angelaki

Transcription

angelaki

ANGELAKI
journal of the theoretical humanities
volume 20 number 2 june 2015
Downloaded by [Laurentian University] at 11:53 21 November 2015
T
his special issue of Angelaki – the second
of three on the theme of “philosophical
ethology” – is devoted to the work of Vinciane
Despret. It comes between an earlier issue of
Angelaki 19.3 (2014) dedicated to the writings
of Dominique Lestel, and a forthcoming
issue devoted to the writings of Roberto
Marchesini.
Despret is a Belgian philosopher who has
been writing for over twenty years on human–
animal relations. She is maître de conf érence
in the Department of Philosophy at the Université de Liège, and maître de conf érence in the
Department of Social Sciences and Labour
Sciences at the Université Libre de Bruxelles.
She studied philosophy and psychology at the
Université de Liège, has undertaken field
studies in Belgium, France, Israel, England,
and Portugal, and has been a visiting speaker
around the world.
Despret is the author of numerous books and
essays in French on the history and philosophy of
psychology and ethology, human–animal
relations, and feminism. Over the course of her
career she has collaborated with many humans
(academic and non-academic, experts and amateurs) and non-humans (in the field, in laboratories, on farms) on a variety of projects
associated with her interest in animal behaviour.
They include well-known theorists and artists (e.
g., Isabelle Stengers, Jocelyne Porcher, filmmaker Didier Demorcy, choreographer Luc
Petton), as well as unknown, though no less
important, farmers, breeders, scientists, and conservationists. Animal collaborators have included
birds, sheep, apes, elephants, rats, horses, and
many, many more. However, despite her popularity at home – she is widely read, has a
EDITORIAL
INTRODUCTION
brett buchanan
matthew chrulew
jeffrey bussolini
VINCIANE DESPRET
weekly radio show in Belgium, and has recently
been named Wallonne Person of the Year – her
writings on animals remain relatively unknown
to English-speaking audiences.1
This issue thus aims to provide a broad introduction to her work. Most of this issue comprises translated excerpts from each of
Despret’s major books on ethology: Naissance
d’une théorie éthologique (1996), Quand le
loup habitera avec l’agneau (2002), Hans, le
cheval qui savait compter (2004), Être bête
(with Jocelyne Porcher, 2007), Bêtes et
hommes (2007), Penser comme un rat (2009),
and Que diraient les animaux, si … on leur
posait les bonnes questions (2012).2 We also
ISSN 0969-725X print/ISSN 1469-2899 online/15/020001-3 © 2015 Taylor & Francis
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039819
1
editorial introduction
include a new piece by Despret written for her
public radio programme; a new prefatory essay
by Donna Haraway, “A Curious Practice,”
written specifically for this issue; an interview
with Despret; and an expository essay introducing some of the central tenets of her philosophical ethology.
We are pleased to include art images by many
friends and collaborators of Despret, including
Edmond Baudoin, Luc Petton, Michel Meuret
and Gilles Lacombe. Each of these artists has
collaborated with Despret, and she with them,
on projects involving dance, painting, drawings,
photography, film, mixed-media, and artefacts.
Together, these artists and theorists, humans
and animals, explore human–animal relations
in situations that are at times staged, choreographed and/or improvised, at other times in
the field, museums, and/or laboratories, and
that reside in our imaginations just as much as
in our actions.
The cover image is Light
Bird 19, choreographed by Luc
Petton and photographed by
Virginie Pontisso.
Cover image: Light Bird 19 © Choreography:
Luc Petton, Photography: Virginie Pontisso
2015.
notes
Page 15: Light Bird 4 © Choreography: Luc
Petton, Photography; Virginie Pontisso 2015.
Despret, Vinciane. Our Emotional Makeup:
Ethnopsychology and Selfhood. Trans. Marjolijn de
Jager. New York: Other, 2004. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. Penser comme un rat. Versailles:
Quæ, 2009. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. Quand le loup habitera avec
l’agneau. Paris: Le Seuil, 2002. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. Que diraient les animaux, si … on
leur posait les bonnes questions? Paris: La
Découverte, 2012. Print.
Despret, Vinciane, and Jocelyne Porcher. Être bête.
Arles: Actes Sud, 2007. Print.
Stengers, Isabelle, and Vinciane Despret. Women
Who Make a Fuss: The Unfaithful Daughters of
Virginia Woolf. Trans. April Knutson. Minneapolis:
Univocal, 2014. Print.
list of figures in this issue
1 A number of essays have been translated into
English, and a translation of Que diraient les
animaux, si … is forthcoming from University of
Minnesota Press.
Page 33: Meuret 1 © Michel Meuret 2013.
2 Not included in this issue are excerpts from
Despret’s two other books, both of which have
already been translated into English and neither
of which treat philosophical ethology specifically.
See Our Emotional Makeup and Women Who
Make a Fuss.
bibliography
Despret, Vinciane. Bêtes et hommes. Paris:
Gallimard, 2007. Print.
Page 111: Charlottenberg © Gilles Lacombe
2007.
Despret, Vinciane. Hans, le cheval qui savait compter.
Paris: Le Seuil, 2004. Print.
Page 113: Défense danoise © Gilles Lacombe
2007.
Despret, Vinciane. Naissance d’une théorie
éthologique: La Danse du cratérope écaillé. Paris:
Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 1996. Print.
Page 119: Edmond Baudoin’s La Loutre et le
pisciculteur © Christophe Raynaud de Lage
2007.
2
buchanan, chrulew & bussolini
Page 163: Swan 1 © Choreography: Luc Petton,
Photography: Laurent Philippe 2012.
Brett Buchanan
Department of Philosophy
School of the Environment
Laurentian University
935 Ramsey Lake Road
Sudbury
Ontario P3E 2C6
Canada
E-mail: bbuchanan@laurentian.ca
Matthew Chrulew
Centre for Culture and Technology
Research and Graduate Studies
Faculty of Humanities
Curtin University
GPO Box U1987
Perth, WA 6845
Australia
E-mail: mchrulew@gmail.com
Jeffrey Bussolini
Sociology – Anthropology Department
City University of New York
2800 Victory Boulevard
Staten Island, NY 10314
USA
E-mail: jbussolini@mac.com
ANGELAKI
Interesting research is research conducted
under conditions that make beings interesting.
Vinciane Despret, personal communication
To think with an enlarged mentality means
that one trains one’s imagination to go visiting.
Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy 43
V
inciane Despret thinks-with other beings,
human and not. That is a rare and precious
vocation. Vocation: calling, calling with, called
by, calling as if the world mattered, calling
out, going too far, going visiting. Despret
listened to a singing blackbird one morning –
a living blackbird outside her particular
window – and that way learned what importance
sounds like. She thinks in attunement with
those she thinks with – recursively, inventively,
relentlessly – with joy and verve. She studies
how beings render each other capable in actual
encounters, and she theorizes – makes cogently
available – that kind of theory and method.
Despret is not interested in thinking by discovering the stupidities of others, or by reducing
the field of attention to prove a point. Her
kind of thinking enlarges, even invents, the
competencies of all the players, including
herself, such that the domain of ways of being
and knowing dilates, expands, adds both ontological and epistemological possibilities, proposes and enacts what was not there before.
That is her worlding practice. She is a philosopher and a scientist who is allergic to denunciation and hungry for discovery, needy for what
must be known and built together, with
and for earthly beings, living, dead, and yet to
come.
Referring both to her own practice for
observing scientists and also to the practices of
PREFACE
donna haraway
A CURIOUS PRACTICE
ethologist Thelma Rowell observing her Soay
sheep, Despret affirmed “a particular epistemological position to which I am committed, one
that I call a virtue: the virtue of politeness”
(“‘Sheep Do Have Opinions’” 360). In every
sense, Despret’s cultivation of politeness is a
curious practice. She trains her whole being,
not just her imagination, “to go visiting.” Visiting is not an easy practice; it demands the ability
to find others actively interesting, even or
especially others most people already claim to
know all too completely, to ask questions that
one’s interlocutors truly find interesting, to cultivate the wild virtue of curiosity, to retune
one’s ability to sense and respond – and to do
all this politely! What is this sort of politeness?
It sounds more than a little risky. Curiosity
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039817
5
preface
always leads its practitioners a bit too far off the
path, and that way lie stories.
The first and most important thing at risk in
Despret’s practice is an approach that assumes
that beings have pre-established natures and
abilities that are simply put into play in an
encounter. Rather, Despret’s sort of politeness
does the energetic work of holding open the
possibility that surprises are in store, that something interesting is about to happen, but only if
one cultivates the virtue of letting those one
visits intra-actively shape what occurs. They
are not who/what we expected to visit, and we
are not who/what were anticipated either. Visiting is a subject-and-object making dance, and
the choreographer is a trickster. Asking questions comes to mean both asking what another
finds intriguing and also how learning to
engage that changes everybody in unforeseeable
ways. Good questions come only to a polite
inquirer, especially a polite inquirer provoked
by a singing blackbird. With good questions,
even or especially mistakes and misunderstandings can become interesting. This is not so much
a question of manners but of epistemology and
ontology, and of method alert to off-thebeaten-path practices. At the least, this sort of
politeness is not what Miss Manners purveys
in her advice column.
There are so many examples of Despret learning and teaching polite inquiry. Perhaps the
most famous is her visit to the Negev desert
field site of the Israeli ornithologist Amotz
Zahavi, where she encountered Arabian babblers who defied orthodox accounts of what
birds should be doing, even as the scientists
also acted off-script scientifically. Specifically,
Zahavi asked in excruciating detail, what
matters to babblers? He could not do good
science otherwise. The babblers’ practices of
altruism were off the charts, and they seemed
to do it, according to Zahavi, for reasons of competitive prestige not well accounted for by theories like kin selection. Zahavi let the babblers
be interesting; he asked them interesting questions; he saw them dance:
Not only were these birds described as
dancing together in the morning sunrise,
not only were they eager to offer presents to
one another, not only would they take pride
in caring for each other’s nestlings or in
defending an endangered comrade, but also,
according to Zahavi’s depiction, their
relations relied on trust. (Despret, “Domesticating Practices” 24)
What Despret tells us she came to know is that
the specific practices of observation, narration,
and the liveliness of the birds were far from independent of each other. This was not just a question of worldviews and related theories shaping
research design and interpretations, or of any
other purely discursive effect. What scientists
actually do in the field affects the ways
“animals see their scientists seeing them” and
therefore how the animals respond (34). In a
strong sense, observers and birds rendered each
other capable in ways not written into pre-existing scripts, but invented or provoked, more
than simply shown, in practical research. Birds
and scientists were in dynamic, moving relations
of attunement. The behavior of birds and their
observers was made, but not made up. Stories
are essential, but are never “mere” stories.
Zahavi seemed intent on making experiments
with rather than on babblers. He was trying to
look at the world with the babblers rather than
at them, a very demanding practice. And the
same demands were made of Despret, who
came to watch scientists but ended up in a
much more complex tangle of practices. Birds
and scientists do something, and they do it
together. They become-with each other.
The world in the southern Israeli desert was
composed by adding competencies to engage
competencies, adding perspectives to engage perspectives, adding subjectivities to engage subjectivities, adding versions to understand versions.
In short, this science worked by addition, not
subtraction. Worlds enlarged; the babblers and
the scientists – Despret included – inhabited a
world of propositions not available before.
“Both humans and babblers create narratives,
rather than just telling them. They create/disclose new scripts” (31). Good questions were
posed; surprising answers made the world
richer. Visiting might be risky, but it is definitely
not boring.
6
haraway
Despret’s work is full of literal collaborations, with people and with animals, not
simply metaphors of thinking with each other.
I admit I am drawn most by the collaborations
that entangle people, critters, and apparatuses.
No wonder that Despret’s work with sociologist
Jocelyne Porcher and the farmers, pigs, and
cows in their care, sustains me. Despret and
Porcher visited cow and pig breeders on nonindustrial French farms, where the humans
and animals lived in daily interaction that led
sober, non-romantic, working breeders to say
such things as “We don’t stop talking with our
animals” (Despret, “Becoming of Subjectivity”
124).1 The question that led Despret and
Porcher to the farmers circled around their
efforts to think through what it means to
claim that these domestic food-producing
animals are working, and working with their
people. The first difficulty, not surprisingly,
was to figure out how to ask questions that interested the breeders, that engaged them in their
conversations and labors with their animals. It
was decidedly not interesting to the breeders
to ask how animals and people are the same or
different in general. These are people who
make particular animals live and die and who
live, and die, by them. The task was to engage
these breeders in constructing the questions
that mattered to them. The breeders incessantly
“uprooted” the researchers’ questions to
address the queries that concerned them in
their work.
The story has many turns, but what interested me most was the insistence of the breeders
that their animals “know what we want, but we,
we don’t know what they want” (133). Figuring
out what their animals want, so that people and
cows could together accomplish successful
breeding, was the fundamental conjoined work
of the farm. Farmers bad at listening to their
animals, bad at talking to them and bad at
responding were not good farmers in their
peers’ estimation. The animals paid attention
to their farmers; paying equally effective attention to the cows and pigs was the job of good
breeders. This is an extension of subjectivities
for both people and critters, “becoming what
the other suggests to you, accepting a proposal
7
of subjectivity, acting in the manner in which
the other addresses you, actualizing and verifying this proposal, in the sense of rendering it
true” (135). The result is bringing into being
animals that nourish humans, and humans
that nourish animals. Living and dying are
both in play. “Working together” in this kind
of daily interaction of labor, conversation, and
attention seems to me to be the right idiom.
Continually hungry for more of Despret’s visiting with critters, their people, and their apparatuses – hungry for more of her elucidations of
“anthropo-zoo-genesis” (“Body We Care For”)
– I have a hard time feeling satisfied with only
human people on the menu. That prejudice
took a tumble when I read Women Who Make
a Fuss: The Unfaithful Daughters of Virginia
Woolf, which Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane
Despret wrote together with an extraordinary
collective of bumptious women. “Think we
must!” cries this book, in concert with the
famous line from Virginia Woolf’s Three
Guineas. In Western worlds, and elsewhere
too, women have hardly been included in the
patrilines of thinking, most certainly including
the patrilines making decisions for (yet
another) war. Why should Virginia Woolf, or
any other woman, or men for that matter, be
faithful to such patrilines and their demands
for sacrifice? Infidelity seems the least we
should demand of ourselves!
This all matters, but the question in this book
is not precisely that, but rather what thinking
can possibly mean in the civilization in which
we find ourselves:
But how do we take back up a collective
adventure that is multiple and ceaselessly
reinvented, not on an individual basis, but
in a way that passes the baton, that is to
say, affirms new givens and new unknowns?
(Women Who Make a Fuss 46)
We must somehow make the relay, inherit the
trouble, and reinvent the conditions for multispecies flourishing, not just in a time of ceaseless
human wars and genocides but also in a time of
human-propelled mass extinctions and multispecies genocides that sweep people and critters
into the vortex. We must
preface
dare “to make” the relay; that is to create, to
fabulate, in order not to despair. In order to
induce a transformation, perhaps, but
without the artificial loyalty that would
resemble “in the name of a cause,” no
matter how noble it might be. (47)
Hannah Arendt and Virginia Woolf both
understood the high stakes of training the
mind and imagination to go visiting, to
venture off the beaten path to meet unexpected,
non-natal kin, and to strike up conversations, to
pose and respond to interesting questions,
to propose together something unanticipated,
to take up the unasked-for obligations of
having met. This is what I have called cultivating response-ability. Visiting is not a heroic
practice; making a fuss is not the Revolution;
thinking with each other is not Thought.
Opening up versions so stories can be ongoing
is so mundane, so earth-bound. That is precisely
the point. The blackbird sings its importance;
the babblers dance their shining prestige; the
storytellers crack the established disorder.
That is what “going too far” means, and this
curious practice is not safe. Like Arendt and
Woolf, Despret and her collaborators understand that we are dealing with “the idea of a
world that could be habitable” (Women Who
Make a Fuss 159).
The very strength of women who make a fuss
is not to represent the True, rather to be witnesses for the possibility of other ways of
doing what would perhaps be “better.” The
fuss is not the heroic statement of a grand
cause [ … ] it instead affirms the need to
resist the stifling impotence created by the
“no possibility to do otherwise, whether we
want it or not,” which now reigns everywhere. (162–63)
It is past time to make such a fuss.
Despret’s curious practice has no truck with
loyalty to a cause or doctrine; but it draws
deeply from another virtue that is sometimes
confused with loyalty, namely, “thinking
from” a heritage. She is tuned to the obligations
that inhere in starting from situated histories,
situated stories. She retells the parable of the
twelve camels in order to tease out what it
means to “start from,” i.e., to “remain obligated
with respect to that from which we speak, think,
or act. It means to let ourselves learn from the
event and to create from it.” In a sort of cat’s
cradle with powerful fables, Despret received
the parable from Isabelle Stengers, and then
she relayed it to me in early 2013. I relay it
back to her in this preface. To inherit is an act
“that demands thought and commitment, an
act that calls for our transformation by the
very gift of inheriting” (Despret, “Why ‘I had
not read Derrida’” 94).
In his will, the father in this story left his
three quarrelsome sons a seemingly impossible
inheritance: eleven camels to be divided in a
precise way, half to the eldest son, a quarter to
the second son, and a sixth to the third. The perverse requirements of the legacy provoked the
confused sons, who were on the verge of
failing to fulfill the terms of the will, to visit
an old man living in the village. His savvy kindness in giving the sons a twelfth camel allowed
the heirs to create a solution to their difficult
heritage; they could make their inheritance
active, alive, generative. With twelve camels,
the fractions worked, leaving over one camel
to give back to the old man.
Despret notes that the tale she read left actual
camels out of the enlargement and creativity of
finding what it means to “start from.” Those
storied camels were conventional, discursive,
figural beasts, whose only function was to give
occasion for the problematic sons to grow in
patriarchal understanding, recapitulating more
than a little the history of philosophy that
Despret – and I – inherited. But by listening,
telling, and activating that particular story her
way she makes something that was absent
present. She made an interesting, curious fuss
without denouncing anybody. Therefore,
another heritage emerges and makes claims on
anyone listening, anyone attuned. It isn’t just
philosophy that has to change; the mortal
world shifts. Long-legged, big-lipped, humped
camels shake the dust from their hot, hardworked hides and nuzzle the storyteller for a
scratch behind the ears. Despret, and because
of her, we, inherit camels now, camels with
their people, in their markets and places of
8
haraway
travel and labor, in their living and dying in
worlds-at-stake, like the contemporary Gobi
desert.2 We start from what is henceforth a
dilated story that makes unexpected demands
to cultivate response-ability. If we are to
remain faithful to starting from the transformed
story, we can no longer not know or not care that
camels and people are at stake to each other –
across regions, genders, races, species, practices. From now on call that philosophy, a
game of cat’s cradle, not a lineage. We are obligated to speak from situated worlds, but we no
longer need start from a humanist patriline
and its breathtaking erasures and high-wire
acts. The risk of listening to a story is that it
can obligate us in ramifying webs that cannot
be known in advance of venturing among their
myriad threads. In a world of anthropozoogenesis, the figural is more likely than not to grow
teeth and bite us in the bum.
Despret’s philosophical ethology starts from
the dead and missing as well as from the living
and visible. She has studied situated human
beings’ mourning practices for their dead in
ways strongly akin to her practice of philosophical ethology; in both domains, she attends to
how – in practice – people can and do solicit
the absent into vivid co-presence, in many
kinds of temporality and materiality. She
attends to how practices – activated storytelling
– can be on the side of what I call “ongoingness”; i.e., nurturing, or inventing, or discovering, or somehow cobbling together ways for
living and dying well with each other in the
tissues of an earth whose very habitability is
threatened. Many kinds of failure of ongoingness crumble lifeways in our times of onrushing
extinctions, exterminations, wars, extractions,
and genocides. Many kinds of absence, or threatened absence, must be brought into ongoing
response-ability, not in the abstract but in
homely storied cultivated practice.
To my initial surprise, this matter brought
Despret and me together with racing pigeons,
also called carrier pigeons – in French “voyageurs” – and with their avid fanciers – in
French “colombophiles,” lovers of pigeons.3 I
wrote an essay for Despret after an extraordinary week with her and her colleagues in the
9
chateau at Cerisy in July 2010, in which I proposed playing string figure games with companion species for cultivating multispecies
response-ability (Haraway, “Jeux de ficelles”).
I sent Despret a draft containing my discussion
of the wonderful art-technology-environmentalactivist project by Beatriz da Costa called
PigeonBlog, as well as a discussion of the communities of racing pigeons and their fanciers
in southern California. Pigeon racing is a
working-class men’s sport around the world,
one made immensely difficult in conditions of
urban war (Baghdad, Damascus), racial and
economic injustice (New York, Berlin), and displaced labor and play of many kinds across
regions (France, Iran, California).
I care about art-design-activist practices that
join diverse people and varied critters in
shared, often vexed public spaces. “Starting
from” this caring, not from some delusional
caring in general, landed me in innovative
pigeon lofts, where, it turned out, Despret,
attuned to practices of commemoration, had
already begun to roost. In particular, by
leading me to Matali Crasset’s “Capsule” built
in 2003 in the leisure park of Caudry, she
shared her understanding of the power of
holding open actual space for ongoing living
and working in the face of threatened absence
as a potent practice of commemoration.4 The
Beauvois association of carrier pigeon fanciers
asked Crasset, an artist and industrial designer,
to build a prototype pigeon loft that would
combine beauty, functionality for people and
birds, and a pedagogic lure to draw future practitioners into learning demanding skills. Actual
pigeons had to thrive inhabiting this loft; actual
colombophiles had to experience the loft
working; and actual visitors to the ecological
park, which was rehabilitating exhausted farm
land into a variegated nature reserve for recuperating critters and people, had to be infected
with the desire for a life transformed with
avian voyageurs. Despret understood that the
prototype, the memorial, had to be for both
the carrier pigeons and their people – past,
present and yet-to-come. Neither could have
existed or could endure without each other in
ongoing, curious practices.
preface
But without lovers of pigeons, without the
knowledge and the know-how of men and of
birds, without breeding, without mentoring,
without the transmission of practices, while
certainly pigeons would remain, none would
be a voyageur. What it is to commemorate,
then, is not to recall the animal alone, nor a
practice alone, but to activate two becomings-with, an activation inscribed from the
very beginning of the project. Otherwise
put, what is at stake is to bring into existence
those relations by which pigeons transform
people into talented colombophiles, who reciprocally transform pigeons into trust-worthy
voyageurs. It is that which the work commemorates. The project is charged to make
a memorial in the sense of actively prolonging, actively bringing forward in time and
space. (Despret, “Ceux qui insistent”)5
•••
And then Camille came into our lives, rendering
present the non-linear generations of the not-yetborn and not-yet-hatched of vulnerable, co-evolving species. Proposing a relay into uncertain
futures, I end this preface with a story, a speculative fabulation, which starts from a writing
workshop at Cerisy in summer 2013, part of Isabelle Stengers’s colloquium on “gestes spéculatifs.” This ending of a preface will be another
sort of commemoration, like all commemorations
prolonging actively the stories and practices of
those at stake to each other, but this time inherited from those yet to come. Gestated in SF
writing practices, Camille is the keeper of memories in the flesh of a world that may become habitable again. Despret must become Vinciane for
me to tell this story that makes Camille real.
Companion species, we start from Camille
together. Camille is one of the Children of
Compost who ripen in the earth to say no to
the posthuman of every time.
I signed up for the afternoon workshop at
Cerisy, called “narration spéculative.” The first
day the organizers broke us down into writing
groups of two or three participants and gave us
a task. We were asked to fabulate a baby, and
somehow bring the baby through five human
generations. In our times of surplus death of
both individuals and of kinds, a mere five generations can seem impossibly long to imagine
flourishing with and for our multispecies world.
Over the week, the groups wrote many kinds of
possible futures in a rambunctious play of literary forms, all different, all vital. Versions
abounded. Besides me, the members of my
group were the filmmaker Fabrizio Terranova
and Vinciane. The version I tell here is itself a
speculative gesture, both a memory and a lure
for a “we” that came into being by fabulating a
story together one summer in Normandy. But I
cannot tell exactly the same story that my cowriters would propose or remember. My story
here is an ongoing speculative fabulation, not a
conference report for the archives. We started
writing together, and we have since written
Camille stories individually, sometimes passing
them back to the original writers for elaboration,
sometimes not; and we have encountered Camille
and the Children of Compost in other writing collaborations too. All the versions are necessary to
Camille. My memoire for that workshop is an
active casting of threads from and for ongoing,
shared stories. Camille, Donna, Vinciane, and
Fabrizio brought each other into co-presence;
we render each other capable.
Vinciane, Fabrizio, and I felt a vital pressure
to provide our baby a name and a pathway into
what was not-yet but might-be. We also felt a
vital pressure to ask our baby to be part of learning, over five generations, to radically reduce the
pressure of human numbers, currently set on a
course to climb to ten to eleven billion by the
end of the twenty-first century CE . We could
hardly approach the five generations through a
story of heteronormative reproduction (to use
the ugly but apt American feminist idiom)!
More than a year later, I realized that Camille
taught me how to say “Make Kin Not Babies.”6
Immediately, however, as soon as we proposed
the name of Camille to each other, we understood
that we were now holding a squirming child who
had no truck with conventional genders or with
human exceptionalism. This was a child born
for symbiosis and sympoiesis – for becomingwith and making-with. Luckily, Camille came
into being at a moment of an unexpected but
powerful, interlaced, planet-wide eruption of
numerous communities of a few hundred
people each, who felt moved to migrate to
10
haraway
ruined places and work with human and nonhuman partners to heal these places, building
networks, pathways, nodes, and webs of and for
a newly habitable world.
Camille’s people moved to West Virginia on a
site that had been devastated by mountain-top
removal coal mining. They allied themselves
with struggling multispecies communities in
the rugged mountains and valleys, both the
local people and the other critters.7 Coming
from every economic class, color, religion, secularism, and region, members of the emerging
diverse settlements around the earth lived by a
few simple but transformative practices, which
in turn lured – became vitally infectious – for
many other peoples and communities. Some of
the practices: every new child must have at
least three parents, who may or may not practice
new or old genders. Corporeal differences, along
with their often fraught histories, are cherished.
New children must be rare and precious, and
they must have the robust company of other
young and old ones of many kinds. Kin relations
can be formed at any time in life, and so parents
and other sorts of relatives can be added or
invented at many significant points. Such
relationships enact strong life-long commitments and obligations of diverse kinds. Kin
making as a means of reducing human
numbers and demands on the earth, while
simultaneously increasing human and other
critters’ flourishing, engaged the most intense
energies and passions in the emerging worlds.
Thus, the work of these communities is an
intentional kin-making practice across deep
damage and significant difference. Historical
social action and cultural and scientific change
– much of it activated by anti-colonial, antiracist, pro-queer feminist movement – had
seriously unraveled the once-imagined natural
bonds of sex and gender and race and nation,
but undoing the widespread destructive commitment to the still-imagined natural necessity
of the tie between kin making and a tree-like
biogenetic reproductive genealogy became a
key task for the Children of Compost.
The decision to bring a new human infant
into being is a collective one for the emerging
communities, and no one can be coerced to
11
bear a child. Although not in the form of individual decision making to conceive a new
baby, individual reproductive freedom is cherished. This freedom’s most treasured power is
the right and obligation of the person, of whatever gender, who is carrying a pregnancy to
choose an animal symbiont for the new child.
All new human members of the group come
into being as symbionts with critters of a specific
threatened species, and therefore with the whole
patterned fabric of living and dying of those particular beings and all their associates, for whom
the possibility of a future is very fragile.
The symbionts must also be members of
migratory species, which critically shapes the
lines of visiting, working, and playing for all
the partners. The core of each new child’s education is learning how to live in symbiosis so
as to nurture the symbiont, and all the other
beings the symbiont requires, into ongoingness
for at least five human generations. The symbionts keep the relays of life going, both inheriting and inventing practices of recuperation,
survival, and flourishing. Because the animal
partners in the symbiosis are migratory, each
human child learns and lives in nodes and pathways, with other people and their symbionts, in
the alliances and collaborations needed to make
ongoingness possible. Literally and figurally,
training the mind to go visiting is a life-long
pedagogical practice in these communities.
Together and separately, the sciences and arts
are passionately practiced and enlarged as
means to attune rapidly evolving ecological naturalcultural communities, including people,
through the dangerous centuries of irreversible
climate change and continuing high rates of
extinction and other troubles.
A treasured power of individual freedom for
the new child is to choose a gender – or not –
when and if the patterns of living and dying
evoke that desire. Bodily modifications are
normal among Camille’s people; and at birth a
few genes and a few microorganisms from the
symbiont are added to the child’s bodily heritage, so that sensitivity and response to the
world as experienced by the animal symbiont
can be more vivid and precise for the human
member of the team. The animal partners are
preface
not modified in these ways, although the
ongoing relationships with lands, waters,
people and peoples, critters, and apparatuses
render them newly capable in surprising ways
too, including ongoing EcoEvoDevo biological
changes.8 Throughout life, the human person,
in our case, Camille, may adopt further bodily
modifications for pleasure and aesthetics or for
work, as long as the modifications tend to both
symbionts’ well-being.
