays, were used in large
numbers to establish what constituted a lethal dose (Brandon, p.
59). Sometimes, this even was done in a public demonstration,
including Harold Brown’s notorious “canine execution show” (not
the actual title of his lecture series!) that traveled round New
York State electrocuting up to a dozen dogs in an evening
(Brandon, p. 78). In 1887 and 1888, Edison also presided over
similar experiments at his West Orange laboratory in New Jersey.
Some were attended by members of the public and journalists in
an atmosphere, summarized by one recent commentator, as “a cross
between a circus side show and an abattoir” (Metzger, 1996, p.
99). These experimental displays eventually included the killing
of larger animals in response to the criticism that dogs were
too small and not comparable to the human body. When the
electric chair was installed at Auburn prison in 1889, it was
tested with a horse and a four week old calf (Metzger, pp.
112-114).
Considerations that brought together the issue of civilized, or
humane, behavior and technology also were important to the meat
industry. Despite the increasing importance of technology in the
processing of meat from the early nineteenth century on, it had
long been recognized that, to produce decent meat, animals had
to be treated decently. They could not be subjected to stress or
anxiety. As Wynter (1854) put it, somewhat dramatically, “…for
anything like fright or passion is known to affect the blood,
and consequently the flesh. Beasts subjected to such
disturbances will often turn green within twenty-four hours
after death” (p. 284). In what essentially was the first
scientific text book for the meat industry, Leighton and Douglas
(1910) described the goal of the industry as the ability to
produce the optimum amount of meat of the best quality in the
shortest time (pp. 87ff).
Later, from about 1927, experiments in electrical stunning
before slaughter offered new possibilities for attaining such a
goal. As with execution by electrocution, electrical stunning
offered options of efficiency, low cost, and hygiene as well as
meeting humane considerations. In addition, it was a technology
that could be operated with relatively little skill compared to,
say, wielding a poleaxe (See Figures 2-4). In the words of
Müller (1932), one of its pioneers, it indicated, “the higher
standard of modern civilisation” (p. 487). As Müller, 1929)
wrote elsewhere,
[T]he setting up of electrical stunning devices for the
slaughtering of animals will further the cause of humanity. The
question of the stunning of animals for slaughter, to the humane
slaughterman, is a matter which is not a party, political, or
religious one, but one that must be answered from the point of
view of humanity and justice to animals. (p.166)
Figures 2-4 (figures not available online)
In the production of meat, the need to bleed the animal
thoroughly is essential as residual blood causes damage to the
carcass and can lead to the spoiling of the meat. This problem
was called, “splashing … the term commonly applied to a more or
less disfigurement of dressed carcasses, which takes the form of
haemorrhagic areas”(Parker, 1929, p. 197). Splashing was
recognized as particularly apparent in carcasses of animals who
had had long journeys before slaughter or who had shown fear or
been difficult to handle. This was one of the main reasons why
the inhumane treatment of animals needed to be avoided. Stunning
seemed a partial solution to this by offering an efficient
method of pacifying the animal and calming the atmosphere of the
slaughterhouse. A number of scientists such as Hill (1935) noted
how unusually quiet the slaughterhouse was when electrical
stunning was being used (p. 53). Thus, slaughter was to be not
only unseen but also unheard.
Early efforts at electrical stunning had not been entirely
satisfactory, mainly because of the difficulty of establishing
correct voltage levels (Ducksbury & Anthony, 1929). Too heavy a
voltage could lead to a convulsion in the animal severe enough
to cause skeletal damage. Too low a voltage, and it could not be
guaranteed that the animal would be unconscious when it actually
was killed. This debate, incidentally, has continued to be an
issue to this day (Hickman, 1954, p. 501; Roberts, 1954, p.565;
Eisnitz, 1977, pp. 64-66).
In late 1931, a new model improving on the Müller-Weinberger
machine, known as the S.R.V. Electrolethaler 2, was demonstrated
in Britain with favorable results (Anthony, 1932, pp. 380-381).
However, Dryerre and Mitchell pointed out in a 1933 report on
stunning to the RSPCA that the requirements for electrical work
were not likely to be promoted when slaughterhouse workers were
operating under the pressure of time. All that the worker really
required was for the animal to be pacified before hoisting,
which could mean that correct voltages were not necessarily
applied. Whether an animal was truly unconscious would not
necessarily be a primary consideration (Longley, 1950, p. 264).
This argument over unconsciousness versus bodily paralysis
really could not be decided. However, its ramifications extended
beyond a simple matter of the humane precisely in those areas
that Müller (1929, 1932b) saw as irrelevant to modern slaughter:
religion and politics.
When Müller (1929, 1932b) wrote that stunning should not be a
religious matter, he had in mind primarily the Jewish method of
slaughter, which he considered barbaric. This practice, known as
shechita, involves the cutting of the throat of the animal in
one swift action with an extremely sharp knife. The animal is
not permitted to suffer any kind of bleeding, external or
internal, before this act. This form of killing had been the
focus of much debate throughout Europe and was banned in a
number of northern European countries, beginning with
Switzerland in 1893 (Sax, 2000). Müller believed that electrical
stunning would be acceptable in shechita because no blood would
be spilt before slaughter. However, the debate raised an issue
that went to the heart of whether stunning was a humane
practice- the possibility that animals actually may not lose
consciousness when stunned. With shechita, it was claimed that
loss of consciousness was virtually instant. In the debate, as
conducted in the pages of British veterinary journals, two Dutch
scientists pointed out that Leduc’s electrocution experiments on
himself in 1903 led to the loss of motor functions and speech
but not consciousness (Roos & Koopmans, 1934). One response to
the Dutch was to suggest that their arguments were flawed
because they were Jewish: “[B]y his explanations, Professor Roos
perhaps intends to assist his co-religionists in the question of
killing according to the Jewish rite” (Müller, 1934, p. 413).
Roos was compelled to respond, “in Holland a Jewish professor is
as credible as any other” (Roos, 1935, p. 64).
Conclusion
This debate over stunning crystallized many themes concerning
the relation of the animal to technology and culture. In all
three examples, the issue of the humane is bound up with
technological development at some level. The animal is not
outside the changing dynamics of this technology but integrally
related both to its development and its articulation in the
public domain. The changing configurations of visibility and
invisibility- indeed, one cannot consider one without the other-
are what determine both the nature and power of animal
representation. To see animals as straightforward metaphors for
human attributes, whether individual or social, is too limiting.
Animal representation is related to a much broader and
ambivalent structure of ethical practices and social control.
This seems to me to be central to the way we might express the
animal’s relation to modernity. To refer to Derrida’s (1999, p.
273) question that I used at the very beginning of this essay,
animals inevitably are constituted by the time in which they
live. They also have time, but it is edited- by film-
manipulated and re-organized- by zoo display- and accelerated-
by the mechanization of slaughter. This is the temporality of
modernity for all creatures, human and animal. Thus, in many
ways, animals are representations of themselves as subjects to
the technology that frames them.
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