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Beastly Traces: The Co-Emergence of Humans and Cattle Dissertation Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Seth J Josephson Graduate Program in Comparative Studies The Ohio State University 2018 Dissertation Committee: Hugh Urban (Advisor), David Horn, Bernhard Malkmus, Isaac Weiner. Copyrighted by Seth Joshu Josephson 2018 Abstract Humans are not alone in this world nor have we ever been. This inter-disciplinary project develops an approach to understanding species difference through a phenomenology-informed, material-semiotic investigation human/cattle co-emergence. Cattle (Bos taurus) have been selected because of their outsized significance in the transformations that have defined contemporary human life. By identifying a select set of sites and developing a situated investigation around a “beastly figure” representative of each of them, this project demonstrates the co-productive and emergent qualities of our interspecies relationships and makes a case for situated co-emergence as an ethical and ontological paradigm for animal studies. Over the course of the text, I will consider several “beastly figures” each of which offers an example of co-emergent human/cattle processes. I come to these figures through a process of “tracing,” starting with my own situated position and moving toward an encounter (albeit a mediated one) with the world-making frame of another being. The dissertation begins with a “0” chapter on the wild aurochs, an animal predating or excluded from the human/cattle domestication relationship. Each subsequent chapter takes up a different figure of human/cattle entanglement to highlight a passageway of encounter between species or identify an emergent whole that the integration of our species creates. Chapter 1 follows the alphabet back to its beastly source, provides an !ii overview of the tracing methodology, and makes a case for the importance of cattle specifically. Chapter 2 considers the medieval bestiary as a material object, a medium for encountering an animal other, and as a model for understanding projects of knowing animals. The next three chapters consider contemporary entanglements between humans and cattle and the emergent potentials of each. All this builds toward a conclusion, which pulls together the threads of each chapter to emphasize the ethical importance of consideration of individual experience. This leads to a proposal for a practice of ascetic release as a compassionate method for a future coexistence. This work identifies contemporary patterns of struggle where the meaning of species difference is negotiated. It maps these moments as sites of material and semiotic passage, highlighting our complicated human dependency on the animal other. Finally, it recommends a reassessment of both human-exceptionalism and anthropocentrism, and indicates the viability of an alternate conceptual paradigm. The paradigm I propose acknowledges that our position as humans frames any philosophical perspective on other animals but it also refuses to place ourselves at the center of value. This paradigm develops from a recognition that anything we might plausibly call our “humanity” is always codetermined with others and is an expression of our “animality” not a transcendence of it. Rather, true “transcendence" comes from a recognition of ways that we are participants in forces beyond our full control and that these larger, emergent phenomena act upon us, shaping our experience as living beings. !iii Acknowledgments Writing a dissertation can be isolating and, as has often been noted, it can be difficult to maintain inspiration. The support I’ve had from various people and institutions in developing these and other ideas has been enormous. I am deeply grateful to the support, both material and intellectual, I’ve received from my family: my ever- supportive parents, John and Susan Josephson; my pathbreaking brother, Jason Josephson-Storm; my generous uncle, Nicolas Goodman, and others. I’m indebted to the numerous mentors I’ve had over the years. To name only a few of those who provided support from within the academy, I am grateful for the guidance and support of Lisa Shabel, Daniel Farrell, Dorothy Noyes, Maurice Stevens, Leo Coleman, Tom Kasulis, Allison Fish, Theresa Delgadillo, Nina Berman, Bernhard Malkmus, David Horn, Isaac Weiner, and, my advisor, Hugh Urban who has stood by me patently through the long evolution of interests and passions that finally brought me here. I doubt I’d be here without the care of Sara Provenzale, Kylene Cary, David Ike, Ryan Agnew, Emil Moldovan and all the others who held open for me the refuge of Sangha. Words fail me when I try to express my gratitude for Becca Alexander, my biggest fan and toughest editor. In this reflection on interspecies affinity, I cannot fail to mention my two companion cats, Calcifer and Stewart, and my gratefulness for their persistent willingness to love and be loved. Through out this work I’ve had my children, Moshe, Ruth, and Dov, and the world they inherit in the front of my mind. May this dissertation be at least a !iv small contribution to the collective vibration that will bring about a new, more harmonious, way of living. There is so much work still to be done. !v Vita 1998 ....................................................Linworth Alternative High School 2004 ....................................................B.A. Philosophy, Ohio State University, 2011 ....................................................M.A. Comparative Studies, Ohio State University 2010 to 2016 .....................................Graduate Teaching Associate, Department of Comparative Studies, Ohio State University 2017 ....................................................Visiting Instructor, Department of Religious Studies, Kenyon College Fields of Study Major Field: Comparative Studies, Specializations: Critical Animal Studies, Religious Studies, and Science and Technology Studies. !vi Table of Contents Abstract ...............................................................................................................................ii Acknowledgments ..............................................................................................................iv Vita .....................................................................................................................................vi Fields of Study ....................................................................................................................vi List of Figures .....................................................................................................................ix Introduction: Project Overview ...........................................................................................1 Intro.1: Motivations for Research ..................................................................................6 Intro.2: Theory and Methodology ...............................................................................18 Intro.3: Outline of Chapters ........................................................................................40 0. Aurochs: The Forgotten the Marsh Walker ....................................................................55 0.1 The Aurochs ...........................................................................................................59 0.2 A Life in Place: “the famous marsh walker” .........................................................66 0.3 Life Without a Place: as an obstacle in the way of things to come .......................78 0.4 Writing Extinctions ................................................................................................81 0.5 Death as a Sign of Life ..........................................................................................86 0.6. Looking and the Looking-Back ............................................................................95 1. Alphabet: Signs of the Cow-House .............................................................................109 1.1 From One Health to One Semiotics .....................................................................116 1.2 Shapes for Sounds (cowhouse) ............................................................................123 1.3 A Strange and Potent Technology ........................................................................134 1.4 Alpha Cow ...........................................................................................................146 1.5 As an Archive of Beastly Traces ..........................................................................156 2. Bestiary: The Beastly Book of Beasts .........................................................................165 2.1 Knowing The (Other)Animal(s) ..........................................................................172 2.2 A Beastly Book of Beasts ....................................................................................182 2.3 The Monster and The Mooncalf ..........................................................................207 3. Fetal Bovine Serum: Medium of Live and Danger .....................................................217 3.1 Laboratory Life ....................................................................................................225 3.2 The (Tissue) Medium is the Message ..................................................................237 !vii 3.4 Health, Danger, Feeling, and Emergence ...........................................................243