Monarch butterflies frequent land near
Camille’s West Virginia community in the
summers, and they undertake a many-thousandmile migration south to overwinter in a few
specific forests of pine and oyamel fir in central
Mexico, along the border of the states of
Michoacán and Mexico.9 Along the way, the Monarchs must eat and breed in cities, farms, forests,
and fields of a vast and damaged landscape. In particular, the young of the leapfrogging Monarch
migrations face the consequences of genetic and
chemical technologies of mass industrial agriculture that make the indispensable food plant for
larvae – native, local milkweeds – unavailable
along most of the routes. Not just the presence
of any milkweed but also the timing of flowering
of local milkweed varieties is syncopated in the
inherited flesh of Monarchs. Unhinged in time
and stripped of food, larvae starve. Migrations
fail. The trees in central Mexico mourn the loss
of their winter shimmying clusters, and the
fields of North America are desolate without the
flitting shimmer of orange and black in summer.
Camille’s birthing parent chose Monarch butterflies as Camille’s symbionts. That meant that
Camille of the first generation, and further
Camilles for four more human generations at
least, would grow in knowledge and know-how
committed to the ongoingness of these gorgeous
and threatened insects all along the pathways
and nodes of their migrations and residencies.
Camille grew rich in worldly communities
throughout life, as work and play with and for
the butterflies made for intense residencies and
active migrations with a host of people and other
critters. As one Camille approached death, a
new Camille would be born to the community in
time so that the elder could teach the younger to
be ready. At initiation, as a coming-of-age gift,
the second Camille decided to ask for chin
implants of butterfly feelers, a kind of tentacular
beard, so that tasting the worlds of the flying
insects could become the heritage of the human
partner too, helping in the work and adding to
the corporeal pleasures of becoming-with.
All the Camilles knew the work could fail at
any time. The dangers remained intense. A
legacy of centuries of mostly capitalist exploitation of both people and other beings, excess
extinctions and exterminations continued to
stalk the earth. Still, successfully holding open
space for other critters and their committed
people also flourished, and multispecies partnerships of many kinds contributed to building a
habitable earth in sustained troubled times.
Nonetheless, after decades of heartening progress, new fungal diseases afflicting several
species in the subfamily Danainae emerged too
quickly for response; and near the end of life,
the third Camille witnessed the loss of the Monarchs and the active patterns of living and dying
they sustained. The fourth Camille thus inherited another task from the mentor, to become
the Speaker for the Dead, to bring into ongoing
presence, through active memory, the lost lifeways, so that other symbiotic and sympoietic
commitments did not lose heart. The fourth
and fifth Camilles traveled widely, drawing
from their heritage of Monarch symbioses, to
teach and learn how to practice healing and ongoingness in the cyclones of continuing damage.
Through the practice of vital memory, the work
of the Speakers for the Dead was to strengthen
the healing that was gaining momentum across
the earth. The Children of Compost would not
cease the layered curious practice of becomingwith others for a habitable world.
With Vinciane and her
companions, it is time to
make a fuss, time to go
visiting, time to think with each
other.
notes
1 With courage and precision, Porcher has also
studied horrific industrial pig facilities that can
never be called farms.
12
haraway
2 For example, see the film The Story of the
Weeping Camel (2004), directed and written by
Byambasuren and Luigi Falorni.
3 Pigeons and doves constitute the bird clade
Columbidae, with about 310 species.
4 For an exposition of the project and a
photograph of Matali Crasset’s pigeon loft, see
<http://www.artconnexion.org/espace-public-pub
lic-realm/37-matali-crasset–capsule>.
5 Quoted in Haraway, “Jeux de ficelles” 52 (my
translation). Original:
Mais sans colombophile, sans savoir et
savoir-faire des hommes et des oiseaux,
sans sélection, sans apprentissage, sans
transmission des usages, quand bien même
resterait-il des pigeons, plus aucun ne sera
voyageur. Ce qu’il s’agit de commémorer
n’est donc pas un animal seul, ni une pratique seule, mais bien un agencement de
deux “devenirs avec” qui s’inscrit, explicitement, à l’origine du projet. Autant dire, ce
qu’il s’agit de faire exister, ce sont des
relations par lesquelles des pigeons transforment des hommes en colombophiles
talentueux et par lesquelles ces derniers
transforment des pigeons en voyageurs
fiables. C’est cela que l’œuvre commémore.
Elle se charge de faire mémoire au sens de
prolonger activement.
6 This slogan joins a litter of symbiogenetic and
sympoietic provocations that lure my writing. In
the 1980s, Elizabeth Bird gave me “Cyborgs for
Earthly Survival.” Later, Rusten Hogness gave
me “Not Posthuman but Compost!” as well as
humusities rather than humanities. Camille gives
us “Make Kin Not Babies.” Breaking the “necessity” of the tie between kin and reproduction is
the task for feminists now. It is past time to
make a fuss. Disloyal to patriarchal genealogy,
we have helped disable the sense of natural
necessity of the ties of race and nation, although
that work is never done; and we have unraveled
the bonds of sex and gender, although we are
not finished there either. Feminists have been
powerful players disabling the pretensions of
human exceptionalism too. No wonder that
there is much more collaborative work to do
strengthening webs, cutting some ties and knotting others, to live and die well in a habitable
world.
13
7 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountaintop_rem
oval_mining>. See the film Goodbye to Gauley Mountain:
An
Ecosexual
Love
Story
(http://
goodbyegauleymountain.org/).
8 Ecological Evolutionary Developmental biology,
or EcoEvoDevo, was one of the most important
knowledge practices to reshape the sciences in
the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries
CE .
9 See
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monarch_
Butterfly_Biosphere_Reserve>, <http://www.nets
tate.com/states/symb/butterflies/wv_monarch_but
terfly.htm> and <http://www.wvdnr.gov/Wildlife/
Butterflies.shtm>; for a good map of the
migrations, see <http://www.flightofthebutterflies.
com/epic-migrations/> and <http://www.fws.gov/
international/animals/monarch-butterfly.html>. See
also Kingsolver. Western Monarch butterflies
overwinter in California, including Santa Cruz,
where we avidly seek them out each year in eucalyptus and Monterey cypress groves at Natural
Bridges State Park. Monarchs in Santa Cruz numbered about 120,000 in 1997 but had plummeted
to 1,300 by 2009, a few dozen in 2014, and
maybe a couple hundred in winter 2015 (http://
www.xerces.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/we
stern-monarchs-factsheet.pdf). Camille’s community has ties here too.
bibliography
Arendt, Hannah. Lectures on Kant’s Political
Philosophy. Brighton: Harvester, 1982. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “The Becoming of Subjectivity
in Animal Worlds.” Subjectivity 23 (2008): 123–39.
Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “The Body We Care For:
Figures of Anthropo-zoo-genesis.” Body and
Society 10.2–3 (2004): 111–34. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “Ceux qui insistent.” Faire Art
comme on fait societé. Ed. Didier Debaise et al.
Paris: Réel, 2013. I.7. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “Domesticating Practices: The
Case of Arabian Babblers.” Routledge Handbook of
Human–Animal Studies. Ed. Garry Marvin and
Susan McHugh. New York and London:
Routledge, 2014. 23–38. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “‘Sheep Do Have Opinions.’”
Trans. Liz Carey-Libbrecht. Making Things Public.
preface
Ed. Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel. Cambridge,
MA: MIT P, 2005. 360–68. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “Why ‘I had not read Derrida’:
Often Too Close, Always Too Far Away.” Trans.
Greta D’Amico and Stephanie Posthumus. French
Thinking about Animals. Ed. Louisa Mackenzie and
Stephanie Posthumus. Ann Arbor: Michigan State
UP, 2015. 91–104. Print.
Haraway, Donna. “Jeux de ficelles avec les espèces
compagnes: rester avec le trouble.” Trans. Vinciane
Despret and Raphael Larrière. Les Animaux: Deux
ou trois choses que nous savons d’eux. Ed. Vinciane
Despret and Raphael Larrière. Paris: Hermann,
2014. 23–59. Print.
Kingsolver, Barbara. Flight Behavior. New York:
Harper, 2012. Print.
Stengers, Isabelle, and Vinciane Despret, and collective. Women Who Make a Fuss: The Unfaithful
Daughters of Virginia Woolf. Trans. April Knutson.
Minneapolis: Univocal, 2014. Print.
Donna Haraway
History of Consciousness Department
University of California at Santa Cruz
1156 High Street
Santa Cruz, CA 95064
USA
E-mail: haraway@ucsc.edu
ANGELAKI
The best drama is written by animals, I
think, and I think that it was a good choice
for ethology to choose stories, not only
because it’s pedagogical but because it
always obliges and requests from us to
remember that we are dealing with a living
being, a subject with their own experience.
Vinciane Despret1
I hope to feel differently. To have new percepts […] To change.
Vinciane Despret2
F
or over twenty years Belgian philosopher
Vinciane Despret has been carving a
unique path in the study of human knowledge
about animals: its forms, history, limits, questions, future. And though it has led her to be
a leading figure in the interdisciplinary field of
animal studies, her writings are still relatively
unknown to English audiences. Equally at
home in philosophical discussions on Leibniz
or Deleuze, ethological observations of birds
or orangutans, and historical or current practices of scientific investigations and methodologies, Despret has approached the lives
of animals with a refreshing and open-minded
curiosity. Rather than starting out from a prescribed theoretical position and methodological
base, Despret waits, like the ethologists she
works with and studies, for animals to show
their ways to her. She takes her lead from
animals, and those who work with them: she
thinks with, from, and like them, follows
them, observes and learns from them, and in
the process she continuously becomes transformed by them. What do they have to say?
How do they behave? What questions do they
ask? How are their behaviours affected by the
presence of observers? Why have humans
approached the study of animals in the ways
brett buchanan
THE METAMORPHOSES
OF VINCIANE DESPRET
they have? The result is a rich and diverse
body of writings, with over eight books and
eighty articles and counting, full of stories that
demonstrate just how much more surprising,
inventive, and intelligent animals are than we
credit.
A veritable bestiary of animals and interesting stories are found throughout Despret’s writings, and her sources are as varied as the animals
themselves: she draws from field research
(Arabian babblers, sheep, wolves), YouTube
videos (cats, crows, lions), scientific laboratories
(capuchins, rats), zoos (orangutans, baboons),
rescue centres (elephants, chimpanzees), farms
(pigs, goats, cows), film (parrots), literature
(horses, tigers), philosophy and history (octopuses, ticks, jackdaws), and more. Despite the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039818
17
the metamorphoses of vinciane despret
slightly classificatory feel to this list, none of
these stories are just about one species either.
Every story is multispecied. Perhaps it’s no surprise, then, that one of her latest books is an abecedary; from A to Z, from artist to zoophilia,
from ants to zebras, animals utterly permeate
our languages, our thoughts and behaviours,
our accounts of ourselves, our everyday lives.
But Despret does not generalize or universalize.
There’s no attempt at systematicity or completeness. Like Isabelle Stengers (one of Despret’s
mentors), she actively resists an all-purpose
explanation or theory (Que diraient; Stengers,
Cosmopolitics I). And like Jacques Derrida,
Despret claims that not a single animal can
speak for its species, just as no species is representative of animals as such (Quand le loup 28;
Buchanan, Chrulew, and Bussolini; Derrida).
There is no as such. No two stories are alike,
then, in the same way that no animal is just
like another. Instead, one discovers a plurality
of singular animals and meanings that reawaken
our understandings of animal lives.
Despret’s methodological approach is similarly idiosyncratic, always changing, and
resists easy explanation. Like a curious investigative reporter, she has a knack for discovering,
analysing, and articulating good stories. Early in
her career, Despret’s work established her as
both a philosopher and ethologist, albeit with
a twist: as a philosopher, she’s out “in the
field,” creating concepts with birds just as
much as with ideas, and as an ethologist, she’s
more an “ethologist of ethologists,” studying
the behaviours and practices of the ethologists
as much as the birds that they themselves are
observing. This ability to look at particular situations in new and inventive ways, from multiple
perspectives, defines Despret’s work over the
ensuing decades. In one project she’ll wear the
hat of a literary detective and lawyer, poring
back over the infamous case of Clever Hans to
unravel the testimonies of the expert witnesses
(Hans); in another she’ll enter the world of rat
experimentations to cast a light on the questions
being asked of the rats, and the rats’ responses
to this misplaced attention (Penser); in yet
another she’ll work with filmmakers, installation artists, and curators to create a large
exhibition in Paris on the extraordinariness of
animal lives (Bêtes et hommes).
Finally, it’s not just the animals that teach and
inform Despret’s thoughts, even if she herself
would be the first to claim that she’s learned
the most from the animals themselves. Her
human sources are just as wide-ranging. These
include writings from the history of Western
philosophy (from the Ancient Greeks to Gilles
Deleuze), the practices and philosophies of contemporary science studies and animal studies
(Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, and Stengers),
the science of ethologists and primatologists
(Amotz Zahavi, Shirley Strum, Barbara Smuts,
Marc Bekoff), historical biologists (Edward
Thompson, Charles Darwin, Jakob von
Uexküll), and political theorists (Karl Marx,
Peter Kropotkin) as well as the oral reports
and anecdotes of farmers, conservationists, caretakers, trainers, and breeders. The point is not to
supply an exhaustive list of all of Despret’s influences but rather to exhibit their great diversity.
It is for all of these reasons, and more, that her
writings will be of interest to those working in
animal studies, science studies, contemporary
philosophy, cultural anthropology, social geography, political theory, religious studies, and artistic practices. Her training and experience have
drawn from the academic disciplines of psychology and philosophy, and ethological fieldwork in
parks, farms, laboratories, and cities throughout
Europe. Throughout it all, Despret seeks something relatively simple. Simple to say, but far
more difficult to achieve. She seeks transformations and metamorphoses: to transform and
be transformed, to change ideas, behaviours,
and habits, both her own and those of others.
To view the world differently – and to take joy
in its plurality – will be the sign of such an
achievement. She wants, in short, no more than
to let animals be interesting, and no less than
to change the world, and this begins with “learning to transform our habits” and acquiring “new
ways of living together” (Quand le loup 255).
origins
Despret admits that it is somewhat of a cliché
for an author to appeal to an “origins” story
18
buchanan
for how she or he came to have an appreciation
or love for animals. Perhaps it was a family companion animal while one was young, perhaps a
discovery of one’s own eating habits, or
perhaps a black bear encountered along a
forest trail. But this doesn’t mean there isn’t
some truth in these stories, and this is no less
the case with Despret herself. She has her own
versions of an origins story, but there are a
few caveats: on the one hand, there isn’t a
single “origin” to Despret’s passion for
animals, but rather many continuously unfolding origins, and on the other, these stories are
not so much about her own self-awakening (as
such stories tend to emphasize), but rather
they are just as much about the animals themselves. In one of her most autobiographical
works, Despret explains that it
is a matter of performing through narration
the pressing obligation that is now mine: to
always attempt, by all means possible, not
only not to erase the presence of the
animal, but above all to avoid relegating the
animal to the status of a passive object.
This is a moral, political, and epistemological
obligation. (“Why ‘I Had Not’” 98)
This story could therefore begin with an
account of Despret listening to a blackbird
early one spring morning in her Liège backyard
garden. Overtaken by the experience of the
blackbird’s song, Despret has said that the
bird sang as if the importance of the world
was in its song, that this blackbird knew what
importance meant, and that it was teaching
Despret something about importance.3 Like
many of her colleagues in ethology, she dismisses any suggestion that a sentiment such as
this bears a negative mark of anthropomorphism. Human attributes are not being attributed
to animals, as it may in fact be just as much a
case of theriomorphism, with humans adopting
the capacities and influences of the animals.4 In
the present scenario, the blackbird taught
Despret about the notion of importance, of
being open and available to the world around
her, of hearing the song, and of becoming transformed through an event as seemingly simple
and routine as this.
19
This story, however, could just as easily begin
when Despret showed up on the doorstep of the
Israeli ornithologist Amotz Zahavi, eager to
observe Arabian babblers with him in the
Negev desert. Through this process she discovers that Zahavi is just as interesting as the
birds themselves, so much so that her project
takes off in a different direction. One of these
insights is that no one is “neutral” in the
study of others: neither the scientists nor the
animals. Each contributes to the production of
existence that brings them together, and each
constructs the stories that are told (Naissance
14–22; Stengers, Invention 146). Then again,
this story may begin when she first met Isabelle
Stengers, and discovered that her theoretical
approach to the sciences was exactly what she
herself was intuitively thinking about, but had
not yet been able to formulate with respect to
her work with animals. Or it may start with
her work with the dance choreographer Luc
Petton (whose images appear in this issue),
with whom she re-imagines the notion of choreography and collaborative work as they place in
motion a dance involving humans and Manchurian cranes or humans with swans.
In every case, Despret transforms her thinking and actions through all of her engagements.
By her own admission, she gets bored by the
status quo, by the same overarching generalizations, by the erasure of individual idiosyncrasies, anecdotes, and knowledges (Buchanan,
Chrulew, and Bussolini). There isn’t a single
“origin,” then, but multiple origins that arise
as a result of the “agencement” of various
agencies coming together (Despret, “From
Secret Agents” 38); each origin isn’t self-produced, as though autonomously willed by
Despret alone. Instead, each origin is both the
commencement and consequence of a new
entanglement of which she forms a part, as she
becomes together with her interlocutors, both
human and non-human. She listens to animals,
and her writings are responses in kind. More
on this below.
That there isn’t just one story to be told here
is likely clear, but there is one particular fable
that runs its course throughout her writings.
Beginning with her doctoral thesis on emotions
(Our Emotional Makeup) and continuing
through to her most recent writings (Les Faiseuses; “Why ‘I Had Not’”), Despret has
evoked a fable – “The Twelfth Camel” – about
an old man who, anticipating his coming
death, needs to leave his eleven camels to his
three sons. With no easy way to divide them,
the father bequeaths half to his first son, a
quarter to his second son, and a sixth to his
third son. Upon their father’s death, the sons
are unsure how to divide up this legacy, so
approach an old sage in town. The sage’s solution is to give them his own old camel, out of
which the sons divide the camels into groups
of six, three, and two respectively, whereupon
they, having resolved their problem, return
the old camel back to the sage. For Despret,
this fable of the twelfth camel provides a
means for thinking about how one responds to
problems that stem from influences, legacies,
and inheritances. The twelfth camel wasn’t a solution in and of itself to the sons’ problem but it
did provide a creative means of changing the
problem by constructing a new one. As
explained in Our Emotional Makeup, the sons
responded with an affirmative “yes” to their
problem, seeking and finding solutions to a
problem that in fact has no clear or identifiable
solution. Instead of fighting over their inheritance, resorting to negative hostilities due to
their situation, or escaping from the problem
altogether, the sons sought a creative solution,
one that involved the receiving and returning
of a gift.5
It’s clear that this fable resonates with
Despret, and it does so for at least three
reasons. The principal one is that, as she puts it,
I am interested in the problem: how to pinpoint what we know, how to state our practices in a way that I know will make them
exist, make them change, in a way that
offers them a possibility likely to be of interest to us. (Our Emotional Makeup 21)
From a broadly theoretical point of view, the
fable is oddly pragmatic: the sons are compelled
to find the best solution possible within an
otherwise unresolvable scenario. For Despret,
this becomes an epistemological, ontological,
and ethical challenge of discovering one’s role
in a particular problem, how one contributes
to the “production of existence” of knowledge
and things (Naissance 22), and how changing
the conditions of a problem leads it to become
much more interesting. For example, what is a
scientist’s interest in an experiment? What is
the interest of the animals in question? How
might the investigator be creating the conditions of the apparatus that he or she believes
to be objective? How are the animals responding, and to what are they responding? The pragmatic practice of thought actually leads to more
questions, considerable uncertainty, and greater
flexibility, but it also makes the experiment,
both of thought and practice, much more
interesting.
More specifically, the fable speaks to the
ability to adapt creatively to the inheritance
one receives. Despret was educated in both psychology and philosophy – and for a time worked
as a therapist and clinician – but it was her curiosity with the boundless untold stories of
animals that led her towards ethology. To be
frank, animals became more interesting. At
this juncture in her early career, however, the
question of her own indebtedness to and inheritance of two or three rather distinct traditions
(philosophy, psychology, ethology) placed her
in a concrete quandary. As both a methodological and material dilemma, what does she actually study, and how? Does she think from her
philosophical tradition, one rooted in the
erudite traditions of logic, exegeses, and critical
analyses, or does she think on behalf of the
animals, from a tradition seen as rooted in anecdotes, subjective biases, and questionable scientific validity? The fable resonates because it
pulls her out of this forced and false alternative
between “pure” philosophy and “pure” ethology – with their internal mechanisms of isolating, differentiating, and separating problems –
and instead presents her with the freedom to
reinvent what will become, through her writings, a new practice of philosophical ethology.
The fable, in other words, “put an end to the
compromise I had made between two contradictory obligations: that of thinking from philosophy, and that of thinking from animals”
20
buchanan
(“Why ‘I Had Not’” 94). It’s a false alternative –
though one still very much embedded within
our Western academic practices – and the
fable provided a lesson that an inheritance is
“an act that calls for our transformation by the
very gift of inheriting” (ibid.).
To understand Despret’s practices it’s also
important to appreciate the subtle humour and
laughter that flows through the majority of her
writings. Her usage of the fable reinforces this
trademark of hers, as she reads the twelfth
camel to be positively affirmative, optimistic,
and even comical in tone. Rather than being
burdened by their inheritance, the sons find a
creative solution, and in doing so proclaim a
joyous “yes” to their situation. There is more
than a hint of Nietzschean inspiration throughout Despret’s writings, and this fable underscores it. “I would like to attempt, then, to
produce this same ‘yes,’” Despret writes,
to create the conditions by which we can
produce it, conditions by which we can
invent a new relationship to our heritage, a
new way of being worthy of it and gain
trust, a new way of being in harmony with
it. (Our Emotional Makeup 18–19)
Like Nietzsche’s amor fati, accepting one’s lot
and creating one’s future demands an inventive
“yes” in place of a resigned or resentful “no”;
and like Zarathustra’s three metamorphoses,
which move from the burdened camel,
through the defiant and critical lion, to the
playful and creative child, Despret reads the
fable as “child-like” in that she builds relations,
starts new beginnings, and laughs along with her
animals.6
These three aspects of the fable – addressing
a problem with no real solution, receiving an
inheritance that requires inventive shuffling,
and an appreciation for surprise and humour –
find their way into much of Despret’s philosophical ethology. In fact, they become the methodological foundation for her writings.
versions
The fable of the twelfth camel is just as significant for what it lacks as for what it gives.
21
For all of its strengths, the camel in this fable
is an allegorical one, a representative symbol,
and a “passive animal” at that; it’s missing, in
other words, a real camel, and for this reason
it remains a theoretical construct and pale
version to the otherwise more fascinating, and
always more interesting, worlds of real
animals. This proves to be a decisive point in
Despret’s thought, and it occurs quite early in
her career. In point of fact, it is precisely what
instigates her career in philosophical ethology.
Returning to the account of the blackbird,
Despret realized it was not enough to write
and think about the representations of
animals; it’s far more productive, and interesting, to write and think with real animals.
Writing about her earliest publications,
Despret notes that “[i]t goes without saying
that I did not have any intention of speaking
about real animals. Rather, my aim was to
follow the path of representations, the symbolic” (“Why ‘I Had Not’” 98). Her own self-criticism is that she “produced many of my own
monologues” and that “in ethology, and more
generally in animal sciences, monologues make
terrible narratives” (ibid.).7
This is a lesson that Despret learned very
early on, and one she took to heart, unlike
certain other theorists and philosophers who
have written about literary, conceptual and
otherwise imagined animals, and who would
go on to become examples of rather strong
indictments. Donna Haraway’s critique of
Derrida and Deleuze on this point comes foremost to mind.8 Always clever, insightful, and
rigorous in their thinking, Haraway contends
that their animals are nonetheless fictitious
animals. They are not real animals, interacting
with other real animals, entangled in complex
social–historical–material relations. They are
not embodied animals who have the capacity
to “bite back.”9
Heading out into the field was the most
immediate and direct way for Despret to overcome this problem. During the summer of
1994, Despret, with only a few ethology
courses behind her (one can sense her spirit of
adventure and humour!), headed out to the
Negev desert to study with Zahavi, the
celebrated ornithologist. Zahavi was famous for
his Handicap principle, a theory that countered
the common sociobiological explanation for
altruism among Arabian babblers (Turdoides
squamiceps), his most commonly studied
bird.10 The Handicap principle provides a
hypothesis for the seemingly paradoxical cases
of animal nature and behaviour (e.g., the peacock’s bright tail feathers, the altruism of babblers) that is potentially “costly” and
“extravagant,” and that should put the
animals at risk, but actually favours them for
sexual selection. As Zahavi explains, animal
signals are reliable and honest in that they
show what they mean to show (Despret,
“Domesticating Practices”; Zahavi and
Zahavi). In the case of the babblers, their
social and gregarious behaviours, such as their
dances and their care for nestlings that are not
their own, do not emphasize cooperative
family modelling, as an altruistic interpretation
would have it, but individual status and
strength. Zahavi suggests that the babblers’
extravagant behaviours show that an animal is
actually well suited for mating since it is able
to take such costly and apparently unnecessary
measures. Despret’s interest was in how these
birds seemed to defy common biological
norms, and thus set out to study the “hybrid”
formation between what Zahavi and his team
of observers were “saying” about the babblers
and what the babblers were “doing” (Naissance
31). In short, she wondered whether it was the
birds who were eccentric, or if it was Zahavi’s
own eccentricity that depicted them as such.
Despret’s experience in the Negev desert has
had a lasting impact on her thought, and has
been raised in many of her subsequent writings.11 She has recently written that “the field
‘happened to me’” (“Domesticating Practices”
25), and in the process it transformed her and
her questions. She entered the desert with the
simple objective “to do in the field what philosophers did with respect to texts” (“Why ‘I Had
Not’” 98), but came away from the experience
with an entirely different perspective. Perhaps
more than anything else her methodological
approach to the study of animals changed, not
only from a switch from symbolic animals to
real animals but just as importantly in the
kinds of questions she learned to ask. To “ask
the right questions” becomes a central motif
of Despret’s thought, for asking the right questions does more than attribute a different
approach to the animals, it just as importantly
highlights a different response from animals.12
Animals, in other words, are not “texts” awaiting hermeneutic interpretation any more than
they are “objects” that can be explained
through scientific experiments; both are suggestive of a detached objectivity ill-placed with
respect to subjective agents. Rather, asking
the right questions demonstrates a form of
“politeness” towards other beings, not only
giving animals the benefit of the doubt of
being able to respond but doing so in a way
that allows them to respond on their own
terms and to answer questions that are of interest to them.13 In Thinking Like a Rat, for
instance, Despret demonstrates how research
with animals too often has them conforming to
the preconceived expectations of the researchers
– as formulated through the hypotheses guiding
the research – rather than to what the animals
themselves might be interested in (Penser 8;
Que diraient 235–37). This can extend from
the assumed gullibility of the research subjects
(e.g., that rats will naively abide by the fixed
parameters of the research apparatus) to an
active violation of the animals themselves
(e.g., removing the whiskers from a rat, or
removing a dominant baboon from his troop).
Politeness is a form of methodological courtesy
as well as an ethical obligation. It not only allows
animals to perform to their capabilities, as
opposed to mechanically react according to the
research apparatus, it also allows them to “collaborate” as active and curious participants in
the process of discovery and learning (Penser
15). Similarly, it provides and encourages
every opportunity for such collaboration to
unfold (Chrulew 33; Lestel, Les Amis 34–35).
This form of politeness is found through all
of Despret’s writing. In her work with the sociologist Jocelyne Porcher, with whom she cowrote Être bête, Despret found that asking the
right questions applies equally to those who
work with animals. To ask the philosophical
22
buchanan
question “what is the difference between
humans and animals?,” as they originally did
with farmers throughout parts of Europe, had
very little applicability or relevance to those
who work, play, train, and live with animals
on a daily basis (11). The question simply
made no sense. Much of their book, therefore,
is about the reformulation of questions such
that they can matter to both “amateurs” and
animals.14 In lieu of a “difference” between
humans and animals, for example, the questions
became shaped by how animals and humans live
“together” (12); similarly, rather than considering what separates human capacities from
animal capacities, the farmers thought in
terms of similarities. On the farms visited, the
sheep, cattle, pigs, and dogs are all individuals,
with their own personalities, friends, intentions,
likes, and fears. The status quo, therefore, is
that animals are similar and not dissimilar to
us, and the question is instead that of wondering
“what are animals capable of?” instead of what
they are incapable of (30).
As a methodological framework, then, “the
right question” does not imply that there is
the right question to ask. This isn’t a prescriptive or normative injunction, and Despret
never tells her readers how to ask the right questions. The right questions are those that lead
towards more questions, that leave open the
possibility for others to respond on their own
terms. It is not to jump ahead and anticipate
how an orangutan will respond to a bunch of
string and thread (Que diraient 243), just as it
isn’t to assume how ravens will respond to
carrion left in a forest (Quand le loup 207).
The assumption of a false pretence will either
result in precisely what one expects (no surprise) or disappointment in the unexpected
result. By contrast, the politeness Despret
extends is one of remaining “hesitant” – in
limbo, as it were – towards how any animal
may respond within a particular scenario. The
hesitation is strategic, and draws from the
thought of William James in a few ways.
