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Humanizing Animals: Talking About Police, Prisoners, and Horses by Erica Carol Tom A Dissertation submitted to the Graduate School-Newark Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Graduate Program in American Studies written under the direction of Frances Bartkowski, Ph.D. and approved by _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ _________________________ Newark, New Jersey May 2017 ©Erica Tom All Rights Reserved Humanizing Animals: Talking About Police, Prisoners, and Horses By Erica Tom Dissertation Director: Frances Bartkowski, Ph.D. Abstract Despite the horse’s central role in the conquest of America and its ongoing importance as a symbol of freedom and independence in the national imagination, innumerable horses—no longer of use—are sold at kill lots every year. However, in recent decades rescues have repurposed these horses for work in law enforce- ment and in equine therapy programs. Equine therapy programs have been gain- ing support in America; at the same time, the disproportionate arrests and incar- ceration of black men has continued to rise._ Equine prison programs produces an evocative situation: two disregarded populations—ex-race horses no longer able to race or mustangs with nowhere to go, and convicts exiled from society—are brought together to “rehabilitate” each other. The trope of the wild and dangerous black man is ever present, as current events—such as Ferguson, and Black Lives Matter—remind us. Thus this pairing the broken (ex-race horse) or untamed (mustang) non-human animal with that of the transgressive human (prisoner) that is undeniably political. Over the last sev- eral years, as tensions between law enforcement and communities of color rose, there has been a call for a re-evaluation of policing strategies. There has been a call for community policing. Horses may be part of bridging the gap between po- lice and civilians. This essay seeks to unpack the complicated implications of equine prison programs and the role of horses in mounted police units. By focusing on the New- ark Mounted Police Unit and the Second Chances Horse Program at the Wallkill Correctional Facility, this dissertation illuminates the ideological underpinnings of attitudes about humans and other animals in the racialized and classed culture in which we live. Finally, this dissertation assesses the impact of these programs and contexts on horses themselves, offering new ways to think about and relate to horses. ii Acknowledgements This dissertation could not have been written without the guidance of my committee, or without the encouragement of my family and friends. I am grateful to my parents, Donna and Walter Tom, whose love and support is tireless. And to my partner, Daniel Vandersommers. iii Humanizing Animals: Talking About Police, Prisoners, and Horses Erica Tom Pages Abstract i. Acknowledgements ii. Table of Contents iii. Prelude. On Pain 1. Chapter One. Introduction: Talking About Horses 7. Chapter Two. Police and Horses: Talking About (Dis)Connection 44. Chapter Three. Prisoners and Horses: Talking About (Dis)Avowal 69. Chapter Four. Conclusion: Horses Beyond Talk 100. Coda. On Pleasure 126. Bibliography 131. iv 1 Prelude. On Pain Several summers ago, I got kicked in the face by a horse. Coming to— amid the stutter of voices, rising dust and sunlight—I didn’t know what had hap- pened. Years later, those last seconds still elude me. A memory safely tucked away. A memory I tried tracking: bruising hip to chin mapped the hoof’s travel. One broken rib. Dark nicks, the small nails, cut a curved line across my cheek and mouth—a horse shoe stamp. Luck and nothing else brought clean test results. Results my mother seri- ously questioned when I expressed my desire to get back to the ranch the follow- ing day. But could she really be surprised? Dedication (or stubbornness depending on perspective) has long been one of my characteristics. As a young girl—and if I am honest, even now—the sure fire way to get me to do something is to tell me I can’t. Or even that I shouldn’t will do the trick. As a point guard in high school, I played through basketball games with an incessantly dislocating right shoulder, ignoring the impact I was warned it might have on me later in life. As the shortest rower on my university’s crew team, I accepted that pain was part of every sun- rise on the lake. I have been horseback riding since I was a child. In my mid- twenties, an apprenticing horse trainer, ignoring—or mastering—pain remained a central part of my life. Horse people have a saying. It’s not if you’ll get hurt. It’s