198 Review Section / Society & Animals 20 (2012) 193-205

Moving Toward an Ethics of Interanimality David B. Dillard-Wright, Ark of the Possible: The Animal World in Merleau-Ponty. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2009. 130 pp.

As a scholar whose work is also heavily influenced by the contributions of phenomenology, I was particularly excited to begin a careful reading of Ark of the Possible to understand more fully Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s approaches to animality and the more-than-human world (Abram, 1996). The work of Merleau-Ponty is currently in vogue in several discursive threads within environmental philosophy and human-animal studies. A number of manuscripts, essays, and books have been written about Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy of nature that build upon his epistemic and ontological approaches to the human experience of animal embodiment and perception. As Dillard-Wright notes, however, Merleau-Ponty himself might not have considered himself an “environmental philosopher” per se. Regardless, his firm rooting of human subjectivity and culture within the “Flesh” of the world is inspirational for those of us seeking to break through the Cartesian worldview and its dualisms of human/nature, mind/body, and subject/object. Ark of the Possible is a wonderful contribution to this growing body of literature. In five short chapters, plus an introduction and conclusion, Dillard-Wright explores various lines of thought pursued by Merleau-Ponty throughout his short—but prolific—academic career, drawing conclusions about his theological understanding, his articulations of “inter- animality,” “flesh of the world,” and the role of nonhuman animals in the development of human culture and language. Each of these chapters takes on the difficult task of creatively drawing inferences from Merleau-Ponty’s evocative writing and often experimental and vague footnotes; as a result, Dillard-Wright warns in his introduction that this “re-purpos- ing” of Merleau-Ponty’s ideas is an attempt to “ask his texts to speak to the important issues of today” (p. 9). Rather than giving an account of each chapter, I will point out the three areas where Dillard-Wright’s book attempts to make the largest contributions to contemporary under- standings of Merleau-Ponty’s work and to human-animal studies in particular. First, the author proposes a tenuous theological reading of Merleau-Ponty’s work, specifically focus- ing upon the spiritual implications of his notions of “flesh” and “world” in order to push back against religious rhetoric about a hierarchy of beings within God’s order. I think Dillard-Wright is correct in drawing the reader’s attention to the role of theology in driving a wedge between human beings and the rest of the natural world; but to what extent can Merleau-Ponty’s work be read as spiritual or theological? Merleau-Ponty’s focus on the embodied context means that a concept such as “‘God’ must somehow be derived from the lived world . . . A God without a body is simply nothing at all and can have no relationship whatsoever to embodied beings” (p. 23). In so far as God is an idea made possible through various culturally sedimented experiences of our animal bodies, Merleau-Ponty’s work exposes the embeddedness of theological concepts within our experiences of the living world. For the human-animal studies scholar, this directly challenges the Cartesian empha- sis on mind over body—built upon the conclusion that humans were created in the image of God—that continues to allow for the domination, mastery, and destruction of both the natural world and nonhuman animal lives. I am surprised that no connections were made between Merleau-Ponty’s concepts of embodiment, flesh, and interanimality and the phil-

© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2012 DOI: 10.1163/156853012X631405 Review Section / Society & Animals 20 (2012) 193-205 199 osophical views of various indigenous and Eastern religions, particularly Buddhism. Given that Cartesian thought arose from a Christian view, perhaps the author did not feel the need to draw these connections, but I think in future work there is room for exploration. The second main contribution arises within the third chapter, where Dillard-Wright presents a very concise and thoughtful analysis bridging American pragmatism and phe- nomenology in order to explore—through the pragmatist notion of “habit”—where mean- ing is located within the world prior to human inquiry and how this knowledge can lead to a new kind of ethical cooperation between human beings and other species. I found this to be perhaps the most interesting chapter within the book, perhaps selfishly, because it is most directly relevant to my own interests. However, from an academic standpoint, and especially within the field of human-animal studies, these are two philosophical traditions that lend themselves well to rooting both human culture and conceptual knowledge within the realms of animal embodiment and worldly experience. Critically, however, this chapter offers only a few insights into the connections between Merleau-Ponty’s own thought and the pragmatist tradition. The chapter is, instead, largely an attempt to establish connections between the pragmatist works of Charles Sanders Peirce and John Dewey and the phenom- enological tradition generally, concluding that they draw ultimate referential meaning from the world of lived experience. Still, the author’s contribution is important: he outlines a wider framework for human-animal studies that now is inclusive of phenomenology and pragmatism. Finally, Dillard-Wright presents throughout the book a thorough exegesis of Merleau- Ponty’s terminology and thought that ultimately establishes an ethical trajectory. His introduction of language such as “flesh,” “world,” and even “interanimality” holds promise for the field of human-animal studies, as this language alludes to a more ecologically rooted and intercorporeal existence that we share with nonhuman animals. As the author situates each of these terms within Merleau-Ponty’s philosophies of gesture, language, embodi- ment, consciousness, and sociality, it becomes clear that human life and thought are indebted to the variety of life-forms, beings, and meanings that exist on Earth; as such, we owe a great deal of ethical consideration to the more-than-human world. How that ethical relation can be flushed out politically and practically is a task for later work, but it is clear that the foundation is laid here. Overall, this book provides a strong contribution to both the literature on Merleau- Ponty’s philosophy and to the field of human animal studies. Unfortunately, the brevity of the book often leaves some gaps between the chapters. As a reader I often questioned how these chapters were meant to fit together as part of a large work. In his conclusion, Dillard- Wright provides some explanation:

Conceiving of the Earth as the ark of the possible means that it houses the vectors of potential meanings available to humanity. Some of these meanings have already been made explicit . . . through art, poetry, religion, science, etc., and some remain outside the human sphere of knowledge . . . To damage the Earth or other creatures is to diminish meanings and possibilities available for the future. (p. 103)

In light of this work’s genuine and careful exploration of these themes—at a time many define as critical for the world’s creatures, indeed all life—I recommend this book. Anyone