To begin with, Despret likens the question of
“what is an animal capable of?” with “what can a
body do?” Both find roots stretching back
through Latour, Deleuze, James, and Spinoza,
23
but it’s specifically James’s emphasis on
slowing down and holding open a question
that particularly interests Despret. With his
thought she finds an affable spirit with which
to hesitate and slow down, and to appreciate
the perplexity and ambiguity of human and
animal bodies coming together to create something new and unexpected. “If we want to
explore how these experiences with rats or
horses are constructed,” she writes,
if we want to gain an access that gives the
chance for many more entities to be active,
we need a theory that prevents us from deciding too quickly what is cause and what is
effect, what affects and what is affected.
James’s theory of emotions provides a good
means to build this undetermined site.
(“The Body” 125)
Drawing from James, Despret notes that “[a]n
emotion is not what is felt but what makes us
feel” (127), such that this indeterminacy
allows animals the opportunity to, as James
puts it, participate in “the creative process of
their own verification” (Quand le loup 26),
which is to say, to play an active role in the
shaping of the ideas we have of them. The hesitation – waiting, watching, learning, playing,
etc. – allows animals to affect us just as much
as we affect them. “Leaving it undetermined
or hesitant allows many more entities to be
active” (“The Body” 123).
In a parallel fashion, Despret develops the
concept of “version” in and around this sense
of hesitation. A version, for Despret, is a particular story, account, perspective, or explanation that coexists, simultaneously and
peacefully, with other multiple versions of the
same event (Our Emotional Makeup 30). Properly speaking, versions exist only in the plural,
as there are always multiple versions that
coexist. Ontologically, versions exist in a mode
similar to how James (and Latour) speaks of
the pluriverse (and Latour also of the “multiverse”).15 Just as the pluriverse refers to the
coexistence of multiple overlapping universes,
and does so to counter the position that there
is a singular universe and universal truth, versions construct multiple stories that transform
our knowledge about how animal lives are
observed and represented. For Despret, the connection to Uexküll’s Umwelt theory is especially
strong here, as Uexküll provides a theory that
depicts the existence of multiple animal
worlds, and does so in such a way that any suggestion of a so-called objective “real” world is
robbed of its familiarity.16 By the same token,
however, Despret finds the Umwelt theory to
overemphasize a vision of subjective worlds
that doesn’t adequately capture the entangled
becomings of various versions that together
form new agents. Epistemologically, versions
are Despret’s way of holding open different narratives that are each capable of constructing our
understanding of a particular event. This notion
of version is contrasted with what she calls a
“vision”:
James gives us tools to help cultivate a site
where different versions can coexist. This is
the very definition of what I call a version,
instead of vision. A version is when multiple
stories can coexist; where they are compossible, Leibniz would say. With vision, if you
say “Oh, this is your vision of the world,” it
means that it’s a subjective experience and
it cannot coexist really with mine, because
this is your vision of the world, and I can
say that you don’t have the truth. You just
have an opinion. (Buchanan, Chrulew, and
Bussolini 169)
More recently, Despret has juxtaposed
version with “theme” as a means to demonstrate
the capability, or not, of maintaining multiple
positions (Que diraient 231–42). Drawing
from translation theory, a theme occurs when
a particular meaning of a term in one context
(e.g., human “mourning”) is directly transposable to another (e.g., chimpanzee “mourning”).
If they don’t have the exact same meaning,
they don’t share the same theme. Throughout
her analyses of scientific practices Despret
finds that animals are all too often diminished
if it’s “found” that the attribute or capacity in
question isn’t “thematically” exact. The question as to whether chimpanzees “mourn”
suggests, then, that there must be an exact
equivalency – a theme – between humans and
chimps. Versions, by contrast, allow the same
term to “open up many meanings and different
senses” (233). They operate on equivocations
and homonymies, not exactitude and synonyms.
When writing a version of how chimpanzees
relate to the death of a loved one, it is entirely
appropriate to say that they “mourn,”
knowing full well that this version maintains
this as an open possibility. Compared with
both “vision” and “theme,” therefore, Despret
proposes “versions” so as to emphasize the plurality and mutual transformability of animal
worlds.
All of this theoretical discussion about
Despret’s methodological approach to philosophical ethology leads towards the kinds of
stories she tells about animals. And stories
they are. In addition to formulating the right
questions in human–animal research, it is just
as important to tell the right kind of story.
Her time spent with Zahavi first accentuated
this penchant for storytelling, and since then it
has been reinforced time and again through
her collaborative projects with academics, scientists, farmers, “amateurs,” and artists, not to
mention the babblers, wolves, chimps, orangutans, elephants … Indeed, Despret’s affinity
for telling a good story extends to her ventures
in film, dance, fiction, and even the art of
writing her own fables (“The Otter and the
Fish Farmer”). “Ethology is a story of
stories,” she explains, and it reinforces the
idea that as a field of study, with its own histories, characters, and concepts, it fundamentally deals with living beings and their own
experiences (Buchanan, Chrulew, and Bussolini
165). With respect to Zahavi’s scientific articles,
she notes that there is a “rupture with the traditional style” of scientific reporting in so far
as he replaces statistics and tables with
“stories” recounting the individual lives of
each bird: he describes what this bird does
during the day, why this bird eats what it
does, how it interacts with others, etc.17 In
other words, the “science” is much closer to
the domain of “non-scientific” writing, such as
that of “amateurs,” naturalists, or journalists.
And yet Despret notes that even Charles
Darwin, the grandfather of biology himself,
wrote in such a style (“From Secret Agents”
24
buchanan
32). While some may write off such storytelling
as romanticized, unprofessional, or, as with the
case of Darwin, a product of his period, Despret
finds the collaboration of perspectives between
the arts and sciences not only entirely appropriate but entirely necessary. The creation of
stories is not akin to the fictionalization of
animal worlds but more a matter of restoring
some of the unfamiliarity that lies within subjective lives that will always surprise us. Despret
describes this as the “re-enchantment” of our
shared worlds, worlds – or one could say “pluriversions” – that have been increasingly reduced
over the last two centuries to informational data
and animal machines. This is what attracts
Despret to the writings of the nineteenthcentury naturalist Edward Thompson:
In effect, Thompson happily mixes together
in his writings what would gradually be separated in the course of history that follows
him: God, scientific knowledge, prophecies,
propositions of transformation, anecdotes,
testimonials of dog owners and zoo keepers,
rigorous experimentations, and a political
project for the composition of a world
where peace reigns between humans and nonhumans. (Quand le loup 256)18
Where science and critical analyses separate and
divide, Despret takes pleasure in the combination and entangling of diverse objects and
views. She appreciates that a crow might enjoy
surfing down a snowy roof or that a horse may
be demonstrating a form of knowledge not
otherwise discerned by an emerging psychological apparatus. She seeks “richer narratives” that
allow for the coexistence of nature and culture,
God and science, peace between humans and
non-humans, as well as penguin LGBTQ communities, painting elephants, and macaques
who like to drink a little too much. In the
case of Thompson, Darwin, Zahavi, and
others, she appreciates scientists who don’t
“de-animate” the worlds they observe.19 What
is needed is a two-fold practice: both to ensure
that the world isn’t de-animated in the first
place, and that it becomes re-enchanted where
and when it has been robbed of its possibility
to enchant.
25
When Despret calls herself a “methodological
animist,” therefore, she does so for precisely
these reasons (“On Asking” passim). She is an
empirical fabulist and non-fiction storyteller,
piecing together bits and pieces of observations
to tell a story that gives life and allows versions
to coexist. To return to her earliest book for a
moment, she explains that ethological theory
“bears the mark of the hybridization of
methods” (Naissance 143) between an a priori
and an a posteriori approach to animals. The
former is akin to the traditional scientific
method: formulate a hypothesis based on what
is expected, and proceed with a “trial.” The
latter, on the other hand, consists in an “investigation” of the empirical evidence: amassing
observations and anecdotes and making sense
of them by connecting the dots. While both
approaches are “versions” in their own right,
Despret’s preference clearly falls towards the
empirical fabulation which she also likens to a
“police investigation” or detective procedural
(145).
It’s no surprise, then, that one of her books –
Hans, le cheval qui savait compter – is constructed in precisely the manner of a detective
novel. Taking her cue from a book by Pierre
Bayard that sets out to reopen and re-examine
the case of Agatha Christie’s The Murder of
Roger Ackroyd (because Bayard does not
accept that Poirot found the “right” killer in
the novel!), Despret similarly sets out to
reopen and re-examine the case of Clever
Hans, the famous Berlin horse believed to be
capable of counting and other feats of independent intelligence at the turn of the twentieth
century.20 Under the watchful eyes of celebrated
psychologists, Hans was first believed to have
the remarkable skill of answering mathematical
questions by counting out numbers by tapping
his hoof, only later to be charged with the
more mundane capacity to read involuntary
clues from his human handlers. At one
moment an animal savant, the next moment a
boring counterfeit. For Despret, however, this
“trial” too quickly indicts Hans and his
handlers, taking away his modes of intelligence
just as quickly as they were attributed. In the
excitement of rushing to conclusions, the
investigators were led astray, or worse, selfblinded from the more interesting hypothesis
at work: that Hans the horse was doing something even more interesting than counting:
“not only could he read bodies, but he could
make human bodies be moved and be affected,
and move and affect other beings and perform
things without their owners’ knowledge”
(“The Body” 113).21 Though far from the end
of the story, Despret finds new clues suggesting
that it is in fact Hans who is leading the humans,
just as much as they’re leading him. The story
takes on a new version here, and provides a
much more interesting and provocative
reading of human–animal agencies, reciprocal
adjustments, and transformations (Hans 126).
All of these methodological approaches –
asking the right questions, humour, politeness,
versions, storytelling, animation and re-enchantment, and more – suggest a common thread: that
of finding and creating connections among
human and non-human animals. The creation
of links is what leads Despret to see herself as a
“constructivist,” namely as someone who consciously chooses to find and build relations,
links, and connections between otherwise disparate propositions, rather than engaging in negative forms of critique, division, reduction,
destruction, and other discriminating practices.
Through her writings, Despret erects bridges
so as to accentuate the often untold “successes”
and “achievements” of animals, be they in laboratory settings or out in the field (Quand le
loup 95–129). The reasons why she does so
might be as simple as saying no more than that
it is polite to do so, or that it provides a more generous, and optimistic, account of our worlds.
That it generates stories of happiness and goodwill, rather than despondency and bad faith.
Another way to put this is to say that it demonstrates “passion,” which for Despret “refers
neither to some parasitic supplement nor to
some sweet story of love: it means to make an
effort to become interested, to immerse oneself
[…] It means to care” (“The Body” 131).
For the same reason, constructing links
shows an interest – a genuine, curious interest
– in animal lives. “Interesting research,”
Despret writes,
is research on the conditions that make something interesting. As soon as one focuses on
the conditions, the question of knowing
“who” becomes interesting is superfluous.
Of interest is he or she who makes someone
or something else capable of becoming
interesting.22
Of course, if animals, and our relations with
them, become more interesting, we ourselves
will become more interested in them. No
longer the animal machine or mechanical automaton or supermarket shrink-wrapped protein,
animals affect us. And the risk is that we ourselves will be transformed as a result.23
transformations
Despret willingly submits herself to change.
Even embraces transformation. And she does
so with respect to both human–animal relations
and the kinds of world we wish to inhabit
together. “If we make an effort,” she writes in
Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau, “to
follow the stories of transformation for each of
these animals, then quite quickly this contrast
between ‘for them’ and ‘for us’ proves to be,
over the course of our journey, not only difficult
but impractical” (24).
In the same vein as both Stengers and Latour,
albeit with a particular emphasis in philosophical ethology, Despret is interested in how new
bodies are articulated. At a conference on “Theorizing the Body,” at which both Despret and
Latour presented, Latour states that an
inarticulate subject is someone who whatever
the other says or acts always feels, acts and
says the same thing […] In contrast, an
articulate subject is someone who learns to
be affected by others – not by itself. There
is nothing especially interesting, deep, profound, worthwhile in a subject “by itself,”
this is the limit of the common definition –
a subject only becomes interesting, deep, profound, worthwhile when it resonates with
others, is effected, moved, put into motion
by new entities whose differences are registered in new and unexpected ways.24
An inarticulate subject is one who speaks in
“themes,” who conducts “trials,” who is
26
buchanan
impolite and disenchants the world. An articulate subject, by contrast, is one who engages in
an “‘anthropo-zoo-genetic practice’, a practice
that constructs animal and human” (Despret,
“The Body” 122). In her own paper from this
same conference, Despret develops this practice
of articulation through an example provided by
the French ethologist Jean-Claude Barrey.
Horses and their riders, we know, develop
very close relations with each other, so much
so that they’re able to “read” one another’s
movements, both intentional and unintentional.
As summarized by Despret,
talented riders behave and move like horses.
They have learned to act in a horse-like
fashion […] Human bodies have been transformed by and into a horse’s body. Who
influences and who is influenced, in this
story, are questions that no longer receive a
clear answer. Both, human and horse, are
cause and effect of each other’s movements.
Both induce and are induced, affect and are
affected. (115)
This practice of becoming articulated between
animal and human is replicated over and over
again, whether it’s Zahavi and his babblers,
Konrad Lorenz and his jackdaw, Hans and the
psychologist Oskar Pfungst, rats and their
experimenters, Heinrich and his ravens, or any
other of our own everyday experiences with
non-human others.
This relational sense of agency is not simply
one wherein animals passively influence our
human understanding and sense of being, but
whereby all animal bodies – human, nonhuman, more-than-human – actively co-constitute each other, both ontologically and
epistemologically.
The claim made by primatologists and ethologists – “The animals have changed, but we
have also changed” – can receive another
translation (if we wish to be faithful to the
way that they themselves describe their
work): “Animals have also changed because
they have changed us.” (Quand le loup 30–31)
The function of this change is an admittedly
novel twist in Despret’s thought, for she reappropriates the French word “agencement,” as
27
used specifically by Deleuze and Guattari, in
order to recover an ontologically foundational
sense of pre-existing agency.25 Unlike “assemblage,” as it is often translated into English,
Despret refers back to agencement to delineate
a rapport of forces that makes some beings
capable of making other beings capable, in
a plurivocal manner, in such a way that the
agencement resists being dismembered,
resists clear-cut distribution […] Agency is
the product of this agencement; there is no
agency without agencement. In other
words, a being’s agency testifies to the existence of an agencement. There is, in each
agencement, co-animation. (“From Secret
Agents” 38)
In some of her most recent engagements with
the dance choreographer Luc Petton, Despret
seeks to explore such agencements in how classically trained ballet dancers “agence” with
swans in one scenario, and with Manchurian
cranes in another. Though the dances are not
choreographed per se, to say that they are
“instinctive” is clearly not the correct term
either for the coordinated and harmonizing
movements of the dancers and birds. Through
their reciprocated movements, it’s not clear
who is choreographing whom. Their bodies
transform together, creating new understandings and new propositions, as suggested by
some of the photographic work in this issue.26
Despret searches for these transformations
and metamorphoses in ethological practices,
just as much as she encourages them within
her self. As a sign of her commitment on this
front, she isn’t afraid to go too far at times, to
force herself out of her comfortable limits, to
say and do things that may encounter resistance.
At times, as discussed above, such risks are
necessary in order to “emancipate” our selves,
both animals and humans, from pre-existing
prejudices or constraints, and from ties that
are too binding, so as to give new relations a
chance. The reasoning is not only so as to
change ourselves but it’s also to change the
world. “We need more work,” Despret writes,
“more good constraints, and more relations to
give animals a chance to actualize their forces,
their intelligences, their competencies, and their
social talents. We need more knowledge and
more practices so as to create a common
world” (Quand le loup 94). The title and epigraph from which this quote is taken, Quand
le loup habitera avec l’agneau [When the
Wolf Shall Dwell with the Lamb], draws inspiration from the Book of Isaiah (11.6) which
reads (in the King James version): “The wolf
also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard
shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and
the young lion and the fatling together; and a
little child shall lead them.”
To transform the world such that lambs may
lie with wolves is a commendable if unpromising goal, but it’s one that Despret eagerly
advances, albeit with some reservations. Like
any good fantasy, Despret’s versions of a
“common world” have their utopic elements;
however, for the very same reasons, they’re
nevertheless somehow believable.
I don’t dream of a perfect world where beings
are no longer exploited by others, which
would not be a perfect world but a world
without life, for there are no lives that are
independent of other lives – it’s Haraway
again who reminds us of this. Nevertheless,
I continue to cultivate the idea of a world
that helps us to be a little less evil, a world
where people are responsible for what they
ask of other beings, and act on this responsibility, with neither the pretence of innocence
nor that the impossibility of innocence allows
us to do whatever we want. (Penser 78)
Her account is strangely but appropriately
Kantian in tone: even if we rationally know
that a perfect world is unattainable, we are
nevertheless obliged to attempt to realize it.27
This obligation – a kind of multispecied, pluriverse imperative – underlies all of her writing,
even if it’s not always apparent. For me, this is
the key to her interest in philosophical ethology, and the stories she tells. Her thought is
underscored by hope which finds its articulation through a secular notion of “belief”:
belief, not in terms of “what is” (and thus the
underlying assumption that some beliefs are
right or wrong), but rather in a pragmatic
sense of what beliefs make possible. A “belief
is what makes entities ‘available’ to events”
(“The Body” 122). It is the belief that our
animal and human worlds are compossible;
that, as she writes in her most recent, unpublished writings, we need to believe in (and
thus remain attentive to) the present and
future demands wrought by extinction events,
and what they signal in terms of the loss of
unique ways of experiencing the world that
are individually and species specific.28
Despret’s belief is what holds her open and endlessly available to the curious stories of animals.
Understood in this way, Despret offers us
an opportunity to believe, to believe in what
is possible, as well as impossible, in what may be articulated
differently, in what new propositions are still to come. And,
in her own way, she does it full
of grace and humour.
disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by
the author.
notes
I would like to thank Matt Chrulew and Jeff Bussolini – my co-editors, colleagues, and friends – for
their support, assistance, guidance, patience, and
above all friendship through the preparation of
this issue. I would similarly like to thank Donna
Haraway for her enthusiastic acceptance to write
the prefatory essay for this issue; Hollis Taylor
and Stephen Muecke for their translations; Luc
Petton, Michel Meuret, Gilles Lacombe, and
Edmond Baudoin for the use of their images; and
Vinciane Despret for her warm hospitality, gracious responses to questions, and for the gift of
her writings in the first place. This work was supported in part by a Laurentian University SSHRC
Research Support Fund.
1 Buchanan, Chrulew, and Bussolini 165–66.
2 Ibid. 175.
3 See Penser 3–5; Buchanan, Chrulew, and Bussolini; Despret, “Why ‘I Had Not’” 97.
4 I recommend here the writings of Dominique
Lestel, Jocelyne Porcher, and Roberto Marchesini
28
buchanan
in particular. See Lestel, Les Origines animales and
L’Animalité; Porcher, Éleveurs et animaux and Vivre
avec les animaux; Chrulew; Marchesini; Marchesini
and Andersen.
“expert” in the field in every way but for a “professional” accreditation or degree. Amateurs
include farmers, trainers, breeders, caretakers,
naturalists, hobbyists, etc.
5 In addition to Our Emotional Makeup, see also Les
Faiseuses 63–71.
15 Latour writes: “To name such a world, I will
employ the term multiverse, put to such good use
by James: the multiverse designates the universe
freed from its premature unification” (“How to
Talk” 213). Latour also uses “pluriverse” (Politics
40). See also James; Latour, Inquiry.
6 I don’t have the time and space to fully develop
this comparison, but please see Nietzsche, The
Gay Science 223 and Thus Spoke Zarathustra 137–39.
7 See Despret, “Ethique et Ethologie” and
“Ecology and Ideology.” This early phase didn’t
last very long, for already by 1995–96 Despret
was engaged in ethological fieldwork for her
Master’s thesis.
8 Haraway famously called out Derrida in her
book When Species Meet for both his lack of attention to real animals (despite his claims to be
affected by the gaze of his cat) and his seeming
blindness to the work and writings of ethologists,
biologists, primatologists, and the like (19–23).
See Despret’s own humorous take on Derrida’s
lack of humour: “his worries about his shame of
being naked in front of his cat seems to lack something I found in Mowat: humour. Derrida doesn’t
laugh at his own worries – neither does he
scream ‘peeping Tom!’” (“Responding Bodies” 64).
9 See Oliver 2; Buchanan, “Most Beautiful
Companion.”
10 See Zahavi; Zahavi and Zahavi.
11 See Naissance, “L’Éthologie comme pratique”
64, and Quand le loup 160–61.
12 See Quand le loup 70, Être bête 88, and Que diraient passim.
16 See Despret, Que diraient 221–30, “From
Secret Agents” 31, and Penser 31–37; Uexküll;
Buchanan, Onto-Ethologies.
17 Naissance 14. This methodological procedure is
in the same spirit as Dominique Lestel’s descriptions of etho-ethnology, in short, the transposition
of anthropological and ethnographical methods to
animal lives. See Lestel, “Ethology and Ethnology”;
Bussolini.
18 In much the same spirit as Thompson’s list,
Despret quotes the fantastical and constructive
list from Borges’ “The Analytical Language of
John Wilkins” as the epigraph to Bêtes et hommes
(11).
19 See “From Secret Agents” 36. Despret here
draws on the recent work of Hustak and Myers
on plant becomings, and appreciates in them
what she elsewhere accentuates through the writings of thinkers such as Eduardo Viveiros de Castro
and Philippe Descola.
20 See Despret, Hans 115; Bayard.
21 On the notion of being affected, particularly the
idea of “affected perspective,” Despret writes: “in
choosing the term ‘affected perspective’, I aim to
emphasize how the scientist risks being touched/
affected by what matters for the animal he/she
observes” (“Responding Bodies” 57).
13 By asking which of the hypotheses and questions are more interesting, Despret consciously
opposes herself to classical theories of science,
including those of ethology and psychology,
which argue that, all else being equal, a simpler
explanation is always preferable over one that is
more complex. In this respect, Morgan’s Canon,
itself an iteration of Occam’s razor, stipulates
that when it comes to animal intelligence, lower
psychological processes ought to always overrule
higher psychological functionality (Morgan;
Despret, Que diraient 17, 137).
22 See “Sheep Do Have Opinions” 363 and Quand
le loup 257; Haraway, “Preface.” On the note of
“interest,” Despret writes elsewhere that it is
“the expectations of someone who cares, of
someone who was interested, of someone who
trusts, moreover, of someone who was interested,
someone it interests (inter-esse, to make a link)”
(“The Body” 124).
14 Despret borrows the term “amateur” from
Latour to refer to “non-scientists” who have a particular taste or nose for a certain field; they are an
23 On this notion of “risk,” as well as seven other
“conditions” that Bruno Latour outlines as part
of the “Stengers–Despret Falsification Principle”
29
(or “Stengers–Despret Shibboleth”), I highly recommend “How to Talk About the Body?” 214–23.
24 Ibid. 210.
25 See Deleuze and Guattari 260, 321.
26 “Propositions” is a term that runs throughout
all of Despret’s writings. And though it is readily
apparent that it is an important term, it can be
easily overlooked due to its colloquial usage. For
a theoretical position on “proposition,” and one
that Despret is quite familiar with, consider this
description by Latour:
Working in the vicinity of Isabelle Stengers’s
Whitehead, I have acquired the habit of
using the word propositions to describe what
is articulated. The word “proposition” conjugates three crucial elements: (a) it denotes
obstinacy (position), that (b) has no definitive
authority (it is a pro-position only) and (c) it
may accept negotiating itself into a com-position without losing its solidity. (“How to
Talk” 212)
See also Politics of Nature 247 and “Well-Articulated Primatology.”
27 See Kant’s “Idea for a Universal History” and
“Perpetual Peace.”
28 Personal correspondence on species extinctions (e.g., passenger pigeons). See Buchanan,
Chrulew, and Bussolini.
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Brett Buchanan
Sudbury
Ontario P3E 2C6
Canada
ANGELAKI
translator’s foreword
The case of the Arabian babblers is a controversial and significant one in ethology. Their
dancing, their gifting, their care for nestlings
that are not their own, are singular enough to
trouble standard sociobiological theories of
the evolution of behaviour. The theory of
Israeli ornithologist Amotz Zahavi is that the
dance is a contest for status that ensures the
reliability of communication and that tests
and performs their social bonds (Zahavi and
Zahavi). Zahavi’s handicap principle has
been heavily criticized by sociobiologists, only
to later find support in the mathematical modelling of others. But is the real difference of
Zahavi’s approach only theoretical, or does it
lie elsewhere, in his anthropomorphic descriptions or habituating field methods? And what
is so special about the babblers?
Vinciane Despret set off to the Israel desert
to find out. Already well versed in the literature
on bird altruism (“É thique et éthologie”), she
sought to complement and challenge her
reading via fieldwork among scientists and
their subjects. She set out to watch the birds,
and to watch their watchers, to ask the latter
questions about the questions they asked the
birds, about the ways they saw them differently. If she initially suspected that it was
Zahavi’s own eccentricities that shaped his distinctive portrayal of the babblers, she soon
came to find that what went into the construction of a scientific theory was here much more
complex and interesting.
The result of this encounter in which, as she
says, “[t]he field ‘happened to me’” (“Domesticating Practices” 25), was her first book, Birth
of an Ethological Theory, written in a joyful
rush of creative energy and promise. In it, she
vinciane despret
translated by matthew chrulew
MODELS AND
METHODS
sketch of a field study
tells of the encounter with the curious theory
that led to her visit, and sets up the theoretical
context of the controversy: evolutionary explanations for altruism in terms of group selection
or reciprocity, debates over sexual selection and
the “arms race” models of natural competition.
She situates among them the idea of “ritual,”
introduced into ethology by Julian Huxley,
which bears on Zahavi’s theory. She then delineates in detail the case of the babblers, combining discussion of the published literature with
her own ethnographic observations in a sophisticated exercise in reflexive and empirical field
philosophy. This was a site, she explains, of
divergent models and methods, narratives and
metaphors, epistemologies and ontologies,
that are only truly visible and understandable
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039841
37
models and methods
if one takes into account the respective scientists’ particular ways of comporting themselves
with the birds they are studying, and the babblers’ active role in writing their own scripts.
In so far as it resembles the immersive participation and individual biographing of anthropological and primatological methods, and
pays skilful attention to the reasons for their
actions, Zahavi’s way of relating to and questioning the babblers gives them the opportunity
to respond, and to bring us to understand and
affirm why it is that they help and dance.
F
rom the reading of one of Zahavi’s articles
devoted to the babblers (“Arabian Babblers”) has emerged the question of whether
the babblers were such extraordinary birds,
with their dances, their games, their disputes,
and their competitions for the privilege of
being altruistic, or if it was the particular gaze
that Zahavi brought which conferred on them
this originality.
Upon reading this article, my questions had
to change (Despret, “Ecology and Ideology”;
“L’Idée de société en éthologie”; L’Homme en
société). In fact, the literature that I inventoried
at the time generally consisted of articles
describing, relatively soberly, types of uncreative automatons, exhibiting behaviours that in
this context are rather conventional.
In order to answer my new questions, I was
then left with the solution of going there
myself, to ask questions, to read and to watch.
I will not maintain the suspense, and all that
precedes suggests my answer. Probably disappointingly, at any rate obvious to my readers,
it appeared to me marvellously complex,
because it preserved the two poles of my questioning, not reducing one to the other nor
exhausting any of the meanings. The babblers
are no ordinary birds, and Zahavi’s theories
emerge in no ordinary contexts of justification.
equilibrium and the great divide
An ironist will say that the birds appeared extraordinary to me, because I saw them through the
eyes of Zahavi. I was myself this ironist on arriving at the Centre. They are right, I was right,
but we must go beyond this one-sided constructivism of the pole of “nature”: not all birds
dance, and not all have this elaborate social
structure. Firstly, because not all birds live for
fifteen years.
Also rare are birds which let themselves be
approached so closely. Let us stop here, just a
moment, and look at what just happened: we
have, without realizing it, slipped from the
bird to the observer, and situated ourselves
right in the space between them. It is in this
space, geographical and relational, that the
double question can arise. The essential and
pressing duplicity of this question transforms
all research into ethical, aesthetic and ethological research: “who am I, how does my gaze
work so that you appear to me as you are?” at
the same time as “who are you so that I see
you thus?” The first without the second pulls
us back to a sterile constructivism; the second
without the first to a dogmatic realism.
Together, they form the moment of equilibrium, the best point for thinking about
things in dynamic, relational and complex
terms. These moments of equilibrium in the
space that unites natural objects and the questions that interrogate them are moments that,
no doubt, contribute to erasing the great
modern divide between nature and culture.
And with this erasure the great divide between
the human and the animal is itself seriously
put into question: Isabelle Stengers sees in the
heresies of the new primatologists (like those
of Shirley Strum) the signs of this challenge
(Invention of Modern Science 62–63). By
letting the baboons respond to other questions
than those traditionally posed to non-humans,
by granting them, for example, social skills
that are no longer merely the product of obedience to species-specific rules, but rather of their
creativity in the construction of social links,
these primatologists seem to sketch the structures of a space of equilibrium.