when, and how bad. Of course being careful helps, but the saying rings true. Strangely enough it wasn’t during the time I spent gentling mustangs at a rescue or re-habilitating ex- race horses that I began collecting injuries. It was later on, when a piece of fly 2 sheeting flew off the top of a barn, startling the nervous horse I was grooming, sending him skittering sideways, knocking me over, further frightening him into a kick that sent me flying. It was later on, when a sweet thoroughbred stumbled and took off bucking as my thighs gripped the saddle tighter, pressing on his ribs which I would later learn were out of place, tossing me cartoon style—catapulted over the edge of the grand canyon—landing on my shoulder and head. Wile E. Coyote style, I sat up in the dirt. If you ride, you better be ready to fall. If you want to keep riding, you better get right back on. I tried shoving my shoulder back in a few times—something I had been doing for years—before see- ing clearly that the humerus was too twisted for me to angle it back into the sock- et. This was the first of two times that I would be tied down to a table as my shoulder was put back in place. Gritted teeth and grunts, there was pride in the lack of tears, in the good humor I showed during these moments—a grimace, or a sly hoof-printed smile in the back of an ambulance. It took me almost a decade after the first shoulder dislocation to use the word pain. Through my teens and mid-twenties, from basketball in high school to rowing in college, when asked how painful something was on a scale of 1 to 10, I refused a straight response. It’s not painful, it’s uncomfortable. In The Dialogic Imagination (1975), Bakhtin explains that there is no sep- aration between form and content in discourse. He writes that language is not “a system of abstract grammatical categories”; language is “ideologically saturat- ed,”; language is a world view, “is a concrete opinion” (271). Language does not 3 have a truth—no pure meaning. Context creates meaning. Meaning is always in process. My twenties were spent developing a cowgirl’s mettle. Stepping back to study this equestrian discourse, it’s clear that there was no place for the word pain on the table I was strapped to as the medics shoved my arm back into the socket. How painful is it on a scale of 1 to 10? A shoulder, a rib. It could be uncomfortable. Discomfort was an accepta- ble confession. But to admit pain was something else. To admit pain would be to name it, to give it power. To admit a lack of mastery, the mastery that re-names pain as discomfort. Discourse is dynamic—and so has been my sense of self in this last dec- ade. Words cannot be unhinged from context; words cannot be neutral. After my second shoulder surgery, my language shifted my subjectivity. Bakhtin argues: language is “taken over, shot through with intentions and accents (293)”. Some- where after anesthesia new language formed. As I worked through the physical therapy following my second shoulder surgery that came soon after my cartoon catapult, as I continued to teach the freshman composition course that was part of my graduate studies in English in my gunslinger styled sling, I began to use the word pain for the new sensations that ran from the base of my skull to my shoulder’s edges and fell like electric bolts into my elbows. This is maturation right? To speak of pain. To get the help my body called for. A daughter who learned to play hockey alongside her brother at age five, who learned to get back in the saddle immediately following a fall, I 4 am unsure. I would be lying if I claimed I didn’t feel I lost something when I add- ed this word to my vocabulary. A few years later, this word is both subject and background. My field work puts me in downtown Newark, observing the mounted police; it puts me in prison pastures at the Wallkill Correctional Facility, observing prisoners rehabili- tate ex-race horses. Entering these contemporary sites of men with horses, my re- search stretches back to the figure of the cowboy, of masculinity in America— where pain is silent, yet ever present. In Rodeo: An Anthropologist Looks at the Wild and the Tame (1984), Vet- erinarian and anthropologist Elizabeth Atwood-Lawrence describes the demand- ing nature of rodeo, the risks of injury and death that entice men who must be strong, but also must be “anxious to prove their physical prowess.” The prime requisite is stoicism. Complaining is uncommon. She writes, “It is not an infre- quent occurrence for [a cowboy] to break an ankle in the chute and go on to finish his ride.

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