Saturday 15 July 2017

Reconnecting with Animality

‘I fear that the animals consider man as a being like themselves that has lost in a most dangerous way its sound animal common sense; they consider him the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal’ (Nietzsche, 2001, p.145).
Several philosophers talk about a need for human beings to reconnect in some way with their animality[1]. We humans once experienced the world with all our senses; we relied on these animal senses for our very survival. It appears now that Western civilisation’s attitude to animals has created a gap or disconnection from nature and animals. This has given rise to a number of problems in humanity.

For Vanessa Lemm (professor of philosophy, New School for Social Research, USA), the ‘future of humanity crucially depends on the human being’s ability to reconnect itself with the dream life of the animal, because only the latter can bring back to the human being the freedom and creativity of interpretation that it has lost in the process of its civilization and socialization’; ‘the animal is the creative genius whose freedom threatens civilization and thus appears as an “evil and demonic being”’  (Lemm, 2009, p.244). Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s conception of ‘animal forgetfulness’ strengthens the understanding of the bond between animal and creativity. For Lemm, it is through this ‘animal forgetfulness’ (Lemm, 2009, p.244) that these key qualities, which were once considered to belong to ‘a higher humanity’, have slipped away (Lemm, 2009, p.244). It is worth emphasising that we do not cease to be ‘animal’ because we oppose ourselves to animals – we are repressing our ‘animality’. It is oppositional hierarchy between rationality (considered to be human) and irrationality (animal) that has turned human life against itself.

In Nietzsche’s view, people’s animal nature has been constrained by civilisation. In his essay ‘Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense’ he takes human morality as a construct that has no relation to actual existence in the world. He places human morality in a position relative to a gnat: ‘If we could communicate with the gnat, we would learn that he likewise flies through the air with the same solemnity, that he feels the flying centre of the universe within himself’ (Nietzsche, 1990, p.1). It could be said that all creatures, regardless of species, are the centre of their own universe - a commonality across the board.  

A balance between animality and humanity would be ideal. Philosopher Jacques Derrida continually questions the logic and ethics of animals’ role in philosophy. He uses the essence of animals to understand what humans are lacking. This prompts a rethinking of what it is to be human. He talks about how the animal cannot be naked:
‘no animal has ever thought to dress itself… I often ask myself, who am I, when caught naked by the eyes of a cat, I have trouble overcoming my embarrassment… and find I am looking into myself’ (Derrida, 2002, p.380).
So is the rise of Nietzsche’s human as ‘lost, miserable, insane’ associated with our disconnection from animality? Carl Jung, the Swiss psychologist, suggests it is. He argued that, paradoxically, civilisation, usually assumed to be the zenith of human society, is in fact destructive. The construction of ‘cramped and artificial lives’ (Guignon, 2004, p.96) ruins people, smothering their creativity.  He claims there is a need to cast-off these constrictions and expose the inner truth that lies within the unconscious.



[1] Animal nature or characters. The animal side of humans, as opposed to the intellectual or spiritual.
Deleuze and Guattari: 
Becoming Intense. Becoming Animal. Becoming Imperceptible 
A Thousand Plateaus (1988)

For French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Felix Guattari animals are an integral part of their thoughts, so much so that they created a concept becoming animal.  Becoming-animal presents us with an alternative to identity thinking. Their intention is to deconstruct dualistic thinking and the desire for people to reject their preference for rigidly centralised systems of thought by becoming-animal, ‘becoming-minoritarian’.  
Deleuze and Guattari talk about anthropology, myth and folktales providing evidence of a human tendency for becoming-animal. These becomings are often related to marginal social groups or movements resulting in ‘an entire politics of becomings-animal and a politics of sorcery… that are neither those of the family nor of religion nor of the State. Instead they express minoritarian groups, or groups that are oppressed, in revolt, or always on the fringe of recognised institutions’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.247).
 During the post-war era (1960s in particular), a significant and complex cultural change took place in the Western world. In France (May 1968), political unrest saw students and workers protest against the government. Widespread strikes and riots over a two-week period almost brought down the de Gaulle government. It was this unrest and the disillusional wake that influenced the historico-political context of Deleuze and Guattari’s thinking. The Western world experienced counterculture on a large scale. Social movements were born, driven by racial issues, gender and sexual politics, and a new emphasis on world peace and the environment (Kurlansky, 2004). These steered the process of reshaping and changing cultural forms and identities. Public consciousness shifted and opened the way for a new kind of thinking about many issues – including the way people regard animals.
The 1960s saw the emergence of the animal rights movement and by the early 70s, the Animal Liberation Front was firmly established – a self-declared advocate, representing the case for animals politically and morally. Public awareness of environmental issues increased along with debates on the ozone, climate change and globalization. 