What happened there for one to come to
abandon the old questions in order to formulate
the new? The answer that Stengers suggests
brings us back to our anchor point, to the
crux of our problem, to what we have said
about ritual and dance: the primatologist was
38
despret
able to give up the search for invariants which
individuals obey, in the same way that ritual
and dance led Zahavi to question, beyond
species similarities, individual singularity. If
one lingers a while at the waning of Strum’s
research – with what Stengers calls her “quest
for pertinence” (Invention of Modern Science
63) – as it is recounted both in her book
Almost Human and in the article written in collaboration with Latour (“Redefining the Social
Link”), one makes out a parallelism of questions
with those that arise here for the babblers: when
confronted with surprising discrepancies
between what she sees among her baboons and
what the data of her colleagues and the literature
in general had prepared her to see, Strum concludes that each baboon troop deviates from
the norm. But this conclusion, one suspects, is
not without its problems. In her attempt to
find a “way out of this dilemma of intraspecies variability,” Strum considers two possibilities: she could, in the first, “reject data and
the views of the observers. A common position
was this: other baboons did not behave differently, they were just inaccurately studied”
(“Redefining the Social Link” 787). Another
way out of the dilemma would be – and this is
the position that she proposes to adopt – to
call into question both the epistemology and
the ontology that underpins the research, to
place herself in a position that takes into
account at the same time the subject, its
modes of knowledge and of definition of the
object (the paradigm), and the object itself,
become subject in turn: “the traditional, ostensive definition of baboon society has been
unable to accommodate the variety of data on
baboon social life. As a result, some information
has been treated as ‘data’ and other information
as discrepancies to be ignored [ … ]” (789). To
regard, with the performative paradigm,
“[b]aboons [as] ‘performing’ society might also
allow a more consistent interpretation of the
cross-populational data and data from other
species of monkeys and apes” (790). Thus it is
not only a matter of admitting, as in many controversies in ethology, that the abilities of the
observer can, by themselves, explain the deviations from the norm, but of broadening the
39
paradigms in order to render them more flexible, more open in the face of difference,
variety or even contradictions. Substituting
the performative paradigm for the ostensive
paradigm at the epistemological level leads to
interesting upheavals at the level of the ontology
resulting from the research: other “beings”
acquire the right to existence, objects become
subjects. It is here also that there opens up,
among primatologists, what we identified as a
space of equilibrium between the poles of subjectivity and objectivity, of nature and culture,
of the gaze and the object gazed upon.
In the same way that the baboons were able to
make the primatologists change their questions,
the babblers gave Zahavi the opportunity to
pose questions otherwise. We locate here, somewhat artificially, our response as regards the
babbler, active subject of the relationship that
unites the researcher and his object of study.
The space of equilibrium lies more in the very
relationship between an active subject and a
likewise active observer, within the play of questions and answers that characterizes the link
created between them. This space of equilibrium can, I think, be partially described in
the methodologies: indeed, it is these which
give a framework and some tools for the questions as well as for the answers.
a priori and a posteriori
methodologies
When analysing the relation between the conceptions underlying the search for species similarities and the methodologies used to observe
them, a term appears that is common to the
object and its categorization, and to the way of
doing fieldwork: the term a priori. Behavioural
invariants are, in a way, the a priori of the programmes and their innate releasing mechanisms: does not Lorenz declare himself Kant’s
heir when he deems the organization of behaviour to be a priori?
To this a priori may correspond certain methodologies which may also merit the name of a
priorist in so far as they are neither the result,
nor the condition. The general characteristics
models and methods
of the method may, however, make it easier to
perceive invariants. The researcher equipped
with an a priorist methodology goes into the
field with a hypothesis to which he intends to
submit the facts (the term submission merits
all its ambiguity here). This methodology is
based on previous research, and organizes the
work around the hypotheses developed on the
basis of these theories. For Jon [Jonathan
Wright], the Oxford researcher, for example,
it is inconceivable that one could go into the
field without wanting to test a hypothesis.
The a priorist thus searches for answers to
“how” questions. His advantage will be, in this
case, the regularity of reality: the invariants
can make up this ideal regularity. This is how,
in a way, the approach and the focus of interest
will be found in a system of resonances, a mirror
system.
The a priorist will more readily make use of
the experimental approach: the manipulation
of variables – to understand reality by resisting
it (in the words of Bachelard)1 – will be for him
the suitable methodology for measuring and
understanding the invariants. Thus, the decoy
method illustrates perfectly what we have been
saying. For the bird’s egg, one can substitute
an egg that is bigger, smaller, redder, or
whatnot, which enables the varying of these
invariants, that is to say of the instinctive or
pre-programmed response of the bird faced
with the stimulus signal that represents certain
characteristics of the egg. The a priorist, faced
with variety, will attempt to create variation
by deviating from the ordinary conditions of
observation. The a priorist, in a way, imposes
on reality his question and the limits of the
answer, as the programme imposes on the
organism its questions (the stimuli signals
acting as keys in a lock) and the behaviours
that respond to them (the innate responses).
In this sense also, the methodologies and
objects begin to resonate, create an isomorphism and form a mirror effect.
If we consider the approaches on a continuum, we find opposite the a priorist procedure
that of the a posteriorist.2 Zahavi’s approach
illustrates this well. The term’s reference to
“what is known from experience” refers here
not to the experience of the experimenter but
to the most common experience. No hypothesis
is explicitly formulated before going into the
field. It is a matter of going there with the sole
intention of seeing what will take place, first,
and subsequently of putting forward, a posteriori, hypotheses and interpretations regarding
what one saw. Of course, hypotheses are not
entirely absent, but they are generally implicit,
and go beyond the scope of the first hypothesis
stipulating that there is something to see. With
Zahavi, one can, for example, think that the
influence of the theory of individual selection
is accompanied by some expectant utterances.
This approach resembles, from numerous
methodological and theoretical points of view,
the anthropological approach. The a posteriorist
collects anecdotal facts and tries to make sense
of them by creating links between these facts.
Rather than to variation, it is to variety that
he becomes attached, and on it that he bases
his experience in the sense of common experience. For example, Zahavi critiques evolutionary game theory because it does not account
for the fact that the animals in the field “react
in a highly variable way,” with reactions that
seem “determined by information gathered
rather than by a pre-set program activated by
simple arbitrary signals” (“Some Comments
on Sociobiology” 414)
Of course, this continuum is an artifice and
one practically never encounters a totally pure
approach. The most illuminating illustration
of these two approaches is found in Lorenz
who can pass, within the same study, from one
extreme of the continuum to the other.
Although driven by a theory in terms of a
priori – the behavioural invariants of the
innate programme – Lorenz may adopt in the
field a dual approach: the anthropological
approach and the a priorist and experimental
approach of searching for invariants. His
research on imprinting during the following
reaction in geese is a striking example of this
hybridization of approaches and of objects. To
recall, the theory recounts the fact that a
young goose, within hours after birth, undergoes a critical period during which it will
follow any moving object found nearby.
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The theory itself bears the mark of the
hybridization of methods, since it interprets
imprinting as resulting from the combination
of an innate invariant programme with respect
to its form, and the open mechanisms of learning with respect to its object. The hybridization
of the theory thus faithfully reflects that of the
objects: the experiment of manipulating the
variables in play takes place on both fronts. As
an experimental approach, it verifies its hypothesis, and emphasizes the innate, a priori
response of the gosling; as an anthropological
approach, it emphasizes what is acquired by
the gosling “through experience,” what goes
beyond the scope of the invariants, what might
then be called the a posteriori of behaviour.
This approach is all the more anthropological
as Lorenz, himself, plays the role of decoy,
thus utilizing, in a quasi-anthropological
manner, the special relationship established
with the subject of his experiment, the young
goose who takes him for its mother.
The two linked poles of the objects and the
methodologies are thus reflected in this particular operation: the experimental approach highlights the a priori of the programme (the
immediate innate response), while the a posteriorist or anthropological approach reveals, for
its part, the variety that this programme has
not anticipated. It allows a space for surprise
and creativity to be created.
the investigation and the trial
Other differences may appear from either side
of our continuum, which give to each of the
approaches their own characteristics. They
appear in what may be called the procedures
of research and of the construction of theories.
The a priorist, of whom we are told that he
fixes to reality the strict frameworks of its
response, does not trust what reality tells him:
the duplicity of causes, the certainties of
opinion constitute so many opportunities for
poor thinking. He will impose on reality to
repeat the story again and again. He will
expect of it that it does not betray itself, that
its versions are reliable, that the regularity of
the deviations from the original response (that
41
obtained without the decoy) confirms his
hypothesis. It is not only reality that is put on
trial, it is he himself in his relationship with
the objects (witnesses) and the hypotheses
describing a system of causes and effects.
Testing reality renews the etymology which
designates the procedure: it is truly a matter
of putting his testimony to the test, as in a judicial trial.
Altruism, studied by the a posteriorist, must
for its part be the object of a thorough
investigation: it must gather clues that belie
the innocence of behaviours, seeking, beyond
appearances, the meaning, the linking of seemingly unrelated facts.
To the trial of the experimenter corresponds,
then, the investigation of the a posteriorist.
This investigation, which focuses on variety
rather than variation, is not, however, without
creating some difficulties. In fact, how can any
ordinary explanatory interpretation be put
forward on its basis? If the trial of variation
boils down to the confrontation of fictions in
order to oust them, the investigation of variety
uncovers neither meanings nor criteria which
enable it to decide between these fictions. The
hypothesis results from putting together heterogeneous observations that make sense once
assembled, but it can only win over opinion on
the assumption of support for a fiction.
I have called this manner of proceeding
“investigation,” not only because it is situated
as the previous and different moment of the
trial but also because it is present in the traits
and characteristics of the police investigation
of the masters of suspense: the researcher not
only joins together disparate facts but, above
all, brings in contact “facts that don’t fit” with
some of the testimony, or else that “don’t fit”
between them. Remember how the theory’s
chronology unfolds and how I have presented
it: the question of how such an altruistic bird
has not convinced Zahavi of the pertinence of
the theory of group selection is in a way
answered in that Zahavi does not believe in the
“innocence” of the babblers. And with good
reason; too many troubling elements, too
many facts that “don’t fit” and which, once
put together, begin to make sense and to
models and methods
indicate what is truly going on (assuming Zahavi
is right, of course): helping at the nest is more
harmful than beneficial; to a gentle taking by
the hand corresponds an aggressive behaviour,
and vice versa; the reprimands of the dominants
take the strange forms of gifts and grooming,
with some gifts, but not all, leading to conflicts;
not everyone can make offerings within the
group; the dancing always occurs “when it
should not be, where it should not be.” Is it
not thus, through a meticulous collection of
small things that should not be found there, or
that say something other than what they seem
to say, that the police investigation is carried
out?
So, to the trial of the experiment, confrontation of all the fictions, responds here the investigation, a fiction itself, a fictional and
hypothetical construction which can have no
greater power than that of convincing, by the
simple fact of what it proposes.
This was for a long time one of the reasons for
the indifference or the suspicion of the scientific
community towards Zahavi’s theory.
The trial in the mode of variation offers, for
its part, the dispositive of the confrontation of
these fictions, that is to say the experimental
apparatus that, as Stengers defines it, puts
them to the test and enables it to decide
between them (Invention of Modern Science).
A fiction that ousts the others can carry with it
the support of the other researchers.
Perhaps it will be more tangible for us to
visit, at the time of a trial, the scene of the
testing of the ethological fictions. This description will allow us to grasp the entire difference
between the two approaches.
experimentation as the locus of the
trial
The manipulation of reality is a way of verifying
the “how” of what is observed: “what is at stake
here, what is the cause of what I observe?” The
manipulatory procedure will consist of a modification of reality to speed it up, to vary it, to
insert into it a series of constraints so that it is
at once in laboratory conditions all while
respecting the conditions of nature.3 But, in
the procedure itself, there is no indication
which will serve as a guarantee that we are
talking about the right “how,” a guarantee
that what is at stake is the effect of the right
cause, that the fiction is the true fiction. That
it is not a simple matter of opinion – of which
it is known since Plato, and no pun intended,
that it has bad press.
It is the way in which the test is organized
that will serve as guarantee, because this organization will, progressively, put each of the fictions to the test of the other fictions, as in the
trial. Look at how an experiment is organized:
Jon participated in the research of a group of
Oxford zoologists led by John Krebs which, in
collaboration with a group from Toronto led
by David Sherry and Sarah Shettleworth, tried
to explain how certain birds (American blackcapped chickadees and European marsh tits)
memorized the hundred or so food caches that
they used.4 The question here is clear, and
simply expressed in terms of “how”: how do
they find the caches again? The initial hypothesis – we are within an a priorist approach – is
that the birds use their memory, and not olfactory cues or other non-mnesic processes of the
association of signs.
From there, the approach will unfold in a discursive mode. The progressive elimination of
alternative fictions itself takes the narrative
shape of a fiction or an imaginary trial. In the
field, the researcher is alone – or with his assistants, close collaborators, or students – but he
will gather around himself the imaginary characters of a trial. Each of the imaginary characters
seems to call upon the researcher to put to it an
objection in the form of another fiction. The
imaginary trial will then proceed until the elimination of each of the fictions proposed by these
characters. Let us follow the steps: in an artificial forest, one of the researchers drilled, into
each of the trees, a hole closed off with Velcro.
We know, the author tells us, that the bird
can open it because it resembles some of the
natural conditions of the closure of orifices. As
you see, the experiment has not yet begun
without imaginary objections already intervening. The Velcro is itself used to fend off
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another objection: the bird would not need to
demonstrate its memory if the food were visually accessible.
During the first stage of the trial the birds
hide the seeds, and then are removed from the
forest to be released there twenty-four hours
later. They find the caches again and the seeds
that they contain, and thus allow the researcher
to attribute the success of the performance to
memory.
Another objection, however, seems to have
been created, since our researcher begins his
experiment again, but with the addition of a variation: the birds could find the seeds due to their
odour. They could also rely on the fact that the
Velcro does not close up the visited caches
again in exactly the same manner. The researcher
will remove the seeds after the first visit, in the
absence of the birds, reclose the Velcro, note
where the seeds were cached, then, after
twenty-four hours, observe the return of the
birds. They head straight for the used caches.
Another imaginary objection crops up again:
“The birds do not memorize the used caches but
use certain indications or certain criteria, always
the same, to hide the seeds. Finding the caches
again is thus not an exercise of the memory,
but a combination of habits similar to those
we typically use to park and return to our
car.” The researcher therefore hid the seeds
himself, and showed the caches to the birds.
This had no impact on the performances.
After having thus eliminated all the imaginary objections, the rival fictions in short, there
remains for the researcher the opportunity to
show that not only is his hypothesis correct
but that it is perhaps even better than what
the fictions have testified to. A two-stage experiment puts the tits back in the presence of the
caches to let them eat half the seeds. In the
second stage, twenty-four hours after this first
phase of consumption, forty-eight hours after
they had hidden the seeds, they are released
once more into the artificial forest. The tits
will show that they have not only stored the
caches in memory but that they have, furthermore, memorized the caches already visited in
the preceding visit. They thus memorize not
only the filled caches but also the emptied ones.
43
This examination in an imaginary court
seems to constitute here the guarantee against
subjectivity, against the opinion of just one.
The experiment becomes the locus of an imaginary public space, a fictional way to open the
doors of the natural laboratory. In a way, this
examination plays the role of the initial trial,
with publication allowing, for its part, the
appeal proceedings for wrongfully ousted fictions or for sanctioning fictions with inflated
claims. During this stage the imaginary jury
ceases to perform the role of a real jury, who
will, in principle, not miss any of the failed
objections or any of the procedural flaws that
occurred in its absence.
the babblers on trial
If we turn now to the trial in which Jon will
stage the babblers, we still do not find all the
characteristics of the procedure. In fact, this
trial is still in its first phase, in which possible
alternatives are considered. The trial itself will
only begin next spring. Yet we can already
point out a few of the permanent features of
the confrontation of fictions in the courtroom
of the experiment. The alternative fictions are
here the hypotheses that seek to explain
“helping at the nest”: first, the initial hypothesis
– issuing from the theory of kin selection – is
that the birds assist those they are related to;
the second fiction considers helping at the nest
as a system of exchanges founded on reciprocity.
Jon’s final fiction is the Zahavian hypothesis: the
birds are “helpers at the nest” because this represents a good way for them to enhance or to
demonstrate their status. How to decide
between these fictions? An element of variation
must be found for each by which the situation
opens itself up to experimentation. The form
of the assistance appears to meet all the requirements, and can be varied by introducing decoys.
How the young are fed seems to reflect the way
in which interests conflict within the group: for
example, kinship theory predicts that the
helping will be positively correlated with the
degree of kinship but negatively correlated
with the size of the group of helpers. This negative correlation is logical enough. The more
models and methods
helpers there are, the less it is necessary to work
for the brood. Contrariwise, within the framework of the Zahavian theory, the size of the
group should not affect the helping since it is
not useful to the recipient, but to the giver.
The fiction of reciprocity must be evaluated on
the basis of observation: do the current
helping relationships reflect former relationships? And do they predict future relationships?
It would seem that the observations carried out
so far provide no evidence in support of this
fiction.
A first stage of the work consists in observing, for a certain period, how natural variations
affect the relationships of helping at the nest.
In the second stage, Jon will attempt to
produce variations that should enable him to
decide between the fictions: if the effort of a
member of the group significantly increases,
one can predict, according to each hypothesis,
different consequences produced by this variation. Thus, if the fiction of kin selection is
the “true” fiction, in response to the increased
efforts of an individual, the other helpers will
decrease their efforts. It is not necessary to
force-feed the young; if they are fed, each of
the helpers can attend to something else. Contrariwise, if Zahavi’s fiction is true, and if the
act of feeding the young constitutes an exhibition, then even if an individual increases his provisioning the other helpers will maintain their
level of effort, or will even enter into competition and increase it. For this stage, Jon will
carry out a simple manipulation: he will
provide some helpers with artificial feeders
that will allow them to easily increase their
apparent investment in alloparental care.
In another stage of the trial, Jon also plans to
decrease the capacity of some helpers. Three solutions were considered: to attach a weight to the
tail of some babblers; to reduce the mobility of
the beak of some – by a system of small ties; or
else, to produce a decoy: the cries of chicks will
be recorded and played next to the nest, when
selected individuals pass by, in order to induce
in them the belief of a very intense demand on
the part of the brood. If they increase their
efforts, one can measure the decrease, stabilization or increase of the efforts of other
members of the group. This possibility should,
in principle, be the only one used – for clear
ethical reasons.
If the imaginary tribunal of the experiment
guarantees the a priorist approach, the question
must now turn towards the a posteriorist to ask
what guarantees his own.
the a posteriorist approach
In contrast to the experimental procedure which
creates an identity between what grounds the
hypothesis and what ensures its validity by
means of the decisive experiment (which by
showing “how it works” at the same time
proves that “this is how it works”), Zahavi’s
approach separates the two moments of the procedure. Zahavi himself separates them so well
that he never occupied himself with the
testing5 and left the care of this step to others.
In fact, the tests to which the theory has given
rise were carried out elsewhere, and mostly in
order to contradict the theory: Slotow, Alcock,
and Rothstein, for example, changed the
colour of the feathers of dominated sparrows
to “disguise” them as dominants. According to
them, if the theory of the social control of
status is correct and “cheating” is impossible,
the dominated usurpers should be subjected to
a change in the intensity of aggression, that is
to say be much more frequently attacked. This
was not the case. Since the usurpers were not
revealed, the authors were able to conclude
that the principle of reliability, which is at the
heart of the handicap principle, was a false
fiction. Some laboratories of fiction also tested
the theory. After having refuted it, the procedures showed that the fiction was realistic.
The process of collecting singular and anecdotal clues, which constitutes the groundwork
for the investigation, tries to find, beyond and
despite invariants and a priori, what is distinctive about the response of each individual. We
mentioned the heresy of the primatologists; we
find it again, here also, in the daily confrontation
between the researcher and his babblers. The
heretical approaches of one (the primatologists)
like the other (Zahavi) are, in fact, the
approaches used by anthropologists. The great
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divide challenged by the new questions of the
primatologists knows, especially here, to my
mind, the signs of its erasure.
This erasure can be explained as much by the
methodology and the approaches used as by the
particular personality of the bird. Zahavi is not
only accepted close by the group, but he fits in
with it and always moves to the middle of the
birds, and not like an external observer would,
from the outside, in front or behind. Most of
the birds observed are tame – the others are
called the barbarians. Each receives a name
that allows it to be identified: the birds, like
all living beings who are distant from us,
appear too similar to each other to hope to
recognize them without fail; thus each bird
will be identified and named through the four
colours of its bands. The name of each is thus
formed from four initials of these colours in
Hebrew: so when a researcher says he saw
MMCT or AMMT, everyone knows exactly
who he means, and to which group the bird
belongs.
new ethological time and space
Like an anthropologist, Zahavi has learned to
recognize each of the individuals and to know,
over the years, the development of its alliances
and its status. Thus one can know, by consulting
the records and the archives of the large chart
permanently displayed in the laboratory (and
some of the articles that adopt this narrative
form), that AMMT was born in 1975, that he
lived with his father and a brother of the same
brood. His mother was replaced by another
female in 1977, and he became “breeding
helper.”6 His dominant brother was driven
from the territory and AMMT was thus able,
on the death of his father, to become the dominant male. In 1975, he thus had five nestlings,
six between 1980 and 1981. In 1982, there was
once again a change of female and he could
mate with her. The two sons that he had with
the missing female who disappeared became
breeding helpers. He drove one away and
remained with the other until his death, in
1987. AMMT thus remained in the same territory all his life, waited to become dominant,
45
lived twelve years and had twenty-nine children
as dominant.
So, one can also find the more tumultuous
story of SMTA, who had to conquer a new territory and lose his collaborators, or else that of
MTMC, who was driven from his territory by
his brother. He lived as a refugee, before
being rejoined by two of his sons. After a few
years occupying marginal territories he was
able to replace a male who had just died, and
form a new group. The bird’s time is thus structured like human historical time, and the stories
become life stories. Ethological time is thus
replaced by anthropological time.
Space is also structured in a particular
manner, since Zahavi observes from in the
middle of the birds. The ritual of approach
and of encounter initiates – and doubtless
defines – the relationship: Zahavi whistles by
imitating the babbler’s call and throws them
bread. The babblers respond, hop up to him,
eat the bread, then return to their activities
without seeming to be concerned about his presence any longer. The distinctive structuring of
space is made possible by the familiarity of the
birds. It is possible, yet it is not necessary,
and each researcher integrates the relationship
into a substantially different space: Jon, the
Oxford zoologist, experimenter constantly
putting the fictions on trial, establishes with
the birds a relationship of distant spectator.
He is either in front or behind, never in the
middle, never too close. Roni [Osztreiher], the
doctoral assistant, is always in front of them,
but so close that the other researchers reproach
him for disturbing the birds (we saw him, one
day, block with his head the entrance to a
bush where the nest was found, in order to
observe more closely).
The spatial structuring of the encounter
between Zahavi and the birds shapes as a
space without borders between the observer
and the observed. To this space without
borders corresponds, in an analogous manner,
a common mental space, the space of anthropomorphic identification: “When we do not understand why an animal does this or that, we try to
understand what use this behaviour could serve
in humans, then we try to see if the hypothesis
models and methods
can be confirmed by these observations”
(Zahavi, pers. comm.).
It is this procedure that Zahavi calls the
anthropomorphic model. This model should
not be understood here as a model in the technical sense of the term, but rather as a psychological model, the referent of identification. A
controversial heuristic strategy, it was nevertheless the tried and tested method of many
hunters: Bushmen, for example, so identify
with the animal they are hunting that they can
answer questions like “what should I do now if
I were this animal?” with amazing accuracy
(Kennedy 94–95). Zahavi’s approach, however,
diverges on one key point: interpretation is substituted for prediction. The question is not so
much “what will it do?” – a question whose
answer can confirm or refute the fiction – but
“why does it do it?” – whose response does
not have the power to oust alternative fictions.
Interpretations will always suffer from the
impossibility of consensus about them. In
other words, as I commented regarding the
investigation, the sharing of fictions can only
be based on common opinion; disagreement
expresses the inability of the interpretive statement to be anything other than a mere fiction
dependent on the intentions and convictions of
its author.7
This inability is all the more marked as the
anthropomorphism proceeds from an identification of causes with intentions, thus bringing
about a confusion between intentionality and
causality. In sum, as will have been well understood from the beginning, the “how” is far more
of a “why.” The fictions encounter and confront
each other, without allowing them to be decided
between. This work will be done elsewhere.
Anthropomorphism and the anthropological
method complement each other in a process of
fictionalization of a very particular kind: not
only everything that the animal does or demonstrates receives a meaning, but each of the behavioural sequences must be understood as the
best possible compromise by which the animal
does what it can.
This process of the saturation of meanings
and of the elaboration of positive and rewarding
fictions is not only linked to the attributive or
projective mechanisms of anthropomorphism
nor to the anthropological approaches characterized by spatial proximity and personal relationships, even though it is largely dependent on
them. It is based on an evolutionary epistemology coupled with an ontology of nature: “the
Oxford people,” says Zahavi, “argue the stupidity of the cuckoo. For me, if the cuckoo is
stupid, it is because it is good to be stupid,
because some errors are less costly. I do not
think that there is in nature much room for
these kinds of problems like the arms race. It
is thought, in this framework, that one is
stupid and the other intelligent. The strategy
of deceit is only good if you think that the
others are fools.”
To the ontology with Panglossian resonances
(everything that is in nature is the best possible)
will correspond what I would call a genuine epistemological ethic – that probably also allows the
opportunity of going beyond the perception and
study of invariants: “if I go into nature and I see
a peculiar behaviour that I can not understand, I
have two options: either I do like at Oxford, and
I say this animal is stupid, or I say to myself that
it is me who is stupid, and I remain in the field
until I understand” (pers. comm.).
It seems that this is the message that Richard
Dawkins understood, and which seems to create
difficulties, when he wrote, in the second edition
of The Selfish Gene, the amendment correcting
the criticisms levelled at Zahavi in the first
edition: if Zahavi’s hypothesis is correct,
which now seems to him to be the case, the prospect is worrying “because it means that theories of almost limitless craziness can no
longer be ruled out on commonsense grounds.
If we observe an animal doing something
really silly, like standing on its head instead of
running away from a lion, it may be doing it
in order to show off to a female. It may even
be showing off to the lion: ‘I am such a highquality animal you would be wasting your time
trying to catch me’. But, no matter how crazy
I think something is, natural selection may
have other ideas” (313).
The saturation of meanings brought about by
the anthropomorphic, anthropological, adaptationist and fictional approach is not unlike this
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characteristic of mythic rationalities, such as
they are described by Lévi-Strauss: before a
reality to be understood and its lack of
meaning, its non-testable objects and its experiences without objects, myth will furnish “a
plethora of meaning” (181) and overload reality.
mythic scene and experimental
scene
We have seen that to our description of Zahavi’s
method as a mythical and attributive approach
taking place between two characters – human
and bird – we have opposed the experimental
approach by describing it as one that triangulates the roles, since it always involves three
characters: a bird-witness, an observer-manipulator and an imaginary jury. Can it be maintained that the latter protects itself in this way
against any attributive temptation? In other
words, can it be thought, according to these
descriptions, that one of the two approaches is
totally attributive and that the other protects
the triangular system thus formed from the
intrusion of subjectivity and from the processes
at work in mythic rationalities? I will recall here
two interpretive events: the hypothesis concerning the “modesty” of the babblers, first, and
later that of the “false signal.” Recall that with
the social control hypothesis Zahavi states that
the “modest” male who keeps the other males
away from the scene of coupling proves to the
female his capacity to defend future interferences around the nest. We will later analyse
the “mirror” phenomenon between Zahavi’s
methods and the way the males perform the
expulsion of other suitors. We can now consider
Jon’s alternative proposal: according to him, the
Zahavian interpretation of the demand for
privacy forgets an important character in the
scene: the female. The females, although in a
different way, also exercise a form of social
control. They can accordingly be in conflict
with the males, even if this conflict does not
take the appearance of an open conflict. According to Jon, the female can achieve this control by
hiding from the males who is the father of the
eggs. If the female can hide the coupling, and
47
if she isolates herself with each of the males of
the group, none of them can be certain that he
is not the father of the brood. On the contrary,
if the coupling is truly discreet, each of them
will be able to have good presumptions concerning the paternity of the eggs. Consequently,
each of the males has a vested interest in
taking care of offspring that could be his own.
Before anything else, I pause to underline
that Jon has well demonstrated one of the
most important lacunas of the Zahavian
system: a peculiar enough “androcentrism.”
The male controls the totality of relations, and
what could be interpreted as a demand of the
females becomes an exhibition of the male.
Furthermore, it will be noted that the influence of the theoretical framework of the arms
race is evident here: conflicting interests, evolving strategies, a parasite – the female – who
exploits a host – the male invests his efforts in
a brood that could just as well be that of
another. The interpretive grid marks its signature very clearly at the bottom of the interpretations: rather than the interpretive grid, it
seems to us to become, in this particular
context of the emergence of interpretations in
“the field,” a genuine fiction-producing grid.
Alongside the influence of the theoretical
corpus, the practices themselves seem to
colour the interpretations and the construction
of fictions, as if the observer attributed his
own practice to those he observed. The female
in fact uses the means of the experimenter.
Beyond the grid of the arms race, what is
described of the female is curiously similar to
the experimental procedures: setting up of
decoys – however, in a vaguer sense of the
term than the usual one in ethology – in the
form of creation of beliefs, manipulation of subjects. This analogy will seem much clearer – and
even more pertinent – in our second example:
the false signal hypothesis.
