Knowing Animals Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd i 1/30/2007 11:26:51 AM Human Animal Studies Editor Kenneth Shapiro Society and Animals Forum Editorial Board Ralph Acampora Hofstra University Clifford Flynn University of South Carolina Hilda Kean Ruskin College Randy Malamud Georgia State University Gail Melson Purdue University VOLUME 4 Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd ii 1/30/2007 11:26:53 AM Knowing Animals Edited by Laurence Simmons and Philip Armstrong LEIDEN • BOSTON 2007 Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd iii 1/30/2007 11:26:53 AM This book is printed on acid-free paper. A C.I.P. record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. LC Control Number: 2007060853 ISSN 1573-4226 ISBN-13: 978 90 04 15773 6 ISBN-10: 90 04 15773 5 © Copyright 2007 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill NV provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. printed in the netherlands Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd iv 1/30/2007 11:26:53 AM “. and already the knowing animals are aware that we are not really at home in our interpreted world.” —Rainer Maria Rilke, “Duino Elegies” Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd v 1/30/2007 11:26:53 AM Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd vi 1/30/2007 11:26:53 AM CONTENTS List of Illustrations ...................................................................... ix Acknowledgements ..................................................................... xi List of Contributors .................................................................... xiii Bestiary: An Introduction ........................................................... 1 Philip Armstrong and Laurence Simmons PART ONE THINKING ANIMALS Chapter One Shame, Levinas’s Dog, Derrida’s Cat (and Some Fish) ...................................................................... 27 Laurence Simmons Chapter Two Understanding Avian Intelligence .................... 43 Alphonso Lingis PART TWO ANIMALS INCORPORATED Chapter Three What do Animals Dream Of ? Or King Kong as Darwinian Screen Animal ........................... 59 Barbara Creed Chapter Four “No Circus without Animals”?: Animal Acts and Ideology in the Virtual Circus ........................................ 79 Tanja Schwalm Chapter Five Farming Images: Animal Rights and Agribusiness in the Field of Vision ........................................ 105 Philip Armstrong Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd vii 1/30/2007 11:26:53 AM viii contents PART THREE THE FACE OF THE ANIMAL Chapter Six The Mark of the Beast: Inscribing ‘Animality’ through Extreme Body Modi cation ..................................... 131 Annie Potts Chapter Seven Bill Hammond’s Parliament of Foules ........... 155 Allan Smith PART FOUR THE PLACE OF THE ANIMAL Chapter Eight Extinction Stories: Performing Absence(s) ...... 183 Ricardo De Vos Chapter Nine Australia Imagined in Biological Control ........ 196 Catharina Landström PART FIVE ANIMAL TALES Chapter Ten Tails within Tales ............................................... 217 Brian Boyd Chapter Eleven Pigs, People and Pigoons ............................... 244 Helen Tif n Chapter Twelve Walking the Dog ........................................... 266 Ian Wedde Index ........................................................................................... 289 Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd viii 1/30/2007 11:26:53 AM LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Front Cover: Joanna Braithwaite, Dangerous Liaison (2003) Bestiary: An Introduction: Images, Harry Kerr (2006) 4.1. Circus Krone Elephants and Handler with Bullhook 4.2. Jumbo Tethered 4.3. “Buddy Wild in Africa” 5.1. Fistulated Cow 5.2. Sheep Housing 6.1. Katzen 6.2. Cat Man 7.1. Bill Hammond, Coastwatcher’s Songbook (1994) 7.2. Bill Hammond, Untitled Bird Study (1998) 7.3. Bill Hammond, Skin Room (1997) 7.4. Bill Hammond, Shag Pile (1994) 7.5. Bill Hammond, All Along the Heaphy Highway (1998) 7.6. Bill Hammond, Limbo Ledge and Timeball (2002) 10.1. George Herrman, “The Family Upstairs” (c. 1913) 10.2. George Herrman, “Krazy Kat” (c. 1913) 10.3. Fritz Heidler and Marianne Simmel, Geometric Shapes (1944) 10.4. Peter Blegvad, “Leviathan” (1994) 10.5. Art Spiegelman, Maus (1986) 10.6. Art Spiegelman, Maus. “And So The Train Man . .” (1986) 10.7. Art Spiegelman, Maus. “Maybe We Should Try . .” (1986) Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd ix 1/30/2007 11:26:54 AM Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd x 1/30/2007 11:26:54 AM ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The editors are indebted to Tanja Schwalm, Creon Upton and Emily Wall for their tireless