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COPYRIGHT 2006 University of Manitoba, Mosaic
An exploration of traditional and "new" literary anthropomorphism and the fascination, problems, and limitations of imagining "being animal," this essay presents a contrasting analysis of canine constructs and their complex narrative fabrics of human and animal lives and consciousnesses.
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In Paul Auster's novel Timbuktu, two children in love with a mangy old stray are told that the dog "is not a person, he's a dog, and dogs don't ask questions" (139). But the children know better, and so does the reader. Indeed, Auster's canine protagonist not only has a lot of questions about the world; he also finds it "odd that he should be thinking about these things" (31). Mr. Bones, "part spaniel, part canine puzzle" (5) in multiple senses, joins a vast menagerie of philosophizing animals in today's literature. He also raises the question of what makes animal protagonists so popular despite the disdain of literary critics for adult anthropomorphic fiction. Writing from the animal perspective tends to be dismissed as a trivial enterprise, and, as in the case of Virginia Woolf's Flush: A Biography, its result generally meets with critical neglect (Caughie 143; Beer 102). Many important writers have nevertheless chosen to venture into the field of animal consciousness, despite their own reservations. Woolf, anticipating that her reviewers would find Flush only "charming" (Diary 181), pre-empted their criticism by calling it a "freak [...] to let my brain cool" from her intense experimental work on The Waves (Letters 161-62). Flush was indeed originally conceived as a joke and a quick way to sell a novel at a time when publishers were wary of her innovative work (Caughie 149). The writing process took her more than two years, because "in even so slight a book [...] greater concerns" arose (Lewis 308). These concerns were, I suspect, deeper than the "complex and conflicted aesthetics" that today's readers find in the novel (Caughie 154). As one critic recognizes, Flush can be called a joke "only in the deep psychological sense, as unconscious truth-telling" (Squier 124). Although some Woolf critics have come to reassess Flush, the many facets of anthropomorphic bias surface again in the critical reception of Timbuktu. One reviewer dismisses the book that took Auster five years to complete (Interview II) as the "[marginal] result of a writer's holiday," at the same time critiquing the author's proclivity for "the utterly bewildering nature of human experience" and calling the novel too dark for a children's book and too whimsical and slim for an adult novel (Tayler 22). The reception of Auster's and Woolf's canine biographies ranges from the delight and fascination of many readers to the critics' disdain, which suggests that imagining the world as perceived through animal eyes is inevitably a complex and controversial undertaking.
Are these fictional representations of the animal mind just harmless testimonies to the curiosity and playfulness that the animals' Otherness evokes in us? Are they reflections of a deep, if unconscious, yearning for contact with the unknowable, or cheap exploitations of our need not to feel separate from the animated universe? The popularity of animal representations--in whatever form they appear--may spring from a genuine interest in deepening our understanding of the Other. However, as recent cinematic explorations of animal alterity suggest, even real animal encounters grant insights not so much into animalness as into the human condition. The documentary Grizzly Man, as filmed by Timothy Treadwell and mediated by Werner Herzog, demonstrates how the human interest in animals can be fuelled by a self-centred curiosity about how we might be perceived by the animal, no matter how much we "love" animals. To put it more pointedly, our interest may be fuelled by the narcissistic desire to have our superiority mirrored back to us by creatures that lack the capacities for which we pride ourselves. Baker's claim that humans "have typically wanted things from animals, wanting them to be meaningful, and wanting [...] to be consoled by these meanings" (82) is validated by Herzog, who says about Treadwell that "the bears redeemed him more than he redeemed the bears." So, are even the most recent animal representations just new versions of the traditional self-serving, "unashamedly anthropomorphic sentiment" (Baker 20) that renders the animal invisible?
In this essay, I argue that the literary imaginary reflects a paradigm shift from the traditional anthropomorphic view, where the animal is inextricably linked to human consciousness and deprived of its own agency, to a new anthropomorphism that views the animal as a separate and unknowable entity. By thinking of an animal, we construct it within our own consciousness and therefore what is reflected back to us is our own existence, irrespective of the point of view we choose to adopt. The new anthropomorphic approach acknowledges this impasse and integrates it into its inquiry on animal alterity. Philosophical explorations such as Thomas Nagel's seminal "What is it like to be a bat?" for example, or Roger Grenier's The Difficulty of Being a Dog jolt the human mind out of its accustomed anthropocentric complacency and allow it to enter a space that Giorgio Agamben calls the Open, the nonconceptual territory that humans share with nonhuman beings without being conscious of doing so.
It is hardly surprising that the most abundant literary animal is canis familiaris, man's best friend. Unlike any of the other species that have served as pets, dogs form the close, merging relationships with their humans that satisfy our need to be mirrored. Dog-lovers often insist that their dogs have both cognition and consciousness. They readily back it up with anecdotal evidence of "almost-human" performances, forgetting that performance itself is a defining human, not animal, quality. As Simons warns, "Animals do not perform being animals [...] the difference we see in a borzoi and a bull terrier is a function of our own performative urge" (9-10). From the large number of anthropomorphized canine protagonists and their reflections on human and animal existence, I have chosen Flush and Mr. Bones to highlight both the similarities and the fundamental differences between these constructs. The two spaniels--Miss Barrett's companion, "a pure-bred Cocker of the red variety marked by all the characteristic excellencies of his kind" (14), and Willy's "sidekick [...] a hodgepodge of genetic strains [...] a pooch primed for oblivion" (5)--have a lot in common, despite their different historical and cultural backgrounds. Both dogs use an omniscient narrator to express their feelings and thoughts. The voice of the Victorian interpreter ranges from the sentimental to the subtly ironic, and the contemporary interpreter's from utter seriousness to witticisms and sarcasm.
Both dogs exhibit unconditional love. The sole confidants and soulmates of their owners, they suffer "pure ontological terror" when separated from their masters. Mr. Bones, foreseeing...
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