The “false signal” hypothesis of food contribution has been interpreted by Jon as an
“anti-bluff” manoeuvre. I have already connected this hypothesis to the general theoretical
model that constitutes the interpretive framework of his hypotheses, and have shown that
this statement could be largely dependent on
models and methods
this framework. We can try to go further in the
hypotheses and show that here, too, the attributive approach is present in this type of reading
of behaviours and colours the hypotheses,
albeit in a more implicit way. What does the
bird do, in Jon’s hypothesis? It verifies the
actual hunger of the brood by creating a “test”
experiment. It acts on a variable to measure
the deviation from the norm, it creates a decoy
that allows it to decide between the duplicity
of causes, it does not rely on what seems
obvious and makes the brood the locus of experimentation. Thus, according to our hypothesis,
in his interpretation of the behaviour of the
bird, by attributing to it an identical approach
to that which he uses, Jon created a “mirror
effect.” He attributed to the bird his own
approach, his frame of thought, his procedure.
The methodology thus also becomes the
source and model of the fictions.
my own. But let those who are laughing, by
making of me the object of the same analysis
as that of the previous level, know that they,
too, have just created an almost infinite play of
mirrors, a regression of reflected attributions,
as in the famous painting of the mirror that
reflects a mirror, etc. And let them accept,
henceforth, to laugh with me, and no longer at
me. Here, no doubt, also resides the lesson of
laughter inflicted on the ironists by Isabelle
Stengers when she invites us to find together
this “capacity to recognize oneself as a product
of the history whose construction one is trying
to follow” (Invention of Modern Science 66).
We have thus just caught up with one of
our very first aporias: the outcome of the
analysis we made of the anthropologist sent
to Rosenthal, which showed the impossible
exteriority of the researcher, his total inclusion
and the inaccessibility of the fundamental
hypothesis.
the tables turned and the laughter
of passers-by
methodologies and loyalties
It will not escape the reader that we are not ourselves sheltered from mythic rationality when
we consider what I call here the mirror processes.
Mirror processes are those that cause the
content of the analysis to reflect the form or
the procedure used – for example, when an a
priori approach preferentially analyses the a
priori of behaviour – or else, when the
researcher seems to regard the animal as
doing, at the same time as him, the same thing
as him: when Zahavi reads behaviour in terms
of information he attributes to the animal the
same role and the same work as that taken or
done by the observer (reading the behaviour of
his fellows as so many sources of information);
likewise, when Jon sees the helper at the nest
as testing the fledglings he attributes to the
bird a genuine work of experimentation in the
nest.
This will be the occasion to pause here a
minute to share a laugh with those who
haven’t missed the following fact: I apply the
same mythic rationality, and I attribute to
each of the researchers the same approach as
If one was to take up again the idea of a continuum of methodologies observed in the field,
ranging from the more anthropo-morphological (Zahavi) to the more experimental
(Jon), a third character appears whose ambivalence sheds another light on the practices of
each.
Rather than a real mediator, Roni, Zahavi’s
doctoral assistant, strikes me as the bearer of
two difficult-to-reconcile projects, of two loyalties to divergent orders of practice. His practice
itself seems indicative of these tensions: if, on
the one hand, he clearly adopts the position of
outside spectator, if he neither whistles at nor
feeds the birds, on the other hand, he adopts
so intimate an approach that he cannot be
without influence on their behaviour.
Conscious of the demands and necessities of
the domain in which he works – that is to say,
constructing spaces for the confrontation of fictions – and of the need to subscribe to it in order
to be published, he remains, however, close to
Zahavi’s methodologies: the management of
space can thus be seen as a compromise
between the “uninvolved” distance of the
48
despret
objective spectator and the crowding of the
anthropologist.
I will also analyse his practice as an attempt
at conciliation between the demands of
putting fictions to the test of the experimental
approach and the demands of a descriptive
and interpretive practice of the anthropological
approach. If we return, for a moment, to the
disagreement over the babblers’ dance, it is to
recall first that his interpretation remained
fully Zahavian. Then, one will be able to
suggest that the dance offers him something
other than the locus of a disagreement: it
brings him above all the evidence of the influence of the observer on the subjects observed.
And through this evidence, by giving him something to work on, the dance provides him with
the opportunity to reconcile the demands of
the two approaches. What he learned is
perhaps also no stranger to his intrusive
manner of intervening in the groups. Moreover,
this style is all the more intrusive as he is
accompanied, in his work, by rather cumbersome video equipment.
Visits to the birds are regularly in the
morning, at sunrise, and in the afternoon,
from around 3 o’clock until the sun sets and
the birds sleep. The dances can be observed
on certain days, just after rising and just
before sleeping.
Remember the two hypotheses in play:
according to Zahavi, the dance, like a ritual, is
a test imposed on partners; according to Roni,
it is the means of affirming his superiority, particularly for the sharing of resources. Roni’s
research begins with a simple enough observation: the frequency of the dances varies in
the course of the year. And yet, if Zahavi’s
hypothesis is correct, if the dance’s function is
to test the strength of the group’s links, the
dance should have a higher frequency at the
moment when the group needs to be the most
supportive, that is to say when the adults must
perform the most tasks in common. This solidarity is particularly crucial in the period that
follows the hatching of the eggs. And yet,
Roni notes, this is not the case. Just after the
hatching the frequency of the dances decreases
sharply.
49
Roni then sets about comparing two types of
groups: on the one hand, groups that have successfully carried out the reproductive stage; on
the other, groups that were unsuccessful in
this phase. Once the first group’s eggs have
hatched he finds that the level of competition
is greatly reduced, while at the same time this
phenomenon does not occur in the groups
which have no eggs: the competition remains
at the same level. Among the latter, the frequency of dances remains high as long as possibilities to reproduce exist. Only at the end of the
reproductive season does one witness the
gradual disappearance of the dances. A final
point lends support to the thesis of the importance of “status” in the function of the ritual:
the adults dance at the time of sexual competition, with a view to reproduction; the young
will do it most frequently in autumn, at the
time of competition over food resources.
Access to these resources, during the most difficult period of winter, will be determined by the
outcome of these competitions. We can already
glimpse that Roni’s methodologies seem distinct from Zahavi’s: that which, in the master,
proceeds from an intuitive development
becomes, in the student, the object of a procedure for the verification of fiction. It is not
yet a matter of a real confrontation of fictions
in a courtroom designed to decide between
them – Roni does not yet interfere here in the
natural course of things – but of the substitution
of one mode of questioning for another: to
Zahavi’s “why,” Roni opposes a “how.” With
the answer to this “how,” he thus hopes to supplant the fictions of “why.” Zahavi makes claims
on the basis of a series of clues, and answers the
question of why the birds dance – like a good
investigator, he seeks the motive. Roni, for his
part, carries out the reconstruction: “it can’t
be about this because of that.” Roni seeks
proof. If we were to continue our metaphor
linking the investigation and the trial, I would
situate Roni in the intermediary phase: the
investigation is concluded, it is now the stage
of preparing the case. One builds up the stock
of witnesses, studies the plausibility of the
facts and motives. In relation to laboratory
work, one can suggest that the work has
models and methods
received, with Roni, a first “purification”: from
a qualitative analysis, one slides towards a quantitative analysis of these qualities. It is, strictly
speaking, not yet a matter of a genuine work
of experimentation or of putting fictions to the
test, since it is always about “watching and
doing nothing.” However, another part of
Roni’s research – which is the consequence of
his work observing the dances – seems to me
to attest to a certain will to do science.8
Roni noted, as his research went along, that
the frequency of the dances not only varied in
the course of the events in the life of the
group but that it seemed to be affected by the
manner and timing of the observers’ visits. He
thus elaborated the plan for a comparative
experimental study, modifying the hours of
visits and how they are carried out (the distance,
the presence or absence of equipment … ). He
thereby discovered that night time visits
reduced the chance of the morning dance,
while morning visits increased it. He then organized quite a job of analysing the influence of
the observer on the behaviour of the observed.
One might at first think that, with this experiment, Roni questions Zahavi on the subject of
his habituation practices. But this does not
account for the way in which he himself practises the approach.
If this research reveals that Roni has, in a
certain way, internalized the reproaches of his
colleagues, or else has realized that “something”
was going on, it seems to me to indicate a more
important factor regarding this type of
approach. This research seems to respond to a
twofold imperative. The first, just evoked, is
that employed by Zahavi, which consists of
observing and doing nothing (not modifying
the environment more than is done by the presence of the observer); the second responds to the
criteria of the experimental approaches: to
better observe, study the variation that the
experimenter produces in the natural course of
things. Here, however, it is not the bird who is
called as witness in the trial of fictions but the
particular relationship between the researcher
and his subject-object. In this context, the variables are nothing other than the researcher
himself, time, and space; the laboratory, to
him, will be the space of their singular relationship. Here, it is not the fictions that are put on
trial but the researcher himself who is put on
the stand. Here, the bird will not be the
passive subject of the manipulation of its
environment but will be called into a relation
that asks for its participation. This is where
the dance appeared to me to offer him something other than the locus of a disagreement:
through it, he could actively create the conditions for the reconciliation of two contradictory demands with which he found himself
confronted. This experiment then would be,
for Roni, a way to demonstrate his loyalty to
the field practices of his teacher.
He adopts in it the anthropological approach
of Zahavi, but to take it even further, to its conclusion: with it, in fact, and this is the culmination of an anthropological
approach in ethology, he takes
into account the fact that those
whom he questions will integrate
the dispositive that questions
them and give it meaning.
the author.
notes
Translated from Vinciane Despret, Naissance d’une
théorie éthologique: La Danse du cratérope écaillé
© Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 1996,
135–70.
1 Bachelard writes: “we understand nature by
resisting it” (33). [Translator’s note.]
2 I must thank Ezio Tirelli for having, during a discussion on the subject, emphasized this distinction.
3 A number of controversies in animal psychology
will also bear on this argument (Collins and Pinch).
This procedure seems rather old since it can
already be found at the beginning of the century
in Kropotkin. He in fact rebels against the claim
that marmots are aggressive: it is only in conditions
of captivity that this phenomenon may take place;
50
despret
the marmots he encountered in the field were, for
their part, entirely peaceful.
4 A detailed record can also be found in Marian
Dawkins’ book Through Our Eyes Only?, which utilizes not the procedure but rather the data
obtained from the experiment to discuss the
problem of the attribution of cognitive faculties
among birds.
5 Except in an article, prior to 1973, devoted to
the hybridization of certain birds, and in some
articles written in collaboration with some a priorists about the behaviour of the cuckoo, for
example, the results of research conducted in
Japan in collaboration with a Japanese zoologist
(Lotem, Hitoshi, and Zahavi).
6 In English in the original. [Translator’s note.]
7 “The ‘authority’ of experimental science, its
claim to objectivity, thus has no other source than
the negative: a statement has conquered – at a
given epoch, of course, and not in the absolute –
the means to demonstrate that it is not a simple
fiction, relative to the intentions and convictions
of its author” (Stengers, Invention of Modern
Science 90).
8 One will recognize here the borrowing of a
title from Isabelle Stengers: La Volonté de faire
science.
bibliography
Bachelard, Gaston. The Formation of the Scientific
Mind: A Contribution to a Psychoanalysis of Objective
Knowledge. Trans. Mary McAllester Jones.
Manchester: Clinamen, 2002. Print.
Collins, Harry, and Trevor Pinch. The Golem: What
Everyone Should Know about Science. Cambridge:
Cambridge UP, 1993. Print.
Dawkins, Marian Stamp. Through Our Eyes Only? The
Search for Animal Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford
UP, 1998. Print.
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. 2nd ed. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1989. Print.
Human–Animal Studies. Ed. Garry Marvin and
Susan McHugh. Abingdon: Routledge, 2014. 23–
38. Print.
51
Despret, Vinciane. “Ecology and Ideology: The
Case of Ethology.” International Problems 63.3–4
(1994): 45–61. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “Éthique et éthologie: Une histoire naturelle de l’altruisme.” Cahiers d’éthologie
11.2 (1991): 141–266. Print.
Despret, Vinciane, et al. L’Homme en société. Paris:
PUF, 1995. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “L’Idée de société en
éthologie.” Cahiers d’éthologie 13.4 (1995): 435–
68. Print.
Kennedy, John S. The New Anthropomorphism.
Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992. Print.
Lévi-Strauss, Claude. Structural Anthropology. Trans.
Claire Jacobsen and Brooke Grundfest Schoepf.
New York: Basic, 1963. Print.
Lorenz, Konrad. Behind the Mirror: A Search for a
Natural History of Human Knowledge. Trans.
Ronald Taylor. London: Methuen, 1977. Print.
Lotem, Arnon, Nakamura Hitoshi, and Amotz
Zahavi. “Rejection of Cuckoo Eggs in Relation
to Host Age: A Possible Evolutionary
Equilibrium.” Behavioral Ecology 3.2 (1992): 128–
32. Print.
Slotow, Robert, Joe Alcock, and Stephen I.
Rothstein. “Social Status Signalling in WhiteCrowned Sparrows: An Experimental Test of the
Social Control Hypothesis.” Animal Behavior 46.5
(1993): 977–89. Print.
Trans. Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis and London:
Stengers, Isabelle. La Volonté de faire science. Paris:
Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 1990. Print.
Strum, Shirley. Almost Human. New York: Norton,
1990. Print.
Strum, Shirley, and Bruno Latour. “Redefining the
Social Link: From Baboons to Humans.”
Social Science Information 26.4 (1987): 783–802.
Print.
Zahavi, Amotz. “Arabian Babblers: The Quest for
Social Status in a Cooperative Breeder.”
Cooperative Breeding in Birds: Long-Term Studies of
Ecology and Behavior. Ed. Peter B. Stacey and
Walter D. Koenig. Cambridge: Cambridge UP,
1990. 103–30. Print.
models and methods
Zahavi,
Amotz.
“Some
Comments
on
Sociobiology.” Auk 98.2 (1981): 412–15. Print.
Zahavi, Amotz, and Avishag Zahavi. The Handicap
Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Puzzle.
New York and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1997. Print.
Vinciane Despret
Philosophie et Lettres
Université de Liège
4000 Liège
Belgium
E-mail: v.despret@ulg.ac.be
Matthew Chrulew
Curtin University
GPO Box U1987
Perth, WA 6845
Australia
ANGELAKI
volume 20
number 2
june 2015
Vinciane Despret describes her 2002 book
Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau [When
the Wolf Will Live with the Lamb] as “the
major scientific statement of my research.”
The book continues along avenues she had
started previously, such as the ethology of
ethologists, the importance of asking the
right questions in research, and the characterization of some ethological inquiries as sleuthing akin to a detective novel. Building on her
book about Zahavi and the Arabian babblers,
Despret furthers her inquiry into both important
historical episodes in the development of ethology and contemporary research that continues
to build the discipline. She structures the book
in part as a series of letter-essays dedicated to
persons who have influenced her thinking and
being, with several chapters drawing on concepts or ideas from those to whom they are
addressed (the chapter here on ravens is to
Bruno Latour, and it draws on his concepts of
interest and the Greek middle voice as a formulation that allows for thinking the intertwining of agency in productive contexts of
interaction and research). The title of the
book, of course, refers to the famous verse in
the Book of Isaiah 11.6 that prophesies a time
when, “The wolf will live with the lamb, the
leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf
and the lion and the yearling together; and a
little child will lead them.” Isaiah provides a
vivid imaginary of multispecies bonds and
flourishing.
The first chapter of the book, on “Transformations,” dedicated to Despret’s son JulesVincent Lemaire, concerns changes that
animals and animal cultures can undergo
over time, and makes the case that non-
vinciane despret
translated by jeffrey bussolini
THE ENIGMA OF THE
RAVEN
human animals are equally as much subjects
of history as humans are. The second chapter,
“The Primate at the Origin of our History,”
to Jean-Marc Gay, looks at how conditions of
confinement and observation in early research
on primates, notably by Solly Zuckerman, introduced longstanding misconceptions about
primate behavior that continued to reproduce
themselves in the literature for decades. The
third chapter, “Apes and Savages in an Anarchist World,” to Didier Demorcy, addresses
the work of Kropotkin and Russian naturalists
who saw cooperation rather than competition
defining animal interactions; the chapter also
looks at how different figurings of the relationship between apes and so-called primitive
humans, for instance in Darwin and Freud,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039842
57
the enigma of the raven
have led to widely differing cultural and political ideals. Chapter 4, on “How to Have Trust in
Prophets,” to Thelma Rowell, analyzes how,
despite numerous reports of striking cognitive,
technical, and emotional capabilities among
primates and other animals in early naturalist
literature, quasi-theological and anthropocentric notions such as that of the great chain
of being caused a subsequent ignoring or disavowal of them; she points to the importance
of changing ourselves as humans to change
animals (in our observations and interactions
with them). Chapter 5 evaluates “Successes
and Achievements” as they might be construed
for different animals; the importance of taking
into account an animal’s own point of view and
interests leads to a better sense of interesting
achievements. Chapter 6 addresses “The
Habits of Researchers and their Animals”
and extends the argument about how changing
human habits also gives other animals a
chance to change theirs, and looks at ethology
as a practice of habits involving distance,
knowing activity, politeness, milieu, and alliance. Chapter 7, dedicated to Isabelle Stengers,
is “Becoming Woman,” and it looks at how the
practice and activity of women ethologists such
as Thelma Rowell, Shirley Strum, and Barbara
Smuts refigure ethology (not because of their
gender but because of their practice and the
questions they pursue); it is no accident that
Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Birute Galdikas have transformed the field of primatology.
Chapter 8, to Bruno Latour, is translated here.
Chapter 9 looks into “What Parrots Talk
About” and considers talking birds and primates as subjective interlocutors who can
become persons in the exchanges allowed by
language; setting, milieu, and influence (cohabitation) are central aspects of the interactions and research with these animals.
Chapter 10, to Jocelyne Porcher and Dominique
Lestel, concerns “Bringing Animals into Politics” and recalls the intriguing story that
Edward Thompson (who has come up earlier
in the book) was motivated in naturalism
and primatology by his hopes to help instantiate Isaiah’s prophecy in terms of multispecies
interaction. It looks at the tremendous
suffering and domination visited upon
animals by human society, and at ideas of composing with and “living well together” as some
avenues fraught with possibility yet also
vigilance.
to bruno latour
“
S
ome years ago, the American Skinnerians,
who had heard tell somewhere that there
existed other birds than the eternal pigeon,
tried to replace it with the great raven.
Without success. The raven, who found the situation in a Skinner Box profoundly absurd, did
not at all wish to push on the levers at the
command of the little lights that illuminated
or for any other signal. Instead, it successfully
used its enormous beak to completely dismantle
the apparatus. This behavior was judged to be
unamerican and everyone went back to
pigeons” (Chauvin 138).
Certainly, in resisting the propositions of the
behaviorist researchers with admirable vigor,
the raven no doubt escaped years of monotonous
labor in dispositives that were probably none
too thrilling for beings of such remarkable curiosity.1 It was this quality that seemed to cause so
much consternation for the American researchers: evidently, they never posed the question of
knowing what a raven could, through this somewhat maniacal behavior, teach them about what
interested it.
“Recalcitrance” to the impoliteness of the
behaviorists, in demonstrating such strong incivility, was not the only crime that the ravens
were guilty of, according to the researchers.
We might recall that before becoming their
specialist, Bernd Heinrich classified them at
the very bottom of the ladder of choices considered sensible by ornithologists.
The list of their annoying habits does not stop
there: when Heinrich submitted to his mentor a
thesis proposal to study ravens, he strongly dissuaded him. Little work had been done on
ravens, but the testimony of those who knew
them or spent time with them converged: they
are of remarkable intelligence. It would be
better to avoid studying an animal that is
smarter than you, he told him, in sagely
58
despret
recommending the study of protozoans the simplicity of which, the author reassures us, nonetheless presents interesting problems. If you
want to study ravens, it will take you years
before knowing them. Their timidity – that
Heinrich attributes to the fact that they had
been, in our regions, victims of accusations of
the most diverse abuses and persecuted for it
– makes them altogether unapproachable. And
then count on still more years before any of
the information that you would be able to
gather with difficulty can make even the least
sense.
Beyond that, if you try to elaborate any model
to make sense of their behaviors they will take a
malign pleasure in contradicting it in the course
of subsequent observations. Ravens, evidently,
do not want to obey any of the rules that make
research possible: the incivility that excommunicated them from the laboratories of the behaviorists having already been stigmatized from
the time of the Flood – the ravens were in fact
the only ones to have disobeyed the rule that stipulated that there be no mating on Noah’s Ark.
Unruly, unpredictable, calling into question
even the intelligence of their researchers, the
pertinence of their models, and the solidity of
their dispositives, they are by all accounts unreliable; in any case, they were not so to a sufficient degree to succeed in recruiting an army
of biographers, as primates had been able to do.
However, after some years spent in caring for
the peaceable world of protozoa and no doubt
forgetting the sage advice of his advisors,
Bernd Heinrich will decide to resubmit his candidacy to the ravens. A sabbatical year offered
by the University of Vermont, where he
taught, and the possession of a country house
in the Maine forests where the ravens Corvus
corax live, will provide the opportunity for it.
This year will be followed by another, by
another still, and will end up extending
beyond a decade. The ravens will literally
recruit their researcher into what will become
a passionate inquiry; they will reveal to him
the resolution of an enigma the difficulty and
the interest of which would be in accord with
what makes them impossible to study. This
inquiry will come to resemble, gradually with
59
its unfolding, more and more those tales to
which the master writers of suspense invite us.
And this inquiry, full of suspense and sudden
turns, from season to season, from enigma to
findings, from hypotheses to tests, will transform all that we know about ravens.
However, if we can fairly compare this adventure that will link Heinrich and his ravens to a
police investigation it is necessary also to
observe that, to the contrary of many of them,
the “guilty” of the story are given from the
beginning: it is the ravens. That which we
could consider to be the “crime,” the act that
transgresses the rules and expectations, is also
known: the ravens present a behavior that has
no sense from the point of view of evolution.
This “crime” that will kick off the whole affair
appeared to Heinrich by accident in the course
of an observation even before the inquiry commenced: fifteen ravens were feeding around a
carcass. Nothing could be more banal, we
might think. Unless this were an assembly of
wrongdoers, and these wrongdoers could be
deemed guilty of the transformation of an
animal into a carcass – which is not the case
since ravens generally do not attack living creatures unless they are of very small size – there is
really no cause here to open an investigation.
Now, in the eyes of someone who knows
Maine ravens a bit, this behavior is justifiably
suspect. In principle, these ravens have no
business being there all together. In Maine,
they are not only rare but most often solitary,
with the exception of some couples and whilst
raising young. If certain ravens can come
together at night to share a communal nest,
during the day they generally avoid one
another and go about their business in places
that are at a distance from one another. The
presence of many ravens at the same site can
therefore not be due to simple habit or coincidence. Of course, the carcass is a sufficient
motive for coming together; but how would
they have been made aware of it, from many
kilometers away? The response is simple, Heinrich explains: they could not all have come
unless the raven who found this carcass had
called them, explicitly. If that one had wanted
to maintain the privilege of dining on the
carcass, the other ones would never have known:
ravens are capable of being silent when they
don’t care to be noticed. This “recruitment” behavior of others around a carcass, Heinrich concludes, goes against all logic. Given the rarity of
resources, a raven who finds food has no interest
in being joined by others; and it has all the
means of avoiding it in remaining discreet.
Why then had a raven called the others, why
had it invited the others to share in the party?
If food is difficult to find, why take the risk of
needing to share it, when ravens are true
experts in hiding food items?
Heinrich therefore had the “crime”: an
absurd behavior from the point of view of traditional models of evolution; he also had the
guilty parties. On the other hand, that which
would make up the crux of the enigma and
which could not be elucidated except at the
end of a long and patient inquiry, the most
important element in the eyes of an ethologist,
would be the motive. Why do ravens do that
which the logic of evolution should prohibit
them from doing? It is this motive that it will
be not only a matter of discovering but also of
inscribing in the regime of proof.
As far as suppositions are concerned, there
are many that we could make of this situation.
We could gamble on the generosity of ravens,
in an anthropomorphic version that ethologists
prefer to avoid since the hypothesis is difficult
to test. We could, in a more plausible and verifiable manner, advance the hypothesis of a
moment of distraction or stupidity: the behavior
would not be repeated in other circumstances.
We could also take up, to give credit to the
ravens, the hypothesis that Zahavi developed
to understand the babblers: the fact of sharing
food affirms the prestige of the one who offers
it to others and permits him to climb, with a
great economy of conflicts, the hierarchical
ladder. Ravens, even if generally timid, are not
sparing with moments of bravery. Some of
these could be interpreted as a desire to cause
a sensation. Many observations describe very
audacious aerial acrobatics – steep nosedives
toward the ground with a swerve at the last
minute – generally followed by an attempt at
one-upmanship by one or other congener;
simulations of attacks on wolves, eagles, or
dogs, or even the theft of their food from right
under their noses. Some observations have
even shown that, following simulated attacks,
a raven will prevent its companions from
coming to its assistance, as if it wanted to conserve the privilege of showing its bravery.
Ravens also accomplish a series of acts that
appear to be useless, that pertain at once to
both the game and to the affirmation of skill:
transporting objects in their feet, wrapping up
these objects, especially in the presence of a
female, it would seem, rolling on their backs,
doing superb slides in the snow or pushing
snow onto their companions. This hypothesis
of “exhibition” therefore would merit being
tested.
One could also just as well think that ravens
practice a system of reciprocity of exchanges
of good conduct, as has been observed among
certain vampire bats in Costa Rica. A raven
who shares a find can count on the fact that its
companions will return the favor, when the
occasion presents itself.
Yet another version can be evoked, with the
theory of sociobiology. In this case the ravens
would constitute an umpteenth example of the
“all purpose” model and, dominating in this
area, of the theory of the “selfish gene.”2
According to this theory, any animal presenting
behaviors that are said to be “altruistic,”
whether it be a bee “sacrificing” itself for its
hive sisters, a bird renouncing reproduction to
feed the young of another, or a primate aiding
a congener in difficulty, is guided by a single
motivation; this would be to transmit the greatest possible number of its genes to the population. Applied to ravens, this theory would
stipulate that, certainly, the “altruistic” recruiters diminish their chances of survival in
sharing a rare resource, but that the “sacrifice,”
costly from the individual point of view, can
reap benefits in regard to evolution. In effect,
still according to this theory, if the raven
shares the find with an individual who carries
a similar genetic baggage as its own, a close relative for instance, it augments the probabilities
of transmitting its genes to the next generation,
in promoting the survival of those whom it
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helps. According to the sociobiologists, this
model permits the resolution, once and for all,
of the mysteries of apparently paradoxical behaviors such as “altruistic” behaviors, whether
they concern ants, Florida blue jays, or hamadryas baboons. The animal simply obeys a relatively inflexible rule: help your relatives, ignore
others, and you will multiply the copies of
yourself.
Ravens, however, do not seem to want to
yield to this rule: their sense of the family
does not extend beyond the migration of
young. One could incidentally think that if
they had done so the investigator would have
quickly reached his conclusions: when animals
are similar and all do the same thing, he says,
they very quickly become boring as subjects of
study. If the underlying principles become
simple enough, they lose all interest once you
have grasped them. In other words, no investigator worthy of the name could be fascinated
by a crime committed by an idiot without
imagination.
Now, everything led Heinrich to believe that
this situation had nothing to do with such a
person, and that those in whom he was interested would require, on the contrary, resources
of imagination, curiosity, and patience to be
able to understand the enigma. For of all the
available models to take account of the reasons
for cooperation among the birds, none seemed
able to accommodate the observations. When a
model finally seems to connect all the elements
and give them meaning, a new version of recruitment appears that places the whole model into
question.
How does the motive make the “crime” an
achievement for the raven? How to accord this
achievement with that which translates, for a
raven, the fact of succeeding in its everyday survival? Clearly everything depends upon the criteria that you use to qualify this as an
achievement. If you opt for the sociobiological
theory, you must evaluate the reproductive
success, and try to link together in the same
schema the carcass, the recruitments, the relatives, the descendants, long-term strategic
choices and DNA. Your animal will be above
all similar to others, and all the variations will
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be nothing but details of the same motive. On
the other hand, if you are interested in the
differences, in unexpected strategies, if you
take into account the fact that the animal does
not cease to transgress the rules and models
and that it is unpredictable in its choices, you
must adopt other criteria of achievement. It is
this that the ravens seem to demand. The criterion of achievement chosen by Heinrich has
nothing of an ambitious program about it: on
the contrary, it leaves the program totally
open in regards to its realization. The primary
achievement of a raven, the author explains, is
first and foremost that it “can procure resources
from the environment and convert them to more
of itself” (Heinrich, Ravens in Winter 36).
Based on this simple premise, all organizations
remain possible. “Converting the environment
into a little more of itself” offers huge scope
for invention – and incidentally responds well
to the raven’s extraordinary opportunism.
It remained then to understand how the
recruitment of others around resources constitutes, paradoxically, a way of realizing this
achievement, of accomplishing this conversion.
The search for a motive will demand of the
author that he explore all the paths, consider
all the conditions, imagine all the tricks and
stratagems. The politeness of “getting to
know”3 here takes on a surprising form: the
relationship is no longer inscribed in the register
on which I insisted in the previous chapters, a
register of negotiations of interests and stakes.