and scholarly assistance in the preparation of this volume. Thanks also to the editor of this Human-Animal Studies series, Kenneth Shapiro, and to the readers of the initial manuscript, for their constructive advice on each chapter. Any errors that remain are our own. Acknowledgement is also due to the Royal Society of New Zealand’s Marsden Fund / Te Putea Rangahau a Marsden, which provided funds for research assistance with preparation of this volume, as part of the project “Kararehe: The Animal in Culture in Aotearoa New Zealand.” In addition, the University of Auckland’s Department of Film, Televi- sion and Media Studies and the University of Canterbury’s School of Culture, Literature and Society both assisted nancially with the procuring of images and reproduction rights. Sincere thanks also to those who provided images or granted permis- sion for their use: especially to Joanna Braithwaite, Catman, Bill Ham- mond, Katzen, PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), SAFE (Save Animals From Exploitation) New Zealand Inc.; and of course to Harry Kerr, for bringing our introductory bestiary to life. Chapter 7, “Bill Hammond’s Parliament of Foules,” is an extended version of an essay which appeared initially as “Bill Hammond Paints New Zealand: Stuck Here in Paradise with the Buller’s Blues Again,” in ArtAsiaPaci c 23 (1999): 46–53. Chapter 12, “Walking the Dog,” is an extended version of an article that has appeared in Landfall 208 (Spring 2004): 60–71, and in Making Ends Meet: Essays and Talks, 1992–2006I, by Ian Wedde (Wellington: Victoria University Press, 2005). We are grateful to the University of Otago Press and Victoria University Press for permission to republish this piece here. Finally, special thanks are due to Professor Howard McNaughton of Canterbury University, whose virtually single-handed orchestration of the 2003 Cultural Studies Assocation of Australasia Conference created the necessary forum for the initial formulation of this project. Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd xi 1/30/2007 11:26:54 AM Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd xii 1/30/2007 11:26:54 AM LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Philip Armstrong teaches English and Cultural Studies at the Uni- versity of Canterbury, Aotearoa New Zealand, and is the author of Shakespeare’s Visual Regime (2000) and Shakespeare in Psychoanalysis (2001). More recently he has published articles (in Society and Animals, ELH and Textual Practice) on literary representations of animals, and his book on this topic (which includes studies of Defoe, Swift, Mary Shelley, Melville, Wells, Hemingway, Lawrence, Atwood and Coetzee) will be published by Routledge in 2007. Brian Boyd, University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English, University of Auckland, though best known for his many award- winning books on and editions of Vladimir Nabokov, has published in eleven languages on American, English, Greek, Irish, New Zealand and Russian literature, from epics to comics. He has recently completed a book on evolution and ction, On the Origin of Stories: Evolution, Cogni- tion and Fiction (Homer and Dr. Seuss) and (with Stanislav Shvabrin) an edition of Nabokov’s verse translations, Verse and Versions. Barbara Creed is Professor of Cinema Studies at the University of Melbourne. She is the author of The Monstrous Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993); the editor of Body Trade: Captivity, Cannibalism and Colonialism (2001), and most recently the author of Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny (2005). She is currently writing a book on the in uence of Darwinian theory on the cinema. Rick De Vos lectures in the Postgraduate programme in the Centre for Aboriginal Studies at Curtin University, Perth, Western Australia. His research interests include extinction, performance and television. Catharina Landström was awarded a PhD in Theory of Science from Göteborg University in 1998, after which she spent three years doing postdoctoral research on the relationships between biological control research and other aspects of Australian culture; her chapter in this volume emerges from this project. Simmon_f1_i-xv.indd xiii 1/30/2007 11:26:54 AM xiv list of contributors Alphonso Lingis is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the Pennsylvania State University. During the 1990s he developed an extensive interna- tional reputation as a radical philosopher whose work is situated at the intersection of several disciplinary elds. Among his many books are Deathbound Subjectivity (1989), Foreign Bodies (1994), The Imperative (1998), Dangerous Emotions (1999), Trust (2004), and Body Transformations (2005). Annie Potts teaches in