A Grammar of Animals: Dramatism, Animal Experimentation, And
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A GRAMMAR OF ANIMALS: DRAMATISM, ANIMAL EXPERIMENTATION, AND THE NARRATIVE OF BIOMEDICAL PROGRESS by Warren Bowen B.A., The University of Alberta, 2010 A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS in THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE AND POSTDOCTORAL STUDIES (Science and Technology Studies) THE UNIVERSITY OF BRITISH COLUMBIA (Vancouver) April 2016 © Warren Bowen, 2016 Abstract Using Kenneth Burke's dramatistic understanding of language as action, and drawing from literature in rhetoric of science and medicine, this thesis argues that the rhetoric of biomedical researchers, advocates, and popularizers perpetuates a progress narrative when using and advocating for the use of experimental animals that disregards animal interests and ethics. First, this thesis examines how transgenic experimental animals are rhetorically constructed as the place, and researchers as the means, of biomedical data, which provides discursive distance from the acts of experimentation. Likewise, the terms affixed to research animals, such as “Oncomouse,” “model,” and even “rodent” function to reflect realities of these research animals that creates discursive distance as they are used to produce knowledge. Second, this thesis examines how biomedical researchers and advocates who disagree about the efficacy of the animal model are united in their rejection of serious animal ethics in biomedical research. Critics of animal experimentation are made into monsters, while serious animal ethics itself is considered either monstrous or irrelevant to biomedical inquiry by groups of researchers who otherwise disagree about animal experimentation's usefulness in biomedical research. Third, it examines how the genre of popular biomedical entertainment seeks to persuade non-expert audiences to be entertained by biomedical research using animals. In addition, biomedical research and animal entertainment industries such as zoos and pet production have a complex, mutually beneficial relationship that makes use of animals to produce knowledge and entertainment at the expense of animal interests. This thesis concludes that the narrative of biomedical progress is underpinned by powerful rhetorical forces applied to animals that reject the serious consideration of their interests that could otherwise complicate such a narrative. A ii suggested way forward could be a more complex biomedical narrative that includes serious animal ethics as part of biomedicine's “moral progress”. iii Preface This thesis is the original, unpublished, independent work of the author, Warren Bowen. This thesis involves no research on human or nonhuman animals. Ethics approval was neither required nor obtained. iv Table of Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ii Preface ........................................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ...........................................................................................................................v List of Tables ............................................................................................................................... vii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... viii Dedication .......................................................................................................................................x Introduction ....................................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1: Terminal Distance ......................................................................................................5 1.1 When People Are Places: Dramatism and the Pentad .................................................... 5 1.2 Transgenic Mice and the Pentad ................................................................................... 11 1.3 Terms of Experiment .................................................................................................... 21 1.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 28 Chapter 2: Monstrosities and Incapacities ................................................................................31 2.1 Occupational Psychosis and Trained Incapacity ........................................................... 32 2.2 Monster-Making and the Communication of Biomedical Knowledge ......................... 35 2.3 The Incapacitated Defense of Animals ......................................................................... 46 2.4 Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 51 Chapter 3: Experimental Entertainment...................................................................................53 3.1 Definitions, Artifacts, and Methods .............................................................................. 53 3.2 Occupational Psychosis in Popular Biomedical Entertainment .................................... 56 3.3 The technocircus/medizoo ............................................................................................ 73 v Conclusion ....................................................................................................................................76 Works Cited ..................................................................................................................................79 vi List of Tables Table 1. Animals used in research at UBC. .................................................................................. 27 vii Acknowledgements I extend my deep gratitude to Ian Hill, who as my supervisor made this thesis possible. Ian, thank you for your vast reserves of patience, your searching, careful comments and questions, for your dedication to good, clear writing, and your ability to make me feel at ease. I will always keenly remember to write my paragraphs “like a stick of gum” whose flavor starts strongly and slowly wanes. Thank you so much Margery Fee for your flexible, helpful attitude in taking me on at short notice, and for treating me and my work with the care and astuteness I would expect from someone invested for much longer. I only wish we had met sooner. Thank you so much Judy Segal, who I approached first and with tenuous ideas. You took me on when all I had were books, quotes, and intuitions and offered measured guidance alongside thorough and thoughtful comments on my developing work. Above all, you made me feel welcome at a time I felt lost. My enduring gratitude to the STS department whose generous funding allowed me food, shelter, and work-life balance while I engaged with challenging new ideas in order to articulate my own. Thank you to my family. Mom, how can I ever thank you enough? I feel so much gratitude for your tireless, enthusiastic, astounding support of all aspects of my life, and without you nothing would be possible. Thank you a million times and more. Auntie, your hospitality provided me viii with many nights of sound sleep after many hours of difficult reading. You got me on my feet when I arrived, and you were always keen to indulge me in the trials and tribulations of a budding grad student. Thank you so much. The STS crew. Peggy, Lee, Joe, Shoshana, Sylvia—without you there when I first arrived I wouldn't have lasted the first month, and you made the many months afterward fun, weird, intelligent, and beer. Thank you for being such great humans. Raquel, I can't even. Thank you for your unwavering belief in my work, your humor and kindness, and your intelligent, thoughtful insights, all of which supported me in ways you can't know. Thank you to my other family at the M.M. Without you in my life during this time I would have crumbled to dust long ago. The care, support, fun, laughter, ease, inquisitiveness, distraction, and love are beyond anything I imagined. ix Dedication For those who think and feel animals deserve better from us. x Introduction This thesis is a rhetorical analysis of how biomedical researchers, advocates, and popularizers of biomedical research write about experiments with animals, and how this writing perpetuates the narrative of biomedical progress. By “narrative of biomedicine progress” I mean a collective discourse that seeks to persuade audiences of biomedicine's normative advancement, expansion, and increasing production of medical knowledge. Rhetorician of medicine Judy Segal explains, “[t]he most salient narrative of medical history is the narrative of progress, the narrative that says, ‘We used to have things wrong, and now we have them right, or are on the road to having them right’” (21). This narrative offers “[f]rom-ignorance-to-knowledge accounts” of biomedical progress that treats knowledge in a forward trajectory (163). An integral component to this progress narrative is animal experimentation described as a method by which gaps in biomedical knowledge are filled. In this thesis, I argue that the rhetoric of biomedical reports, of research advocacy and criticism, and of popular biomedical entertainment functions to perpetuate the progress narrative in three main ways by: 1) constructing discursive distance between researcher, audience, and animal; 2) rejecting serious animal ethics