Certainly, the question remains the same: it
does concern “getting to know” by posing the
question, in terms of achievement, what it is
that interests the raven. But observation alone
does not suffice. It is not only a matter of understanding what the raven does and how it does it;
it is necessary to elucidate why it does it. Of
course one could, in ideal conditions, observe
the scene every day, verify whether the raven
recruits each time, in what circumstances it
does so and in what other ones it does not.
But these conditions are not exactly those of
ravens. Carcasses do not rain down in the
forests of Maine, the activity on the highways
notwithstanding. If you want to distinguish
from the tangle of all the possible explanations,
in the skein of motives, that which can truly
permit you to understand the stakes of the
“crime,” you have to help things along; you
have to create situations that permit the ravens
to help you decide, among all the contesting fictions, the right fiction. You have to do so all the
more so since the ravens will not show you,
straightforwardly, what counts for them. If
you see a raven in front of a carcass, hopping
about in a “dance of hesitation,” not hazarding
too close but seeming to wait for one of its comrades to begin the process of cutting into it, you
can take up several possible interpretations,
each of which modifies the reason for recruitment. The raven may have some fears, in view
of past experiences, that the cadaver is in fact
a predator who is feigning sleep and waiting
for an imprudent raven in order to reverse the
situation and convert the bird into a little
more of itself: we might recall the trick
thought up by Thompson’s monkey.4 You
could also imagine that it is a question of precedence in the hierarchy, and that the subordinate ravens wait for the green light from the
dominant; or that you are dealing with an inexperienced raven, who does not know how to
open a carcass, and who does not know the vulnerable places on it. With the first hypothesis,
the motive for recruitment would then be that
of salutary egoism: it would be better to be
with many others in the case of this type of
error. On the second hypothesis, you find yourself with a model of social organization, with, for
example, for the dominated, the obligation to
share. In the third, you would have still
another type of cooperation and the exchange
of good conducts to make sense of the motive
of recruitment: “I find, you open.”
All the work of the researcher consists, then,
in leading the ravens to take a position in
relation to his fictions and hypotheses: resisting
those that do not explain them; clarifying, in
those that seem to be able to, that which
counted for them. The scientist must, in other
words, create a dispositive that confers on the
ravens “the power not to submit to his interpretations.”5 It is in this way that the politeness of
“getting to know” presents itself. It does so all
the more, and it is here that I can develop this
story as that of an investigation around a
crime, in that it unfolds all along as a test of
the intelligence and cunning of each of the partners. Heinrich’s research addresses the achievements of the ravens; it is interested in that
which renders them enigmatic and fascinating;
it interrogates them where they are competent
and where we have to become more so, theoretically to the degree that we understand nothing
about what they are doing, and practically to
the degree that we have to learn their tricks to
be able to approach them. And it addresses
them above all where they actively resist the
models to which they could have been subsumed. It is not only a matter of explaining or
understanding but also a matter of finding the
procedures that attest to the pertinence of
these explanations.
The enigma, like good detective stories,
inscribes the protagonists in a relation of
rivalry: if I want to understand them, Heinrich
says in some way, I must try to be as smart
and cunning, or more so, than they are. Not
letting oneself be taken in easily, not letting
oneself be duped by appearances, not according
credence too swiftly; subjecting things to a
strong standard of proof, enticing the ravens,
cobbling together situations that oblige them
to take a position. The politeness of “getting
to know” does not necessarily turn on an attentive benevolence but on the art of finding the
forces, and exchanging them, in an exercise of
rivalry – constituted by a clever mixture of complicity and opposition – and of putting to the
test. This politesse can sometimes even take
the form of suspicion: “respect,” the etymology
reminds us, demands of us to look twice (respectare). Confidence without verification
offers little guarantee as to its robustness. A
competence that is too easily accorded attests
to nothing, if not to the great flexibility of our
interpretations. If we want to witness in a
reliable manner, if that which we learn from
the ravens is to be treated with confidence, if
we want to define ourselves as authorized by
them to speak in their name, we are required
to offer them the opportunity to show what
they can do. If they are able to take a position
in relation to the different versions that could
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take account of what they do, the version
that passes the test will emerge as the most
robust.
In this way, if numerous anecdotes on the
subject of ravens report their intelligence, it
does not honor them to accept this interpretation too quickly. Each anecdote, Heinrich
explains, could be susceptible to an alternative
explanation that is just as plausible: at times
one recollection will suffice, at times the
simple vigilance to things that we do not perceive, at other times still happenstance or
chance. For example, when one observes a
raven throw objects and detritus onto those
who approach the nest, we consider right away
that it must be an intentional and dissuasive
strategy. But, Heinrich says, the behavior
closely resembles that of a maniacal disturbed
person who takes out their rage on objects. On
the other hand, when we see a raven succeed
in threading many pieces of meat on its beak
before going to hide them, we could think that
it anticipates the fact that others will come
and steal the pieces he leaves on the ground
during the journey. One could always respond
that the simple desire not to tire itself out and
to economize on comings and goings amply justifies this behavior, and that it gives no proof of
the capacity of ravens to anticipate the intentions of others.
Heinrich will propose to the ravens that he
welcomed in an aviary to demonstrate their
competences: they must prove that they are
capable not only of anticipating the intentions
of others but of acting accordingly. We have
already made reference to this experiment, so
we will briefly recall it here. Heinrich gives
Orange a number of pieces of meat in front of
his fellow creatures White and Red. Orange,
anticipating what will become of this unexpected gift, immediately starts hiding the
pieces. Each of his movements is, needless to
say, watched by the two others, who do not
then hesitate to dislodge the pieces of meat
from their hiding places. Orange tries to
follow them but must soon renounce the
effort. Then he changes strategy: he simulates
the act of hiding food, and when the others are
busy digging to find them, he hides them
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elsewhere, out of their view. The raven has
become a reliable witness for his researcher’s
proposition; he not only became worthy of the
proposition, but he became, by the very form
of it, autonomous in relation to the interpretations of his author. He helped the researcher
to construct a “fact.” And the scientist, in
giving the raven a chance to take a position in
relation to his proposition, became worthy of
witnessing in the raven’s name.
Returning to our enigma, to the motive of
apparently inexplicable behavior: how to ask
the ravens, with the same politeness, to take a
position in relation to all the possible conjectures of the investigation? How to ask them to
teach us the good explanation, the right
motive? How, in other words, to unmask the
criminal? The researcher will have to learn the
art of the trap and the net: the art of the lure
and the trick; the art of learning, from those
whose enigma you are trying to solve – and
have no intention of helping you – how that
which counts can count for them. It is, in
sum, the art of the mētis (μῆτις) (Detienne
and Vernant, Cunning Intelligence 11, 12; Les
Ruses de l’intelligence 10), that particular
form of intelligence that the Greeks cultivated,
and that they learned from hunters and
fishers, that intelligence that combines intuition, cunning, perspicacity, dissimulation,
improvisation, vigilant attention and the sense
of timeliness. It is the only way of getting to
know (making knowledge) that can hope to
address “intelligent, highly flexible” (Heinrich,
Ravens in Winter 259) beings, like ravens,
who require of those who want to know them
the same flexibility and the same intelligence.
And it is not by chance that it is this type of
“getting to know,” long eclipsed by the
choices made in philosophy, that is now returning in some ethological research. For this type of
“getting to know” was constituted exactly “to be
found in a domain where human intelligence is
constantly at grips with the land or sea
animals” (Detienne and Vernant, Cunning
Intelligence 317; Les Ruses de l’intelligence
305) in an area where humans saw their
intelligence and techniques transform in learning from animals. Heinrich, we will see, will
attest to the possibility of prolonging this
transformation.
Strange politeness, some might say, that goes
by way of the art of cunning, lures, and manipulation: enticing ravens; seeing without being
seen; tracking the least indications that would
betray their motives; obliging them to choose;
luring them to actualize the choices; creating
situations as if they were natural so as to let
the birds do the talking. But it is not a matter,
in this research, of searching out the faults to
weaken the ravens, quite the contrary: it is a
matter rather of rendering them more robust
in comparison to the researchers, of giving
them the occasion to resist, of giving them the
power to send the researcher to work. While
Harlow’s laboratory bet on passivity, the “reactivity” of its subject, Heinrich’s dispositive will
take form as an invitation to activity to those to
whom the questions are addressed. By these
strategies and dispositives, the researcher
commits to more activities in order to encourage
them in return among those that he observes. In
other words, and more concretely, the investigator will invite the guilty to take action.
Heinrich’s first activity will thus be to create
an occasion for the ravens to busy themselves
around his problem. To make the crime possible, it would be necessary first of all to find
an enticement that interests them, a carcass if
possible. To begin with, it would be better to
trust the ravens and to act like them. Heinrich
will let himself be recruited by them: he will
report to the rendezvous made apparent by the
cries announcing the discovery of a meal. The
cadaver of an elk, left there by a poacher,
becomes the object of a noisy feast. The birds
take flight at the approach of the researcher.
Without shame, he takes the carcass and will
place it close to his observation post.
The next day at dawn, two ravens arrive, followed by a third. All three remain silent. Ten
minutes later, they are joined by two others.
Some “quorks” are exchanged very quietly.
These are no doubt salutations, not publicity.
The ravens eat silently. When one of them is
full, it flies up to a branch and lets out noisy
cries. Others arrive. A falcon joins them,
rapidly chased off by two ravens. Did they
wait until they were full to recruit their
fellows? Maybe, Heinrich comments. But does
it really amount to recruitment? There is no
way to be sure that the later arrivals came
because they heard the cry. They were perhaps
just passing by. It is necessary therefore to
verify the power of attraction in these cries.
Heinrich procures a tape recorder to capture
them and loudspeakers to be able to disseminate
them later. He would also need another cadaver.
One of his friends had just killed a pig and
offered him the entrails. Eighty kilos should
be sufficient to motivate the generosity of the
one who would find them. Heinrich places the
meat near to his observation post and waits.
Two ravens arrive, followed by a third. They
eat silently, then they leave discreetly. After
hours of waiting the author, discouraged,
returns to his lodging. It is at that moment
that he hears the cries. He reverses course and
succeeds in recording some cries. The next
day, the ravens come and go, but none of
them appears to touch the meat. The one
closest to it executes a small dance of hesitation
and finally decides. It takes some little pieces
and sets to work going to hide them. None of
the birds makes the least noise. Others come
in the afternoon but content themselves with
flying over the meat, as if they simply wanted
to verify its presence. They remain silent.
Why are they not recruiting now? The next
day, the afternoon scene repeats itself. No one
eats or calls.
A new hypothesis must therefore be considered: the reason for their abstention is
perhaps linked to the type of food that is
offered to them. Perhaps it is not their congeners that they are interpellating, but simply
the other scavengers, coyotes or bears,
endowed with sufficient strength to open carcasses? The pig entrails being directly accessible
to them, they may not have needed to call for
aid. It would thus be necessary to recommence
the experiment, this time with a cadaver that
was impossible to open. A goat bought on a
visit to Vermont would fit the bill. The next
day Heinrich waits with the goat cadaver
placed prominently nearby. A raven arrives,
approaches it, then takes off again. Others
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come, no more interested than the first one.
They neither call nor do they eat. Could it be
that the goat is, in their eyes, an inferior substitute for what they usually eat? Heinrich goes to
test his lure on other ravens, kilometers from
there. Those ravens accept his gift with much
goodwill.
Nothing, however, says that if the recruitment
does not seem to be addressed to other species it
would then be a signal of invitation addressed to
fellow ravens. The lure could be used to respond
to this question: the ravens fall for the trick. The
call seems very well indeed to recruit them.
There will be, within fifteen minutes, thirty
birds around the new feast organized by Heinrich … but none of them eats!
From squirrel cadavers to rabbit remains
from the side of the highway, from cow
kidneys to pieces of giblets, the ravens demonstrate the most erratic behaviors: eating
without being called, calling without eating,
eating and calling, eating in the morning and
not in the afternoon, or the contrary. There is
only one logic: that of the most complete
unpredictability.
Things become singularly and decidedly
more complicated: not only do the ravens not
respond to questions but they pose new ones.
It is no longer about understanding why they
call, but on the one hand understanding why
they do it in some situations and not others;
and on the other why they feed at certain
times and seem not to want to do so at other
times. For the first question, Heinrich considers
that the response could be linked to the quantity
of food available: lately, they have been content
with small game found here and there. If there is
not enough of it, the ravens would perhaps have
the advantage of remaining silent. The hypothesis is simple to test; the game warden would
help by bringing all that he would be able to
find by way of large cadavers in the forest. Heinrich organizes an enormous banquet. Against all
expectations, the ravens seem to respond to the
first hypothesis: they recruit, no doubt because
the food is abundant. But they require the
author to pose the second question: they do
not, however, touch the food. They execute
the dance of hesitation.
65
These two hypotheses combined – they
recruit but seem to be scared to approach –
can become the object of a new formulation:
are they perhaps scared of having to do with a
fake cadaver and do they wait until they are sufficiently numerous to diminish the risk? But the
logic of the following observations does not
allow the support of this hypothesis: the
ravens, if that were the case, should have
stopped calling their congeners once they
started to eat and thus verified that it was not
a trap. Perhaps the danger does not come
from the prey, and their hesitation is simply
due to the fact that they are scared of a predator
who prowls around? This hypothesis can be
tested by simply leaving the choice to the
ravens. Heinrich places the meat on the
ground and in a tree. The ravens, if the predictions are correct, will go without hesitation into
the tree, where they have nothing to fear.
However, they will not be so obliging, the
author says: against all expectations, they feed
on the ground, after a hesitation dance. On the
other hand, how to understand the fact that
the ravens can seem so fearful when at other
times they are capable of so much bravery?
Isn’t this the crux of the problem? Wouldn’t
there be some ravens who are braver than
others, which would justify the fact that some
can eat while others hesitate for a long time
before doing so? Wouldn’t this be dependent
on age or experience: bravery, in raven societies,
being precisely “what separates the ‘men’ from
the ‘boys’” (Heinrich, Mind of the Raven
272)? But how could we ask them to verify
this hypothesis?
The author recounts a shocking coincidence
that flows from the comparison of all his observations: sometimes the recruitment is done,
sometimes it is not; but, in the second case, it
frequently happens that only two ravens eat.
Heinrich decides to verify this coincidence: he
places two piles of food in nearby places and
observes. Two birds come to feed from one of
them; a recruitment of many ravens takes
place at the other one. Is this then a couple
and a group? Later observations support the
thought that ravens form very stable couples,
that can last a lifetime. We think, moreover,
that when the young leave the nest they associate in bunches until the age of three or four
years. However, if the first affirmation concerning couples seems to be correct, Heinrich comments, nothing is less sure for the second one:
it is not necessarily the case that since we frequently see groups of ravens around refuse
that they live together in a bunch. We can
only affirm that they frequently share communal nests for the night. Observations also show
that couples defend their territory against all
intrusion. This defense can take highly variable
forms: they can sometimes attack any congener
who approaches, sometimes they settle only for
escorting it to the boundary of the territory. Do
the first to arrive form a couple, and the second
a group of juveniles? Do they all belong to the
same group? We can’t be sure, since we cannot
know whether, on the one hand, birds arriving
in a pair form a couple, and whether, on the
other hand, these are the same ones who
mutually recruit one another, a condition of
being able to affirm that this would be a true
group.
After all these months of research, Heinrich
confesses that he has no answers. Quite the contrary: he now has nine hypotheses and not
enough life left to be able to test them all. He
had to transport tons of meat, purchased
goats, donated pigs, gifts from the game
warden, deer abandoned by poachers; he had
to scour the highways for road-kill cadavers;
and on top of that he had to spend hundreds
of hours immobile in his observation post,
race through the woods and the snow, climb
up into trees, endure extended waits, raise
false hopes, use lures in the form of recordings
… and the mystery is deeper now than at the
start. Biological detective stories, he comments,
are visibly more complicated than the classical
investigations: the more you find out the more
you know that there are things that you do not
know (Heinrich, Ravens in Winter 301). More
cunning, more imagination, more activities to
oblige the ravens to choose between hypotheses.
It would be necessary to organize more feasts,
simulate invitations, call again and again by
means of recordings, propositions, and situations capable of interesting the ravens. It
would be necessary to find the right way to
recruit the ravens for the resolution of his
problem.
Now, if Heinrich learns with difficulty the
means of recruiting the ravens, it is in fact the
inverse that is in the course of declaring itself.
It is the ravens who will recruit the author.
The indices of this transformation take shape
gradually with the research. “It is still dark,
and I’m already being awakened by raven
calls! Several birds are flying over Kaflunk
making short, high-pitched calls that are
unlike the usual quorks. These calls convey excitement. The birds are flying to a kill! I feel it.
Even I can understand, and I too am recruited”
(Heinrich, Ravens in Winter 81).
We cannot ourselves understand it otherwise:
if this recruitment by non-humans was able to
acquire such an efficacy, it is because the
human was transformed by those whose
enigma he was trying to understand. The story
conveys nothing so much as that of a becoming.
Heinrich’s long investigation connected him to
the ravens in an unexpected manner. In learning
to recruit them, he learned to be recruited by
them. That which constitutes achievement for
a raven now constitutes, in another way,
achievement for himself; feeding on their
emotions, letting himself be pervaded by their
joy, letting himself be drawn into their
enigma: converting the environment into a
little more of himself. He learned to become
sensitive to what makes the ravens sensitive.
“The majority of bird sounds have no emotional
content for us. It surprises me, therefore, that
many of the raven’s calls sometimes display
emotions that I, as a mammal for whom they
are not intended, can feel [ … ] I also feel I
can detect a raven’s surprise, happiness,
bravado, and self-aggrandizement from its
voice and body language. I cannot identify
such a range of emotions in a sparrow or in a
hawk” (Heinrich, Ravens in Winter 250). For
the author, the joy of a feast around a carcass
takes on the same force of recruitment that it
can have for a raven. When the raven dances
the dance of hesitation the researcher holds his
breath: there he is, also hesitating, before that
which he wants to understand.
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This becoming “with the raven” that builds
up and transforms that to which the human is
sensitive will in turn submit him to new
demands. These will radically reorient the
course of the research. How to take account of
what counts for a raven, without going
through the ways that the ravens themselves
negotiate it together? The position of control
and exteriority reached its limits. The ravens
cannot respond to questions in the manner
that they were posed to them. If some are
brave and others are not; if some have good
reasons to be afraid and others have none; if
the models do not hold water since they
cannot take account of the “eccentrics”; if
there are small differences we cannot perceive
that guide the behaviors; if recognizing one
another is important, then it is necessary to go
by way of what the ravens demand. “Progress
often depends more on how well one follows
the situation than on how well one controls it.
Especially when control is difficult” (Heinrich,
Ravens in Winter 196). One must learn to
recognize them. One must also learn to ask
them to give evidence differently and to try to
understand how a raven ponders a question.
The first evidence will arrive in the form of a
weakened raven that has to be saved. The author
brings him to his house and feeds him. The surprise is overwhelming: while it will sometimes
take a raven three days to approach a carcass,
and the least provocation can provoke its
flight, the pensive raven seems to find the situation “altogether normal,” and comes, after
two hours of taming, to eat from his hand.
“And now, when everything is suddenly new,
this bird acts as if nothing is out of the ordinary!
I do not know how they perceive the world. I can
only guess that they see it not as an absolute but
as departures from the accepted. When everything is different, then comparisons cease, and
almost anything can be accepted. And come to
think of it, isn’t that how humans perceive the
world as well?” (Heinrich, Ravens in Winter
133). Heinrich will tag him and release him,
after his recovery. The new program is
launched: it is necessary to recognize the
ravens. It is also necessary to feed some of
them who can respond to questions that the
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other ones do not allow to be asked. Tame and
be tamed to better find out what matters from
a raven’s point of view; gain the trust to
respond to the demands of the politeness of
“getting to know.” Make of this taming a distinctive occasion to convey other things, and
to respond to other questions. This occasion,
Heinrich explains, “occurs when the individual
close to the bird is trusted, has earned a trust
that is not offered lightly. Given that trust,
much is revealed that could otherwise never be
seen” (Heinrich, Mind of the Raven 32).6
A huge aviary will be built in the garden, and
young ravens will be released there. Theo, Thor,
Ralph, Ro and Rave will teach the author that
ravens develop their personality in the course
of the first months: Ralph will be the most
adventurous and the most curious; he will also
be the one who will be the most attached to
the researcher. He will soon become the dominant and show that the hierarchy takes shape
as a function of bravery. Those who are the
first to eat while the others hesitate win a sort
of tacit right of precedence, without there
being any conflict around this point. The experiment will be an achievement. “My observations
were possible only because I was so closely in
their midst. My rearing them from nestlings,
and daily association with them for ten
months, had won me their trust, which made
the expression of their fine-grained unfiltered
and hence complex behavior possible in my
presence. The aviary also compensated for my
inability to fly. I could follow them here, while
at the same time provide an experimentally
crowded situation that elicited flexible and innovative behaviors that otherwise might occur
only rarely in the field where the birds can
more easily avoid each other if they choose”
(Heinrich, Mind of the Raven 259). The dispositive of taming, then, proves to be a privileged
access of “getting to know”: it actualizes competences that have less chance of occurring in
usual conditions: those of the birds and those
of the researcher. It transforms habits: once
again, those of the birds and those of the one
who investigates them.
In a parallel fashion, Heinrich will tag each of
the ravens that he can catch. He makes each an
identity file, puts a ring on the leg, and then a
small piece on the left wing, in different colors
for each one. The colors determine the age and
the name of each one of the ravens. The
stories change from this moment on: the investigator has become biographer. W20 and Ro
try to court R26, but being rejected each time,
they finally give up. The juvenile Ro is
amazing: in the absence of adults he behaves
like a dominant. But as soon as adults arrive,
he reverts to all the attitudes of submission.
Some birds are very regular, others are often
absent. They have habits that individualize
them. Ro and R26 both arrived at the same
time today, but each one from a different side:
they are probably not in a real relationship; or
else they have broken up. The marking
spreads, in the stories, even to those who are
not banded: the one who has only one leg did
not come yesterday; the one who has a white
spot on the back seems more timid, the one
who does not have a tail was there today. Not
being there today comes across in another
manner: when he tried hard to establish a statistic on their dispersion by attaching a signal
beacon to some of the youngest ravens, Heinrich
discovers that many among them were killed:
“The statistics that I knew so well were taking
on new meaning. These were “my” raven
friends and neighbors being killed” (Heinrich,
Mind of the Raven 81).
If the terms that guide the “getting to know”
were transformed, this does not mean that the
investigation is abandoned. On the contrary: it
will finally, and thanks to these transformations,
come to its conclusion. The questions addressed
to each one, Ro, R26, W20, white back, one leg,
Thor, Theo, and all the others, will bear fruit.
One simply has to listen to them tell, at
certain times, and to offer them propositions,
at other times. First of all, the fact that the
birds can mix in many places with resources
seems to indicate that the recruitment is not
oriented toward the protection of a stable
group. Certainly, information can be transmitted among the group that finds itself
together during the night: if one keeps some
birds in captivity and releases them in the
evening after several days, but only letting
some of them join a communal nest, the next
day the ones who do will be present with their
night companions around a carcass that the
members of the nest had discovered some time
before. Those who could not join the nest will
not be.
Next, only the dominant juveniles recruit in
the presence of adults, the others do not do it
except in their absence or at a distance. If one
compares this behavior with those that take
place in the aviary, one could then consider
that the fact of recruiting must be linked to
demonstrations of bravery. The best proof of
the value of a bird is its capacity to procure
food. As among the ravens, the fact of eating
often depends on bravery, and since bravery is
often gained by experience, the fact of calling
others around a food find, would it not constitute a reliable gauge of the quality of the recruiter? The ravens fully demonstrate this: bravery
counts for them, it is a good measure of the
value of partners, and a good opportunity to
show one’s own. Those of a very fearful nature
will not take so many risks in many situations,
unless it is for something that really counts. It
is truly that which, among the ravens, separates
the men from the boys.
The first motive for the crime is therefore elucidated. But it is necessary also to understand
that this motive was not the only one: it links
together many of the events, but not all of
them. It cannot explain, for one thing, the fact
that in certain cases the recruitment seems to
have taken place elsewhere: and, for another
thing, that sometimes the ravens who come in
pairs sometimes eat and others don’t. It is in
engaging this detail that the second motive can
be brought to light. To elucidate it, it is necessary to link two pieces of information. The first
of these requires proof by means of an experiment. This will be set up to determine the
link between position in the hierarchy and the
manner of recruiting. If the raucous recruitment
can be, at some times and in some circumstances, an opportunity to show one’s bravery,
what would the reasons be for a more discreet
recruitment, at a distance? Would it be the
fact of less brave or subordinate ravens? Heinrich kept twenty birds for a month and observed
68
despret
how the hierarchy was organized. When this
proves to be clear and stable, the birds are
relaxed. The researcher leaves a carcass in a
place, and leads a subordinate female there.
She does not eat, and stays close to the meat,
dancing a little dance of hesitation. That
evening, she joins the nest. The next day, they
are all there … and she eats with them. A first
explanation can be confirmed: the carcass, like
any new object, could be dangerous; the fact
of eating, since vigilance for predators is diminished, adds to the danger. The presence of
fellow ravens can constitute excellent
protection.
But the danger of a carcass that would miraculously revive is not the only cause; if not,
then how to explain that sometimes a more
raucous recruitment continues after the corpse
has been shown clearly to be dead? Possible predators no longer constitute a sufficient reason:
there are circumstances showing that it is not
the only possible motive. The difference in behavior between the ravens who move in pairs
and those who are in a group adds another
version to the motive. For once they are identified; these ravens who eat as a pair and who
keep others at a distance are shown not only to
form a couple but the proprietary couple of the
territory where the food is found. The reason
for recruitment becomes clear, in this last situation, and permits understanding why ravens
present such indecisive behaviors around food:
when a territory is occupied by a couple, they
will chase off all those who approach. Except
if they are too numerous. If some juvenile vagabonds find a carcass and the territorial couple is
far away, they will eat silently so as not to attract
attention. If, on the contrary, the couple is close,
they will call, and wait to be part of a sufficiently
large number to eat in safety. And if they do not
come, they will not eat.
The achievement that recruitment represents
for the ravens now conveys an achievement for
Heinrich: he succeeded in recruiting the
ravens around his problem, which he could
not elucidate without their help; he succeeded
in being sufficiently recruited himself to
invent pertinent ways of addressing them. The
ravens taught him the taste for differences: the
69
models are now commensurate with their unpredictability. He learned flexible habits from the
ravens that would permit him to celebrate and
to take account of the flexibility and the achievement of their habits. Heinrich became their
expert and their reliable spokesperson: he
gained the status of being authorized by them
to speak in their name. He became the competent expert through whom they acquired their
competences. He could now convince and
interest his colleagues, in terms that count for
them: he could test each hypothesis. He can
speak in the name of the ravens, enroll other
researchers to pose other questions, offer them
new occasions. He could also bear witness for
them.
When in Germany, in the mid-1990s, fifty
ravens invaded the idyllic Swabian Alps
region, near the town of Balinger, the worst
accusations were made against them. Farmers
suspected them of attacking their livestock. A
shepherd described them as a troop of disciplined soldiers who would launch at their
victims, at the signal of their commander, to
kill them. The newspapers immediately seized
on the affair. “Nature turned to horror,” ran
one headline. The accounts recorded seemed
to come straight out of a Hitchcock film.
Hunters joined in to support both the poor
farmers and the threatened animals. All the
observations aligned: the ravens were very
often near or in the fields where the cows and
sheep gave birth to their young. And these
newborn lambs and calves were found with
mutilated eyes or tongues.
All the groups present testified against the
ravens: their killing would be necessary. Heinrich came to the defense of their cause. A new
investigation commenced, with a real crime
and real guilty parties this time. The motives
are, on the other hand, much more heterogeneous, most of them not being those of the
ravens: the farmers claimed compensation
from the government; the hunters demanded
that the law that had protected the ravens
since their quasi-extinction be lifted with the
goal of preserving other species of birds; politicians, anticipating heavy payments, did not
hesitate to jump on the bandwagon, and the
press saw, with each “crime,” a substantial
increase in sales.
To begin with, Heinrich argued, he’d never
heard of ravens attacking livestock: they don’t
approach cadavers that are still moving. At a
pinch ravens can eat dead lambs just after
birth. But in New England, cows and sheep
give birth to their young in stables, such that
the ravens cannot be blamed for all the
animals that die during farrowing. Now, in
this region of Germany, the livestock are left
outside all year, including during the birthing
periods. Heinrich obtained the support of ecologists, who exerted pressure on the government
in favor of requiring autopsies before paying
compensation. The results of these autopsies
will be definitive: all the animals attacked by
the ravens were already dead, for other identifiable causes, before the birds stepped in. These
deaths were also, beyond that, much more
numerous among negligent landowners. In the
light of proof, the number of crimes suddenly
plummeted in a dramatic manner; the compensation, which had become pointless, was suspended and the livestock were better kept.
The ravens had been exonerated; the truce
could once again be respected. The German
ravens had in their turn succeeded in recruiting
the representative of the American ravens; and
he was able to recruit ecologists, who in their
turn mobilized experts and politicians, who
themselves modified the habits of the owners
of the cows and sheep.