Becoming-Animal – the Concept 
Deleuze and Guattari’s radical concept of becoming-animal has the potential to lead us far enough away from being human, allowing us to experience what being other than human may involve, perhaps even allowing us an understanding of what it is like to be an animal. Although they do not provide a definition or description, they present us with a fresh non-hierarchical model; a rhizomatic[2] approach that is anti-Freudian and anti-psychoanalytical in nature. Their becoming-animal is a means of escape from the forces of repression. The authors examine the link between human and animal, a link that cannot logically be entirely human or entirely animal. They offer a complex explanation of what they call ‘Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming-Imperceptible’, discussed at length in their book A Thousand Plateaus (1988), summarised briefly below. 
Becoming-animal is a process of metaphysical metamorphosis, where internal forces are seized and expressed through behaviour, speaking or writing. Becoming-animal is something external to the production of identities and meanings.  Becoming-animal is an invitation – or temptation – that comes from the animal: a proposal of a kind of un-humaning of the person – a signalling of ways and means of escaping. Deleuze and Guattari refer to this as ‘deterritorialisation’ or ‘line of flight’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.174) the point at which metamorphosis takes place.
Becoming is outside the human experience but peculiarly must be understood as a being perfectly ‘real’ - a reality without characteristics. 

Becomings-animal are basically of another power, since their reality resides not in an animal one imitates or to which one corresponds but in themselves, in that which suddenly sweeps us up and makes us become’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.279).
Deleuze and Guattari explain: ‘if becoming-animal does not consist in playing animal or imitating an animal, it is clear that the human being does not “really” become an animal any more than the animal “really” becomes something else. Becoming produces nothing other than itself’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.237).  This metamorphosis is not a change in identity that would make recognition impossible; becoming is not a case of moving from one being to another. However, ‘what is real is the becoming itself – the becoming-animal of the human is real, even if the animal the human becomes is not’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.237). For them the world is a dynamic process of becoming.
Becoming-animal is a creative opportunity for the human being – an opportunity to think of oneself as anything other than human, anything other than in identity. And because there are no set rules with becoming, it happens like an event and because of this we can be swept up most unexpectedly by anything at all.
For Deleuze and Guattari, becoming ‘always involves a pack – a multiplicity’, and for them, all animals are fundamentally a pack – including humans. They have pack modes rather than characteristics, and within every pack is an exceptional individual or an ‘anomalous’. It’s the ‘anomalous’ that invites the human to become-animal – proposes a way out, a means of escape, a way of unthinking identity and subjectivity.  This is the stage where the human encounters the animal, and enters into an ‘alliance’.  Its ‘reality’ is in the nature of an alliance itself and not in the transformation. For example, they talk about Captain Ahab’s[3] alliance with Moby-Dick: 
‘Ahab chooses Moby-Dick, in a choosing that exceeds him and comes from elsewhere, and in so doing breaks with the law of the whalers according to which one should first pursue the pack’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.244).
Those who have access to this knowledge are referred to by the authors as ‘sorcerers’.  Sorcerers know that it is ‘with the Anomalous that one enters into alliance to become-animal’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.246).  They are thought of as exceptional beings who are already prepared or who are open for such becomings.  ‘Sorcerers have always held the anomalous position, at the edge of the fields or woods.  They haunt the fringes’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.246). It is at the borders, where the sorcerer encounters the animal and “enters into a becoming-animal”’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.244).  It is difficult to imagine the sorcerer as anyone other than an artist or writer or shaman. It is through the creative process of transformation that the artist and animal become bound up in some way.  


Becoming-Animal in Art

Art is a good way to get beyond meaning - to unleash becomings. Deleuze and Guattari believe what becoming-animal does is very close to what art does. There are powerful potentials involved in this transitional process, with the total avoidance of imitation. The authors reference works by painter Francis Bacon as an exemplar. They also mention Alfred Hitchcock’s film The Birds as an example where becoming is not imitated. In the scenes where the birds are attacking the people, Hitchcock uses a screeching electronic sound instead of reproducing actual bird calls. This creates an intensity that is all-consuming and ready to explode from within us, activating deterritorialisation. Hitchcock cleverly uses pack mode (swarm) to create a sense of the world becoming-birds.
  
For contemporary artists, animality is a major topic and Deleuze and Guattari‘s concept can help artists to grasp the specific presence of the animal. The aim is to challenge fixed identities and to escape ‘Oedipalization’, a term used by Deleuze and Guattari to describe a condition of pettiness, conservatism and control. For the authors, the animal’s role is to provide ‘a line of flight’ for the human.  This forms a parallel between the animal’s ‘line of flight’ and the artist’s creativity – the end point being the loss of identity.
Deleuze and Guattari’s claim that ‘becoming does not occur in the imagination. Becomings are neither dreams nor phantasies. They are perfectly real’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 1988, p.238).
‘what is real is the becoming itself – the becoming-animal of the human being is real, even if the animal the human being becomes is not’


[2]  A rhizome has no roots – no evolution by descent and filiation. It connects at any point to any other part – decentred network.

[3] Captain Ahab is captain of the whaling vessel Pequod in the novel Moby Dick by Herman Melville (1851).