The recruitment does not stop there. Heinrich will continue to enroll other humans
around his ravens, in drawing this time on particular talents of these birds: in certain circumstances and in certain regions, they can achieve
amazing interspecific recruitments. And inasmuch as it is a prophecy that serves as a
guiding thread for my story, it is the wolf that
I will ask to bear witness to a last version of
this achievement. Isaiah’s bet would certainly
have been less risky if in the place of proposing
it to the sheep he had instead addressed it to the
ravens to put the wolf to the test in terms of
peaceful cohabitation.7
Wolf observers, Heinrich remarks, take the
presence of ravens so much for granted that
none of them has posed the question of understanding the nature of the bond that ties them
to the wolves. Heinrich will seek out those of
his colleagues who study wolves in Yellowstone
National Park. What is the motive for this surprising association between ravens and wolves?
How does this so-called peaceful cohabitation
between them play a role in their achievement?
Are the ravens of Yellowstone different from
the Maine ravens owing to the fact that they
live with wolves? The researchers accept the
recruitment and the programs of research are
launched. The information collected is astonishing: the Yellowstone ravens conform to the
hypotheses that had to be abandoned for the
Maine ravens! The rules that guided the behaviors and the motives for recruitment in Maine
do not apply in Yellowstone. The presence of
the wolves transformed the ravens. While in
Maine, except in particular circumstances or
exceptional bravery, ravens are always hesitant
around a carcass and take many precautions;
those in Yellowstone, when they are in the presence of wolves, do not demonstrate any timidity
and do not hesitate a second before eating. Not
only do they not fear the wolves – who are of an
exemplary patience with the most mischievous
ravens who, with bravery, come to bite them
on the tail – but when the wolves are there
they are no longer afraid of anything! The
wolves allow the ravens to conquer their fear
in the presence of large items of food, such as
the carcasses of large animals; they changed
the constraints that hold sway over the habits
of the ravens.
Better still, it seems that the ravens rely on
the wolves and seek their company in order to
eat. Dan Stahler, the Yellowstone colleague
recruited for these observations, put this
hypothesis to the test: he left deer carcasses
out in the open in places where he had previously seen ravens join wolves just at the end
of a hunt. When the wolves did not find the
carcass, then either the ravens did not come,
or they came, but did not touch it and left
straight away. Besides, when a raven finds a
carcass that is not open, and therefore inaccessible for it, it calls: in a few minutes the one who
was recruited – the wolf – generally appears and
70
despret
opens the prey for it, from which it immediately
takes its share of the benefits. But that is not the
only benefit of this exchange of good conduct for
the wolves. It seems that the ravens are much
more alert and vigilant than the wolves. One
can relatively easily approach a wolf without it
responding, something which is never the case
for the raven: they sound the alarm at the slightest noise. Ravens assume with wolves the role
that the Viking gods accorded to them; they
spy and surveil to the ends of the earth and
report everything to those who sent them. One
can hide nothing from them, “the birds serve
the wolves as extra eyes and ears” (Heinrich,
Mind of the Raven 238).
The prophecy, translated in terms of recruitment, takes an amazing turn: of course wolves
live with ravens and even eat with them. And,
certainly, the scientists who specialize in
wolves now work with those who specialize in
ravens: the recruitment of wolves by the
ravens extends to the recruitment of their
spokespeople. But who could
have thought, if not no doubt a
descendant of La Fontaine, that
it is the ravens who protect the
wolves and permit them to eat
with their eyes closed?
the author.
notes
Translated from Vinciane Despret, Quand le loup
habitera avec l’agneau © Editions du Seuil/Les
Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2002, 207–34.
1 The French term dispositif has an important
specificity that has caused difficulties in prior translation and in capturing the range of meanings that it
covers (including technical, military, legal, and
ontological/arrangement dimensions). The term is
at once an everyday, general term for referring
to machines and devices of all kinds (such as
cameras and pencil sharpeners but also airplanes)
and it is a philosophical concept that has been
drawn upon by Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault,
71
Louis Althusser, Giorgio Agamben and many
others. Owing to the technical connotations of
the term, it has often been rendered as “apparatus”
in English, but this presents a major problem since
the French term appareil, much more closely
related to “apparatus,” is used as distinct from dispositif by the thinkers mentioned. Owing to the
specificity of the concepts, there is an increasing
use of the English term “dispositive” to capture dispositif and the distinctions from appareil. Timothy
Armstrong’s earlier translation of Deleuze’s
famous essay on Foucault’s use of the concept
uses “social apparatus” to distinguish it from
“apparatus” and to emphasize the social and assembling dimensions. These social and assembling
dimensions are particularly important to Despret’s
use of the concept in the philosophy of science and
ethology. See Gilles Deleuze, “Qu’est-ce qu’un dispositif?” in Michel Foucault philosophe (Paris: Seuil,
1989), Giorgio Agamben, Che cos’è un dispositivo?
(Rome: Nottetempo, 2006), and Jeffrey Bussolini,
“What is a Dispositive?,” Foucault Studies 10
(2010): 85–107. [Translator’s note.]
2 Despret refers here to the canonical work in
gene-centered evolutionary theory, namely
Richard Dawkins’ The Selfish Gene. [Translator’s
note.]
3 Vinciane Despret uses the French expression
“faire connaissance” that has a range of meanings
that are difficult to capture in English. “Faire connaissance” denotes getting acquainted in the
sense of “meeting” or “making someone’s acquaintance,” and “getting to know someone,” but it also
literally means “making knowledge,” and Despret is
drawing on each of these elements here. It is rendered here as “getting to know” which has resonances of meeting, acquaintance, and friendship, but
it should also be read with an emphasis on making
and producing, as in “getting to” something via a
process of inquiry and labor. “Faire connaissance”
is closely related to her concept of politeness as
an integral part of the type of research that she is
describing here, exemplified by Bernd Heinrich’s
involvement with the ravens. [Translator’s note.]
4 This story was told by the naturalist Edward Pett
Thompson in 1851, in Passions of Animals. A
monkey in Thalassery, from whom some crows
were regularly stealing food from its plate on the
ground while the monkey was on the top of a
climbing pole, once feigned to be sick and laid on
the ground. When the crows, deceived by its
apparent state of agony, went to take the food
the monkey suddenly jumped, took one of them,
trapped it, and plucked it vigorously.
5 I borrow this definition “of the work of a scientist worthy of the name” from Isabelle Stengers,
Introduction to Nathan, Nous ne sommes pas seuls
au monde.
6 For each of these passages, the emphasis is the
author’s.
7 The Book of Isaiah 11.6 emphasizes interspecific
relationships in its “The wolf will live with the lamb,
and the leopard will lie down with the goat. The
calf, the young lion, and the fatling will be together,
and a child will lead them.” Holman Christian Standard Bible (http://biblehub.com/isaiah/11-6.htm).
[Translator’s note.]
bibliography
Chauvin, Rémy, and Bernadette Chauvin. Le Modèle
Animal. Paris: Hachette, 1982. Print.
Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford:
Detienne, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre Vernant. Cunning
Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society. Trans. Janet
Lloyd. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Print.
Detienne, Marcel, and Jean-Pierre Vernant. Les
Ruses de l’intelligence. La Mètis des Grecs. Paris:
Flammarion, 1974. Print.
Heinrich, Bernd. Mind of the Raven. New York:
HarperCollins, 2000. Print.
Heinrich, Bernd. Ravens in Winter. New York:
Vintage, 1991. Print.
Nathan, Tobie. Nous ne sommes pas seuls au monde.
Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2001.
Print.
Thompson, Edward Pett. Passions of Animals.
London: Chapman, 1891. Web.
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Jeffrey Bussolini
USA
ANGELAKI
The case of Clever Hans is one of the most
notorious episodes in the history of animal psychology. Among numerous “clever animals” of
the time, this horse’s apparently human-like
displays of mathematical, linguistic and
musical understanding caused a stir in
Germany just after the turn of the century;
the effects of his encounters with the scientific
delegations sent to investigate him are still
felt today. The case is full of intriguing
elements: claims to supernatural influence
and other extraordinary phenomena, accusations of deception, questions of anthropomorphism and mechanomorphism. It attracts
romantics and sceptics in equal measure, from
Maurice Maeterlinck to J.B. Watson. Today
there is hardly a serious thinker of animal
mind who has not turned their attention to
these infamous events in order to elaborate
their own theories. The “Clever Hans effect”
has become the name of a cardinal scientific
sin, the experimenter effect by which researchers inadvertently give their subjects the
answers to their questions. Yet this discrediting accusation is often overstated, and in
need of a careful differentiation: there are multiple, and multi-directional, forms of “influence” between observers and observed, some
indeed problematic but others in fact salutary
and revelatory. What goes on between scientists and animal subjects so that such effects
are possible at all? What, indeed, was going
on between Clever Hans and the committees
of venerables sent to solve his case, particularly
the eminent psychologist Stumpf and his
student, the now-infamous Pfungst?
It is here that Vinciane Despret comes in
with her usual literary and investigative flair,
vinciane despret
WHO MADE CLEVER
HANS STUPID?
casting herself in the role of a cold-case detective, a meddling Bayard to Pfungst’s manipulative Poirot, exhuming buried evidence and
retracing concealed errors and blindnesses.
Was it really just a matter of reacting to inadvertent stimuli? Hans was influenced, sure –
but by whom, and to become what? If he was
stupid, then what made him so, if it was not
a subhuman animality? Could it be the psychologist’s regime of questioning itself? If he
was clever, then in what did his cleverness
consist, if it was not a quasi-human rationality? Must the spectre of Hans’s cleverness
remain an ironic epithet – an accusation of
falsity and bête stupidity – or can we recast
it as an alternative intelligence, a remarkably
attentive capacity to be affected? This is
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039843
77
who made clever hans stupid?
where Despret excels, in the careful elaboration
of distinctive performative modes of scientific
questioning, interaction, awareness, and
responsibility, in light of which the opposition
of exceptional humans to mechanical animals
melts away. In her book, then – of which the
final, revelatory act of the epilogue is translated here – Despret digs through the files to
reconsider Hans and his psychologists, and
thereby, also, provokes us to rethink the
legacy of this meaningful scandal in the subsequent history of scientific research on
animal intelligence.
D
id Hans possess this independent intelligence? Has the Clever Hans error, as
Pfungst claims, and as psychologists have generally agreed, indeed been totally resolved?
Pfungst’s solution, despite its coherence and
all the accumulated experimental evidence,
leaves here and there unexplained residues,
peculiarities, details that do not settle well
with the whole and which suggest that there
might be another explanation. We find ourselves
confronting this case in the same position as the
mischievous author who, at the end of a novel by
Agatha Christie, calls for the reopening of the
investigation (Bayard). Hercule Poirot has not
conducted this one well, he declares, and the
culprit is not at all the one whom Agatha Christie has nominated. The author of The Murder of
Roger Ackroyd has been misled by her cocky
detective, far too many mysteries remain,
matters are too quickly resolved. The confessions of the designated culprits are themselves
suspect.
Certainly, Hans’s confrontation with the tests
“without knowledge” proposed by the investigator Pfungst was decisive. Hans’s silence or
stray responses to the blind questions marked
him as guilty of having tricked the humans.
Nonetheless, how is one to understand the
success of these blind tests during the work of
the commission? Pfungst will, of course, give
some explanations a posteriori. These are somewhat confused: clearly our psychologist is not
quite at ease. He could probably have done
without giving them, since they still risk
leading to the undesirable conclusion that the
members of the commission have done their
work poorly. Recall that the blind test had consisted in dividing the roles: the questioner and
the one who receives the response were not the
same person, the second did not know what
the first had proposed. Mr Schillings had given
Hans a number, had left, Mr von Osten had
then gone in and asked Hans to carry out an
arithmetical operation starting from this
number. The horse was in fact wrong. But the
commission had clearly decided to give Hans
credit for his answers: there would have been a
misunderstanding since Schillings had not
understood the instructions and reportedly
asked Hans to repeat the number. And it is
this number that Hans has given, in any case
enough times to convince.
How has Hans succeeded in divining the
answer? According to Pfungst, only one solution proves to be possible. Hans would have
relied on someone else in the gathering who
knew the number to generate, since he had
heard it pronounced by Mr Schillings. It
should first be accepted that this other person
has not corrected the misunderstanding.
Granted. This hypothesis, however, belies the
way Hans goes about things. It was observed
that the latter relies first and foremost on the
people who are closest to him. He can count
neither on Mr Schillings, who is out at this
moment, nor on Mr von Osten, who does not
know the answer. Would Hans have changed
his habits? The horse has thus had to show
great shrewdness: first he had to perceive that
Mr von Osten could not guide him, which is
not as obvious as it seems. According to
Pfungst’s theory, Hans cannot “know” that his
questioner does not know the answer only
because the latter does not make the recoil
movement. He would have therefore had to
tap quite some time before realizing it. That
will be in any case what he will do in the blind
tests proposed by Pfungst: he starts and does
not stop. So he had to perceive, before it was
too late, that he could not count on von Osten.
How did he manage? It is a mystery. Hans
then had to understand that he had to look elsewhere and locate, among those present, someone
more reliable who could help him.
78
despret
Has Pfungst followed the same path as those I
critique? He seems in any case not really to
believe in this solution, he does not go on and
on about it. His innermost thoughts are almost
readable, though never explicit: Hans has
managed to lead the members of the commission to hasty conclusions. However, Pfungst
concedes, one can understand their mistake:
certain events that preceded the meeting of the
11th and 12th of September must have led to
these overly generous findings. Recall that
Hans corrects his questioner a few times
during the preliminary stage of this work. A
few days before the meeting started, some
members of the commission had begun the
work with him, in order to do some tests and
to establish a good connection with the horse.
From this preparatory work, the Count zu
Castell has returned quite surprised: on the
8th of September he had asked Hans the date.
Hans had responded with eight taps of his
hoof. Yet zu Castell was convinced that it was
the 7th. He was about to correct Hans when
somebody pointed out to him that the date
was indeed the 8th, and not the 7th. On
another visit, still in the course of this week,
zu Castell presented to Hans a slate bearing
the numbers 8, 5 and 3, and asked him to add
them. In his excitement, zu Castell thought
that the total was 10. Hans went up to 16.
Other events of this kind happened. Pfungst
inventoried them: there were some seven.
Others will later come to confirm the fact that
these events had no reason to be rare: Pfungst
will correct himself on two occasions, notably
in a miscalculation. Seven occurrences during
the work of the commission, says Pfungst, is
certainly not such a high frequency, but these
cases were impressive enough that their importance was overstated.
He still had to find them a plausible explanation. Pfungst will consider two hypotheses.
The first proves to be consistent both with
that to which his technique makes him attentive, and with his hypothesis of the procedure
without knowledge. One can imagine, in these
latter situations of errors corrected by the
horse, that in fact the questioner might
possess the correct response at another level of
79
consciousness, or more precisely at the edge of
it. This would be the part of consciousness
that would have brought him to act, still
without knowledge. The splitting would have
operated in favour of the correct answer. The
second, much simpler hypothesis refers for its
part to luck: Hans himself would have made a
mistake that, by chance, each time would precisely compensate for that of his interrogator.
In the case of the answer “8” instead of the 7
imagined by zu Castell, he would simply have
stopped too late. The same for the 16 in place
of the 10. As luck would have it … It saved, at
least partially, the honour of the commission.
One can therefore explain the difference
between the September report and that of
December by relating the first situation back
to error … and thus the second to the clarification of truth. There would, however, be
another way of translating the contrast.
I have, for my part, at the start of this investigation, considered the difference between the
situation which saw Hans pass the tests
without knowledge, and that which led him to
fail, by invoking what had happened between
the two moments: Hans had entered into psychology. Two interpretations were possible:
the one I followed proposed to understand the
contrast by considering the objectives of each
of the dispositives. The first, that of the commission, had observed conditions in which the test
produced successes; the second, that of psychology, had put in place conditions in which Hans
could not pass this test. Another, more radical
interpretation was also thinkable: the Hans
before Pfungst’s experiment and the Hans
after it were not the same. The horse would
have been transformed by the way Pfungst
worked with him, by the suspicion, by the
manner of addressing him. This hypothesis is
not actually mine, it is suggested to me by the
criticisms that were directed to Pfungst: he
would have transformed the horse. In some
ways, one might think that this solution is
even engraved in his own work: mistrust
affects the performances of the horse, trust
grants success. This would be to overlook the
peculiar and deeply ambivalent status that
Pfungst accords to trust. When it comes to the
possibility of a conceptual intelligence in the
horse, there is only a short step from trust to
gullibility: here is Hans who understands
French. Pfungst has a point: it is not that one
attributes too much to the horse, it is that one
attributes to him badly. The question of conceptual intelligence is a poor question for Hans
(posed in terms of independent intelligence it
is, moreover, a bad question for everyone): it
reflects what interests us, reading, counting,
not what makes for an interesting horse. Trust
is misplaced. It is other capabilities that it
must support.
The hypothesis of transformation has nevertheless not eluded Pfungst, evidenced by what
he writes in conclusion:
some may assert that it was through our
experimentation that the horse became
mechanized and incapacitated as regards conceptual thinking; that formerly he really
could solve arithmetical problems, and only
later developed the very bad habit of depending upon the signs which I gave him. (211)
Leaving aside this troublesome issue of conceptual intelligence, one realizes that Pfungst
actually hits on an essential aspect of what the
experimental dispositives are: they are apparatuses of transformation; they can never claim
to have revealed that which pre-existed the
examination. Yes, Pfungst is right to consider
it, but wrong to translate a branch of the alternative in terms of conceptual intelligence – the dispositive has transformed the horse. The
processes of this transformation are readable
all over. We are here faced with the most problematic aspect of the psychologist’s work: he has
well and truly mechanized the horse. Some of
the anecdotes reported by Pfungst describe
nothing else; they are not rare. Thus, to make
it even more visible that it is indeed the head
movements that make the horse act, Pfungst
shows, for example, that he manages to obtain
from Hans, by moving slightly and shaking his
head, that he taps alternately and rhythmically
the right hoof, the left hoof, the right, the left,
etc. (61). Hans, he will repeat on several
occasions, responds altogether mechanically
(199). He was, he says again a few pages later,
“like a machine that must be started and kept
going by a certain amount of fuel (in the form
of bread and carrots)” (202). It was possible,
he finally claims, to make Hans respond to the
most outrageous questions by means of
signals. One could successively obtain “yes”
and “no” to the same question, or else get him
to show the direction of the ground when
asked where his head was, and that of the sky
when he should indicate his hooves. In what
the psychologist describes, one is ultimately
not far from the technique of dressage, with
the results that it produces. Hans became a
circus horse, a clown horse (see Crist 17).
Recall that during one of those lengthy notes
in which Pfungst indulges his work dissolving
paranormal phenomena, he compares [spiritualist] table-turning and the horse. Certainly, he
admits, the second is a living being. This difference is immediately brushed aside with the back
of the hand: the cases are in the end similar. We
touch here on the crux of the problem.
Pfungst’s research takes place at a critical
moment of the bifurcation of psychology: the
transformations of Hans herald the transformation of subjects. One can read, engraved in
this history, the first signs of the advent of behaviourism. The “all this was nothing but that”
that punctuates every moment of clarification
is the expression, in its own way, of what happened with Hans: he was subjected to a series
of reductive operations. With the first,
Pfungst reduces the conduct of the horse to
simple mechanisms, he makes Hans pass from
the animal who responds into the “animal that
reacts.” Reaction is at the heart of this whole
affair, it is the real transformation that
announces that living beings, as the objects of
these sciences that make psychologists dream,
will finally submit to the laws that govern the
universe. Only the conversion of response into
reaction can enable this passage, as identified
rather well by Eileen Crist when she says that
“the distinction between action and behavior –
sometimes rendered in terms of ‘conscious’
versus ‘unconscious’ behavior – is not a distinction between ‘natural kinds’ of conduct” (1).
Pfungst, she continues, has created a distinction
between “action” and “behaviour” (or response
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despret
and reaction) by displacing Hans to the other
side of the border that separates “intelligent
actors” and “mindless reactors.”
This operation will constitute the very
essence of behaviourist dispositives. In the
systems of conditioning that will come some
years later, the animal will generally be submitted to training during which it must learn
to react to certain stimuli: a light that turns
on, a bell sound, a picture. When it perceives
the stimulus it is asked to recognize or discriminate, it must present the reaction that the experimenter has taught it. It will be, at best,
rewarded with a bit of food, at worst, punished
with an electric shock or another unpleasant
experience. By dint of repeating the stimulus,
the experimenter gets what he was looking for:
the rat, the pigeon, the monkey or the dog is
conditioned, it now behaves like a mechanical
spring toy. By observing how dogs, in this
type of experiment, are subjected to constraints
that transform in the mode of stupefaction, the
sociologists Arnold Arluke and Clinton Sanders
(81) have taken up again for themselves this
irrevocable conclusion of Vicki Hearne (58):
To the extent that the behaviorist manages to
deny any belief in the dog’s potential for
believing, intending, meaning, etc., there
will be no flow of intention, meaning, believing, hoping going on. The dog may try to
respond to the behaviorist, but the behaviorist won’t respond to the dog’s response. …
The behaviorist’s dog will not only seem
stupid, she will be stupid.
Hans never showed himself to be spontaneous, says Pfungst, he never on his own
initiative did something similar to what was generally asked of him (202). Granted, but Pfungst
does not ask the obvious question: what would
have been the point? If the horse was indeed
able to take an interest in what fascinated
humans, if he was able to give meaning to
what for him was normally meaningless, such
interest could only make sense within a relationship. The verdict of the lack of spontaneity only
reinforces the implementation of the operation:
it will be reserved solely for those reactions that
prove unable to demand an active, autonomous,
81
spontaneous position … without the question
arising of the dispositive that created this
inability. This is where the notion of reaction
becomes like a poison: the search for causes
similar to those of sciences like physics
renders unthinkable and impossible all those
events through which living beings get on
together, transform themselves, build mutual
capabilities.
For if there is indeed a question to which the
problem of influence should have led, it is that
of the influence of the dispositive itself, the
effect of ways of addressing the horse on what
it is in the process of becoming. The issue of
trust might have led Pfungst there, but trust,
as we have seen, is defined under poor conditions: trust is too close to credulity when it
is aimed at “irrelevant” capabilities. Pfungst’s
hypothesis, taken to its limits, could in turn
have opened the question: if, as he repeatedly
maintains, Hans does not have in his head
what the questioner has in his own head, the dispositive’s suggestions should not have been separated from the question of influence; intelligent
horse facing relevant questions, sensitive horse
facing sensitivity, mechanical horse facing one
who sees as the only hypothesis that of an associative chain of actions and reactions.
This will to transform action into reaction,
which is subordinate to the ambition to find
simple causes and generalizable laws, can then
account for certain details too quickly swept
away like dust under the carpet, for certain
unresolved questions, for certain skirted
impasses that punctuate the work of Pfungst.
At first, this question of influence was raised
unilaterally, as we saw. The humans influence
the horse; natural expressive movements stand
in the way of any other hypothesis. This
could, however, be opened up when it is discovered that the form of the signals that indicate
“zero” and “no” was taught to the humans by
the horse, without their realizing it. We could
not show any better the possibility of reciprocal
influence. Pfungst, however, throughout his
affair of verifying whether this transformation
of signals is experimentally possible, does not
explore the consequences of what he discovers.
He could hardly have done so, in any case, in
the system elaborated: from the moment when
Hans’s behaviours are defined in the sole register of reaction, that is to say in the register of
passivity, it becomes difficult to give him such
a share of the responsibility. It becomes above
all very difficult to think of influence as a
process of reciprocal adjustments, of agencements or agreements by which affecting and
being affected are distributed in an indeterminate manner.
The way in which influence can play on the
rhythms of the accord rather than on those of
mere transmission could have, however,
appeared to Pfungst when analysing the
results of tests taken with a stopwatch. These,
as I recall, were introduced to have the most
complete certainty that it was indeed the
human who gave the signal for the end of the
count. If the head movement had come after
the last tap of the hoof, this would have
meant, at best, that this was not the movement
involved, at worst, that Hans knew all by
himself when he should stop. Recall that von
Osten, Schillings and Pfungst played the role
of questioner. Stumpf, two of his colleagues,
and Pfungst himself, when he was not involved
in the role of questioner, were successively the
observers. Pfungst declared, at the end of two
sets of tests, that the results confirmed his
hypothesis. Yet when one looks more closely,
these results are full of anomalies. On one
hand, the first set proves to be very contradictory. The horse follows the movement of the
human very clearly with Pfungst (Hans gives
his last hoof tap when the psychologist straightens up); a little more randomly for Schillings (in
83 per cent of cases, the head comes first, in 17
per cent, it follows); however, in the case of von
Osten, the horse seems to anticipate his master
in a majority of cases! A second set of tests is
then attempted. Everything returns to normal
on the side of Schillings; the results of von
Osten, in contrast, do their utmost to muddy
the waters. The explanations that Pfungst
summons to take account of the difference
between the two sets are not very convincing.
Practice might have made the second test
more reliable. One can rightfully ask how practice could change things. In any event, if Hans’s
response is indeed a mere reaction, things ought
to be clearer.
They are even less so if one takes the trouble,
as Crist did, to take up again the results that
Pfungst has not recorded. He has in fact
excluded from his tables every case where the
two movements were simultaneous, by declaring
them “undecidables.” Yet the statistics that
result from these “undecidables” are astounding:
if with Pfungst, records of simultaneity account
for only 8 per cent of all the tests, with Schillings,
however, one passes to 21 per cent and with von
Osten, depending on the observers, between 20
and 30 per cent! That’s a lot. All these elements
begin to put in doubt the fact that one is dealing
with a simple “reaction” to influence. It is not a
matter of putting back on the table the hypothesis of conceptual intelligence, but of drawing
out the lesson of these cases, too quickly
stowed away under the terminology of “undecidable”: influence does not fit well in the schemas of
reaction and causality. What do these “undecidable” cases of simultaneity in fact signify? Do
they not bear witness to the fact that the Hans
affair is far more complicated than Pfungst
wants to think? Hans can, in certain cases, anticipate the movements, and he more than likely
does it based on other clues that have escaped
Pfungst, whether because they do not exhibit
the same regularity, or else because they are
beyond our sensory channels, or finally because
they are difficult to interrogate within the dispositives. For if Hans can anticipate with some and
not with others, this means that there is, between
the questioners, some variability of movements;
that there would be, in some way, subsidiary
movements that would supplement the information that Hans selects and takes. Which
should then lead us to think that Pfungst’s solution is in fact only a very small part of the solution: literally, the most visible.
It is here that the second operation of
reduction carried out by the psychologist is
formed. As we have seen, the method “by elimination” leads him to favour a purely visual hypothesis. Certainly, this makes of Hans an exceptional
horse, since he has relocated a capability – the
isopraxic ability that enables him to read in his
muscular sensations those of his rider – into
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despret
another register, where the horse does not normally excel: the visual register.
Is this elimination method so convincing?
This is doubtful. The horse normally uses
several sensorial channels, each of its senses is
involved in what it perceives – it is, in the
words of ethologists, a polysensorial being.
And yet, if the senses complement each other,
the suppression of one does not automatically
lead to its relay by the others. On the contrary,
this suppression can render them ineffective, at
least for a while. If the blinded horse does not
perceive any sign, this does not mean that only
vision is involved: it may simply mean either
that he is too disoriented to refer to his other
senses, or even that in the absence of vision
his other senses “no longer speak to him.” Certainly, the horse uses his vision, but, in the
lovely expression of Jean-Claude Barrey, “he
will never believe his eyes,” he always has to
confirm it with his nose. At the same time, muscular sensations are not perceived by the body
alone; at the slightest movement of the rider,
the ears of the horse lie down: he listens to the
effect of his sensation-movements in his body,
he uses his ears “as the eyes of the body.”
Merely to say in the same breath that muscular
sensations are heard by the “eyes” or that scent
confirms vision gives us an idea of the difficulty
of determining both how the horse perceives
and what can produce the neutralization of
just one of his senses. In a certain manner,
Pfungst reduced the horse to the measure of
what he was capable of interrogating: visual
movements. But nothing permits saying that
the mystery is solved and that Hans does not
use a variety of means to read human bodies.
Finally, if we interpret all the “undecidable”
cases that tipped us off as possible instances of
simultaneity, it becomes clear that Pfungst
imposed a third reduction: he wanted to translate
into the Procrustean bed of causality that which
largely overflows it. Indeed, how to account for
this simultaneity if not in terms of “attunement”?1 It is precisely these terms that seem
best able to translate the capacity of the horse
and the human to attune, to connect in so
supple a manner; this capacity for attention to
the other so strong that it makes it impossible
83
to distinguish differences in the rhythm of the
accord. We no longer know which, horse or
human, induced his movements in the other;
we do not know, in these agencements, how the
anticipations of one actualize the anticipations
of the other. Independent intelligence makes a
decidedly poor figure relative to the capabilities
that are deployed: a dual intelligence, involving
bodies, attentions to the other, desires and
wills, consciousnesses capable of splitting, of
being relocated, edges of consciousness that
bring about more effective actions.
Let us not, however, be totally unfair to
Pfungst. He is capable of using these terms, particularly when he abandons the constraints of
the psychologist to adopt a posture closer to
the ethologist. Let us recall what he reports to
us at the end of his investigation among the
horses. It is with an excerpt from Tolstoy that
he gives us at the same time the exceptional
talent of Hans and its similarity to that which
his domesticated counterparts develop: a
capacity for attention to human desires so
strong that they are capable of anticipating
this desire from a simple muscle movement
(Pfungst 183–84).2 What makes Hans an exceptional horse is that he was able to divert this
talent to other senses.
The fact that one can find at times such contradictory characteristics in Pfungst reflects the
context in which he works. His laboratory is
situated at a critical juncture in the history of
psychology. In the same motion, he can celebrate the talent of Hans, focus on his singularities, raise the question of the proper ethos
and of the relevant problems, and a few lines
later mechanize him to dismiss his abilities as
mere reactions. He announces the behaviourist
turn at the same time as he is heir to the
choices of psychology since its inception; those
taking physics as a model, and those making
of its own objects, objects obeying laws: reactions. Furthermore, another contrast, his subjects are talented subjects, sought-after as
such, and some of them still benefit from the
interchangeability of roles. But the procedure
without knowledge indicates that asymmetry,
as the mode of organization according to the recognition of expertise, is already installed.
His practice as experimenter, however, still
connects him to the old tradition. The splitting
of consciousness, the ability to adopt “naı̈ve”
positions, the active practice of self-ignorance,
all testify to that which constituted the identity
of the experimenter: if psychology becomes discipline, it is still defined, for the experimenter,
as discipline of the self. To be a psychologist,
one is committed: the experimenter is the
reliable witness of events that he makes
himself capable of eliciting. The technique is
not yet an “all-purpose” technique but a way
of forming oneself as a talented scientist.
Pfungst has made the horse talented because
he cultivates the same qualities that he attributes to him: an extraordinary capacity for
attention and for attention to the other. Hence
his achievement. The experiment in which he
shows that one can modify natural expressive
movements is exemplary in this regard. By
moving his arms he manages to lead his subjects, without their being aware, to change the
movements of their eyes. Imagine the concentration, the discipline, the willpower it took to
conduct an experiment the success of which
depends on whether the experimenter leaves
his eyes “out of things” and prevents them
from following the movement.
This culture that required experimenters to
submit themselves to the risks and demands of
their technique will die out: psychologists will
become predominantly “anyone”; protocols
will supersede these distinctive forms of selfcommitment and will make of psychology a
technology of control “over others” – in this
case, subjects. These subjects – interchangeable,
but between themselves this time – will by
cohorts come progressively to replace the
talented observers.
We shall now close this case and yield
Pfungst and Hans to history. Having seen how
this story turned out for psychology, I would
be remiss not to conclude with the way it
ended for Hans. When Mr von Osten got him
back after the experiments, things did not go
very well. In short, von Osten, of whom
Pfungst tells us that he was somewhat quicktempered and moody, oscillated for several
months between two positions: at times he
resented Pfungst and accused him of having
completely mechanized his horse; at times he
resented Hans and reproached him for having
fooled him. It is probably on this latter
version that his story with Hans came to an
end. He sold him to Karl Krall, a jeweller
from Elberfeld. The public success of Hans
had in the meantime subdued. But Mr Krall
had not been convinced by Pfungst’s arguments. He resumed his education, organized
exhibitions on the progress of his pupil, and
very rapidly Hans revived his fame. He did
not remain alone. Krall, encouraged by the
success of his illustrious horse, bought two
others, Mohammed and Zarif, who received an
education very similar to that of their companion. One specialized in arithmetic, the other
in spelling. New techniques improved their performances: two hooves would be used, one for
units, the other for tens; the instruments were
modernized and made more practical. The
horses were given a spring-board on which it
was easier for them to tap. The three of them
became the “famous Elberfeld horses.” Certainly, there were still some controversies, but
without the intensity of the first. Mr Krall
strove to prove that Pfungst was wrong. So,
the horses were called to answer in the dark:
this did not seem to affect their performances.3
Perhaps they did not ultimately (or exclusively)
rely on the signals detected by Pfungst?
None of the scientists, however, took the
trouble to reopen the case. This
is probably a good thing, at
least for Hans: in the end, it
was no doubt better for him to
remain one about whom we
were mistaken.
the author.
notes
Translated from Vinciane Despret, Hans, le cheval
qui savait compter © Editions du Seuil/Les
Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2004, 115–34.
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despret
1 These are also the terms (attunement) that infant
specialist Daniel Stern favours to account for the
symbiosis of rhythm, perceptions and affects that
attune, and through which are attuned, the
mother and her newborn.
2 The reference is to the horse race in Anna Karenina. [Translator’s note.]
3 This information comes from Fernald and is confirmed by Candland, except on the occupation of
Mr Krall.
bibliography
Arluke, Arnold, and Clinton R. Sanders. Regarding
Animals. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1996. Print.
Bayard, Pierre. Who Killed Roger Ackroyd? The
Mystery behind the Agatha Christie Mystery. Trans.
Carol Cosman. New York: New, 2000. Print.
Candland, Douglas Keith. Feral Children and Clever
Animals: Reflections on Human Nature. New York
and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993. Print.
Crist, Eileen. “From Questions to Stimuli, from
Answers to Reactions: The Case of Clever
Hans.” Semiotica 113.1/2 (1997): 1–42. Print.
Fernald, Dodge. The Hans Legacy: A Story of Science.
Hillsdale, NJ and London: Erlbaum, 1984. Print.
Hearne, Vicki. Adam’s Task. New York: Knopf,
1987. Print.
Pfungst, Oskar. Clever Hans (The Horse of Mr. von
Osten): A Contribution to Experimental Animal and
Human Psychology. Trans. Carl L. Rahn.
New York: Holt, 1911. Print.
Stern, Daniel N. The Interpersonal World of the
Infant: A View from Psychoanalysis and
Developmental Psychology. New York: Basic, 1985.
Print.
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Matthew Chrulew
Curtin University
GPO Box U1987
Perth, WA 6845
Australia
ANGELAKI
“But, what’s this?” asks the writer Paul Marty,
quoted in the book, “I saw cows with tears in
their eyes?” Between this perception, and the
reality of the tears, we find the play of the
short book from which we have translated one
of the chapters: Être bête, the title itself a
pun playing between “being stupid” and
“being a beast.” Knowledge is the issue in
this ethological essay on research into agricultural animals, neglected “ordinary” farmyard
animals like cows, pigs and goats, set in
France of course.
The knowledge trips across three levels and
back again: what the philosophers/sociologists (Despret and Porcher) think they know
with their theories and methods, what
farmers know and narrate about their livestock, and what the animals themselves
might know, what competences they might
have and even what they feel. And the book
poses the question at its simplest: “What is
the difference between humans and
animals?” then elaborates the question, not
by staying at a philosophical level but by
asking farmers what they think, and reflexively, what they think about the kinds of questions being asked. That is the focus of the
chapter here translated, as it explains the
model – which is how I have rendered the
notorious word dispositif, on this occasion –
for a pragmatic (interspecies) sociology for
doing research with farmers and their
animals, not about them.
Thus we hear the farmers, throughout the
book, elaborate their knowledges via interviews, especially on questions of work, and
animals’ competences: “Recognizing Competences” is chapter 1, followed by 2, “Offers of
vinciane despret
jocelyne porcher
translated by stephen muecke
THE PRAGMATICS OF
EXPERTISE
Subjectivity,” then 3, “Exchanges of Properties
and Sharing of Worlds,” then this chapter, the
methodological one, and finally the Conclusion, which reiterates that the book is
about the “co-evolution” of humans forged as
“beings for animals” and animals as “beings
for humans,” a co-evolution which “farming
extends and makes perceptible” (124).
When experience is accompanied by the
awareness of what it “does” and what it
“transforms” (or what it “creates,” as in
art), new conditions are thus produced that
themselves become objects of interest, and
which can eventually lead to new, specific,
problematic situations, on the basis that
they henceforth become part of the contextual conditions in relation to which the
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039845
91
the pragmatics of expertise
researcher develops his or her aptitudes,
desires, knowledges or science.
Zask, “La Politique comme experimentation” 18
W
ould we have obtained the same
answers, followed the same path, or
bifurcated in the same manner if we had asked
the question the way they traditionally do in
research projects: “In your opinion, what is
the difference between humans and animals?”
We have touched on the first reason for the
choice of this particular procedure that consisted in searching for the “right questions”
and in delegating, to those we were addressing,
the task of constructing them. We were not
certain at any moment if our question had a
meaning, nor if it represented an interest, nor
even if it were relevant. We had even more
reasons to adopt this procedure since the other
question guiding our inquiry – the one interrogating the possibility that animals could take
an active part in work – turned out to be even
more problematic. Besides, it was in explaining
the difficulties linked to this question, exactly as
they were put at the end of the preceding inquiries, that we decided to take it on board:
“During the research I undertook with
farmers I (Jocelyne Porcher) often heard anecdotes, stories, even ways of talking which
suggested that animals, in some way, collaborated in work. Now, when I tried to pursue
this question with the farmers, head on, I was
met with resistance or incomprehension.
Clearly it’s not a good question to ask. But
first-hand evidence kept coming up; this encouraged me to persevere. So, in your opinion, as a
farmer, how do you think I should be framing
my question so that it has a chance of being
understood and being interesting?”1
These two questions, put like this, show how
we have tried to reconstruct and modify the way
traditional research is done. We have asked
people to think with us. We have asked them
to help us construct a problem and not to
reveal situations or hand over information.
Instead of the position of informant, conventionally applied in most inquiries, we have substituted a position that implies sharing, a
redistribution of expertise.2 We know that problems are not interesting unless they interest. So
we should ask farmers raising stock to themselves construct the interest they might have
in our own interrogations, even to the point
(and this is the gamble we take) that we might
hear it said that our problems are not interesting, relevant or subject to sharing. Or, to the
point of hearing a response, like with André
Louvigny: “Let me say, your question sounds
a little weird,” or like Claude Baijot: “Strange
questions you are asking.” In the end, and on
the surface quite paradoxically, we ask for the
maximum amount of indulgence for our
research while at the same time creating the conditions for maximum “recalcitrance”:3 “Your
question is not relevant.” The fact that a
number of farmers, for example, might relocate
the question of difference, by looking for other
sites where it might seem more relevant, is
receipt acknowledged, as far as we are concerned, for this offer of “recalcitrance.”
This will to construct a space of “recalcitrance” and to maximize occasions likely to
call for it comes in response to a difficulty in
social scientific practice, a difficulty to which
our earlier work has sensitized us.4 For the
most part, these practices assume that the procedure for coming to know consists in gathering
information, facts, opinions – even in the case of
psychology studying reactions or behaviour.
Now, this type of procedure keeps coming
back to, keeps in existence, a radical asymmetry
of expertise. There is, on the one hand, the
“author-researcher” who creates the questions,
interprets the hypotheses, constructs the
problem; on the other hand there are those
acting as social witnesses, informants, holders
of opinions, beliefs and representations which
the researcher will have the job of analysing.
The fact that scientists, for example, refer to
their colleagues by citing their names, while witnesses are all interrogated anonymously, is just
one of the many ways of noting this asymmetry
of expertise and of the possibility of being authorized to think and to be recognized as putting
one’s thought to the test.5 The authors of theories, endowed with names, are cited; opinionholders are interchangeable and listed.
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despret & porcher
But the fact of having a name or not, being
the creator of thought or of theories, or the
simple representative of an opinion, is but the
symptom of a more general situation characterizing certain habitual practices. They are based
on a procedure which demands the submission
of those it interrogates – submission to questions; submission to the inevitable play of
interpretations that will come along to judge
their depositions, their beliefs, even their
unconscious motivations; submission to the theories guiding the research; submission to the
problem being imposed on them and the way
the researcher constructs and defines it. The
subject is called upon by a problem that he or
she often has nothing to do with, or at least
nothing to do with the way it is defined, just
as the researcher is most often not concerned
with the way the problem can, or not, be a
problem for the person called upon. And, for
the most part, subjects thus mobilized will
agree to respond to the questions without challenging their grounds, their relevance, or even
their politeness,6 since it seems obvious
enough that the scientist “knows better.”
So our model [dispositif] had the aim of
breaking with the habitual practices that
banked on submission. We research the places
where those we interrogate would be in a
better position to “object”; we address ourselves
to them in places where they would be “fully
involved” and therefore where they would be
interested and interesting. This is why, to each
of our demands, we insist on using the phrase
“you, as farmers.” Because this is where the
real stakes of our proposition lie. It became a
matter of addressing ourselves to those to
whom we were submitting our questions at the
sites where they were competent experts and
where we were able to be confident in them.
Our question, both formulated as a demand
for “good questions” and addressed at what
makes a person skilled in “objecting,” seemed
to us able to keep the bet.
And in fact it elicited in its very form the
possibility for the farmers to actively contest
our questions, even to doubt the relevance of
the hypothesis that underpinned them: “Your
question makes no sense,” or “That’s not the
93
way to put it,” even “That is not the main
issue.” Yet none of our interlocutors left us
empty-handed after having responded to our
implicit request for contestation. They really
helped us. They proposed a lot of questions
that should allow us to explore the difference
between human and animal.
Of course, some of our interlocutors refused
the suggestion to respond to a question with
other questions, and took a short-cut: “I don’t
know what has to be asked of farmers, but as
for me, this is what I think of the difference
between humans and animals.” But the large
majority accepted the exercise. We had implicit
help from Philippe Betton, who even encouraged us when we were investigating together
how to formulate our question: “Exactly, by
not presenting yourselves as coming from the
milieu, from that milieu at all. You are tackling
the subject from the outside. Since you know
nothing and since the [industrial] farmers are
in any case used to being asked questions that
are, in inverted commas, ‘naı̈ve’, ‘ordinary’.
If you ask them questions like that, naı̈ve
ones … ”
In this framework, one fact leaps out at us –
the model creates work. The search for the right
question ends up with lots of suggestions and
hypotheses and leads the farmers to a genuine
sociological exercise. They analyse the contrasts
of different systems of farming and the different
ways people have of organizing themselves with
their animals, each of these different systems
demanding, according to them, a different question. For instance, concerning the possibility of
asking about animals’ work, Jean Rabat, on the
pretext of getting the words right, starts work
on a cartography of habits: “I have a little idea
on this point. It all depends on the type of
farmer you are dealing with. You have two categories. If you look at the organic people,
there are in general a lot of peasants (in inverted
commas) who have just started, people who did
something else before, who came there and who
therefore have completely different approaches.
The usual peasant, coming from father to son,
trained in agricultural school – where you
aren’t trained but untrained, in such a way as
you always do things the same way, reproduce
the same system. If you speak to them about behaviour, the word behaviour, it’s not a word
they usually use.” He continues: “Go ahead,
ask them: ‘When you are working with
animals, do you have the feeling that they
want to collaborate with what you want to
make them do, or not?’ Because otherwise
everyone of my age thinks about work back
then when we put them in harness. That no
longer happens; it’s all over.”
Philippe Betton brings our semantic education to its conclusion by suggesting we avoid
using the term competence because “it’s a
word that is used for meanings other than the
industrial, productivist raising of stock. I
don’t think this term would be well received
by the farmers. Perhaps you could use the
word behaviour.”
If you talk like that, you are not going to be
understood. This is the posture of the expert
in a country of diverse customs who teaches us
the rules of “savoir-parler” and who, in the
same movement, touches up in fine detail the
map of social relations and conflicts.
Patrick André, after having taken into consideration that our question on work, in fact,
touches on what farmers expect of their
animals in the relations that they have with
them, suggests differentiating the latter as a
function of our preferred approach. Would we
like to compare what “cuts across all modes of
production” or, on the contrary, do we want to
“differentiate all the modes of production in
order to make the fine distinction among all
the approaches that might exist?” The expectations, he said, are certainly a transversal
problem, but the forms they take can be different: “I’m not sure that a farmer who is in industrial agriculture expects the same thing of
animals as a peasant who has a different
approach in that he thinks he has to be in
harmony with nature, while the former must
rather adapt nature to himself.” We cannot
fail to notice the way in which the farmer
makes the question of expectations move
around, creating an amazing similitude
between our relationship to research and the
relation of the farmers with their animals.
You must specify what you expect from
your question, and know that it must vary in
function with what the farmers expect of their
animals.
With them we learn about the practice of the
“erotetic,” this felicitous term forged on the
basis of the Greek eros which means love as
well as lack, and which defines the art of questioning. A good question, according to some of
our interlocutors, is not only one that is well
addressed, in terms that can be shared, it is
also an occasion which should lead the person
being questioned to put themselves in question.
It should elicit reflexivity, or at least make
values explicit. A good question puts things to
the test. “What I think,” says Jean Rabat, “is
that you have to ask them if they think the
animal is there to serve humans, to help
humans get what they want done. So if you
say to them, ‘get what you want done’ you are
putting the question in terms of what they
want for themselves. And that the animal is
there to help them do it. And if the response
is yes, they are going to say, ‘I use animals to
make money,’ and that can take the question a
bit deeper, asking themselves, ‘But how far
would I go in making money out of animals?’
That might be one way of approaching the
problem.” Patrick André takes up again his
reflections he had at the beginning of our interview about work when he advised us to go via
the problem of farmers’ expectations: “I think
that one angle to approach [the question of
difference] is exactly in asking the question,
‘what do we expect of animals?’ But is the
door open enough to try to get a feel for the
difference between humans and animals? With
a crude question like that, I don’t think you’ll
get much out of them.” Philippe Roucan takes
another tack, to end up with a similar statement
on the difficulty of the question: “How can you
ask the farmer this question? Asking it is not
rude. He finds it upsetting to be asked this
question. At least, it is not that it’s upsetting,
it irks him a little bit. Because for my part, let
me tell you, there are not that many
differences.”
Eliciting recalcitrance also allows one to
make things explicit, and therefore arguable,
which is what we are after. In most human
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despret & porcher
science research a good part of the aims of the
project remains hidden from the subjects, or
those being researched. Scientists, in fact,
have learned to fear the problem constituted
by their expectations. If the sociologist or the
psychologist reveals too clearly what they are
looking for, the theory guiding their work, you
can always suspect the subject to have replied
by way of being “obliging” and thus to
conform to the expectations of the interrogator.
This is what leads us to think that if researchers
in experimental psychology could for one
moment imagine, as do farmers, that animals
might have the intelligence to want to please,
or to practise a preference for harmony, this
would give them serious methodological problems.7 With humans, researchers have taken
this possibility fully into account. Incidentally,
to counter this difficulty, psychology has
invented a technique of the lie and the trap,
designed to hide what the researcher is really
looking for, so as to avoid subjects being
tempted to confirm the research hypothesis.8
More generally, to the extent that the research
depends on people’s submission to what the
researcher proposes, the problem of the influence of the latter’s expectations cannot be
avoided.
In asking farmers to both judge the relevance
of our research and help us find the most “practicable”9 modes of access we have endowed
expectations with a new status, which has
made us much freer and much less worried
about them. The fact of explaining them by
opening wide the door onto any objection can
benefit clear and active positioning on them.
“What are you interested in?,” “How can I
help you?” we have often been asked. Sometimes in the form of a quite recalcitrant hypothesis, as does Claude Baijot when he tells us: “I’m
so sorry I am not able to reply to you,” and a
little later specifies this by concluding: “You
would have liked to have heard something else
… ”; often helping us in the process. As when
André Louvigny makes the suggestion: “I
think that the word work is not well adapted
to what you want to understand,” and later:
“You need to perceive this human–animal
relation in order to grasp what?” This leads us
95
to this paradox: our model is just as good at
maximizing recalcitrance as indulgence.
The prime effect of this model, if we were to
sum it up, is a kind of translation in the form of
what we might call a “call for expertise.” The
“naivety” that Philippe Betton encouraged us
to own up to – we don’t know how to ask the
right questions – redistributes expertise and
alters the asymmetry of positions. Above all, it
has the effect of making (people) interested
and interesting. A corollary consequence came
up during the interviews, and everything
above attests to it. Once the farmers made the
question interesting, they wanted to answer it.
And they do so. The answers nevertheless
keep a certain emphasis as we formulate them;
we addressed our questions to them “as
farmers.” This emphasis, as we said, created a
way of situating our interlocutors in a position
in which they seemed to us to have the greater
capacity to object. And other effects were also
present.
Our interlocutors have taken this invitation
in two ways. First, “as a farmer” has been translated as “situated point of view” – I think as a
farmer. Secondly, it has been able to indicate a
privileged epistemic stance: “As a member of
a collective who knows its mysteries, its functioning, its conflicts and issues … ” These two
meanings are confirmed when farmers arrange
for us to think about the difference (or the possibility of saying that animals work), in its
relation to, for example, systems of production,
to various limits and to everything that, from
their point of view, can determine one conception or another. “There are,” Philippe
Betton notes, “people who are very attuned to
the well-being of animals and respect them, to
the point of being vegetarians. The difference
for me, as a farmer, that one must not lose
sight of, in relation to whatever people who
are very protective of animals might think, is
that, well, they will be eaten [ … ] One must
not lose sight of this, as a farmer. I think that
all farmers are aware that this is about feeding
people. So already, there’s your answer to
what’s the difference between you and an
animal. They will tell you that we are the ones
eating them. That is the crudest response that
a farmer could give, the difference is that we are
the ones raising them for food.” André Louvigny, on the other hand, contests the generality
of this “as a farmer”: “Even at the heart of the
community, there are farmers who are gentle
and competent in their relations with animals
and others who are brutal, idiots. So, there’s
already a world. There are those who have no
feelings for their animals. There are those who
treat them well, and there are others who
don’t get it. The opposite also goes, there are
people who live for their animals and are crazy
about them. Yes, who live more for their
animals than their family, who neglect their
family and their home.” Philippe Roucan
comes to a similar conclusion. “What I call a
farmer, you know what I mean, for us you’re a
farmer, with the kind of farming you do, I
mean a type of farming that you can call
family, which is done on a small scale like us,
with a limited number of animals, I mean I
think that a farmer is not the same if he has a
hundred head, or if he has ten thousand,
because, as far as I’m concerned, he wouldn’t
have the same perception of the animal.”
Most of the statements that farmers make
present a common characteristic; they are reflexive and contextualized. Each suggested we take
their remarks as a function of their particular
situation, their type of practice, the conditions,
the animals, the quality of their relations, the
fact that death was the fatal outcome for the
life trajectory of both farmer and animal. And
likewise, each could set up contrasts, saying,
“Here you ought to ask this type of question,
over there you have to speak differently.” It is
in general the sociological researcher who fills
in the gaps of the research in relating positions,
beliefs or affirmations of those being interrogated to determinisms, contexts or situations.
The fact of delegating this part of the work to
the farmers provides a not insignificant advantage; it short-circuits any analysis in terms of
unknown causes for the actors.10
The advantages of a so-called pragmatic sociology, which asks actors themselves to put into
operation the analysis of why they are thinking
the way they do, are considerable. Researchers
are required to have better manners, because
they can no longer develop knowledge behind
the back of those they are interrogating. The
interrogated, for their part, can construct their
analysis in all confidence.11 They will be
invited to share all the more intelligence in
that they have to take responsibility for the
more interesting part of the work. It rests on
them to make the link between what they
think and what determines their particular
way of thinking. We are tipping more in this
direction, like Antoine Hennion, who analysed
the manner in which amateurs defined their
relation to taste, from “the analysis of critique
to pragmatics” (Hennion) – one doesn’t do
things, or think things “because of” social determinisms, one works “with.” Farmers, those
whom we met because we knew that they had
the capacity to do it, were not there to “say”
or to witness a problem, they were with us to
“do” and to construct the problem, and to do
so actively and explicitly on the basis of what
gives them a particular, localized, knowledge
of the problem.
“In our culture,” as Portuguese farmers
Acácio and Antonio Moura say with respect to
the question of work, “we link work with physical work. Women at home don’t work. Our
mentality is set up as such, if we go to see
someone and if we ask him if the cow is
working or if it is not, he will reply, if she is
in harness she is working, otherwise she isn’t
working. This mode of thought which has
been around for several years is also attached
to the fact that a cow that works physically
had a better market value.” In Claude Baijot’s
case, his answers go back to the economic conditions of his system: “I think that as far as
my stock goes, I was [previously] more sensitive
to that side of things also, while now I am in the
midst of it all, I have to manage to meet the
needs of the family, and pay my investments
as well. It’s maybe the economic aspect that
… It’s definitely the economic aspect also, and
I have to manage as best I can; last week we
bought a house and we have to keep up. We
are young, I am twenty-eight and this is
maybe why … which sums up the way I
think.” In two or three sentences the farmer
has explicitly brought together several
96
despret & porcher
explanatory registers which allow him to come
to terms with the contrast between how he
sees things today and how he saw them previously – “I was more sensitive”: to economic
and psychic investments, causalities linked to
status, or to the stages of life and family
organization.
The fact that a question addressed to a farmer
“as a farmer” can boost confidence became even
clearer to us when we realized, in the course of
the research, that there was an interesting similarity between our proposition and the choice of
system that most of them had adopted. Thus,
the organic farmers often say to us that their
specific practice is to lead animals to “do the
work themselves,” graze rather than being fed;
move to water sources; calve on their own;
bring up their calves, even adopt another. The
very act of reproduction is left up to them,
most of such farmers giving up techniques of
artificial insemination or even “hand breeding”
[monte en mains]. Philippe Betton, not
without humour, tells us that he resists the
attempts of his boars to get him involved in
copulation: “A farmer might have the reflex,
especially with a sow in heat, when the boar
tries to mount her, the farmer – sorry, I’d
better not mix up the farmer and the boar –
can have the immediate reflex to help the boar
penetrate the sow, whereas in my case, I say,
‘No, that’s a mistake! That’s a mistake!’ If you
have the reflex to help the boar penetrate the
sow, the boar – he’s a bit lazy – he’s going to
get lazy and later, he will get into the habit of
waiting for the farmer so he can penetrate the
sow.”
We have taken the same path, in a way, by
delegating our work in asking our interlocutors
to take some of it on board, on trust. It is exactly
by linking it to this term that the farmers
describe the possibility of sharing work with
their animals. And, no doubt also, the fact
that the same Philippe Betton ends his anecdote
about lazy boars by asserting that “the participation of the farmer has in some respect made
the animal incompetent” should lead us to interrogate the way that research projects can
sometimes leave few opportunities for
competences.
97
A last consequence for our programme came
up as we reread the transcripts of our interviews. Our interlocutors have often said things
such as “I never thought about it, but now
that I do … ,” “As I speak I realize … ,” or
also, hesitating, changing their minds, telling
us they are changing their minds, revealing contradictions themselves, announcing that they
have suddenly found themselves “in a deadend, but I’ll get out of it,” saying, “it’s hard, I
try to get it right. We do things so mechanically
that we don’t even ask the question.” Or then
Claude Baijot, who announces, at the end of
the interview, that he had begun by describing
himself as close to organic farmers, and who
wonders, at the end of the discussion, if he
isn’t an industrial farmer: “Now you have
made me unsure.”
What they have done with our proposal is
grasp it as an occasion to put thought to work.
Thinking with us or for us, to be perplexed, to
slow down. They have helped us to turn this
inquiry into a real experiment, an experience
which, one way or another, transforms questions, modifies attitudes, displaces points of
view and brings new ones into existence. So it
is not so much of an accident if, in researching
the differences between humans
and animals, we have been
greatly surprised to find ourselves
exploring the inverse of our question, the one that concerns similarities and competences.
the authors.
notes
Translated from Vinciane Despret and Jocelyne
Porcher, Être bête © Editions Actes Sud, 2007,
87–107.
1 We have each taken on the responsibility for the
questions that interest us respectively. Questions
of work and the fact of power rest on earlier interviews and were therefore formulated by Jocelyne
Porcher; questions of difference and reference
refer to the academic work of Vinciane Despret.
2 Our experience is not unique in this genre.
Other researchers have, for their part, also tried
redistributing expertise in other ways, without,
however (as far as we know), using this particular
protocol. Note, for example, that in the work of
sociologists linked to agriculture and agronomy
the processes by which knowledge is co-produced
by sociologists and agronomists and by farmers
have been widely studied. Darré, Le Sens des pratiques and La Production de connaissances pour
l’action.
3 The notion of “recalcitrance” was Isabelle Stengers’, later put to use by Bruno Latour. It is
explained at length in Stengers’ Invention of
Modern Science and Cosmopolitics I and II.
4 The fact that Jocelyne Porcher worked as a
farmer and therefore felt close to those she was
investigating makes for a certain kind of practice.
The choice to write on piggery work in collaboration with a former employee of the pig farming
industry, Christine Tribondeau, translates and prolongs this political choice (Porcher and Tribondeau). For Vinciane Despret, it became necessary
to modify her practice during research in refugee
camps in the former Yugoslavia where the effects
of the research ran the risk of stigmatization and
therefore of worsening the condition of the
people investigated. Addressing these people as
refugees, for example, an identity they didn’t
recognize themselves as having, only repeated the
process of exclusion. On this topic, see Chauvenet,
Despret, and Lemaire.
5 On this question of the methodological choices
embarked upon in the refugee camps, see
Despret, “L’Effet sans nom.”
6 In an earlier work we analysed the politeness of
questioning by designating under this name the
capacity for a question to make the one being
addressed interesting. An impolite question
makes people less interesting, less reflexive and,
in a related manner, less interested. See Despret,
Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau.
7 Apart from the problem of expectations, other
difficulties come crowding in the moment one
takes into consideration the fact that the one
being interrogated cannot help but be affected by
the manner of interrogation. See Porcher, “L’Occultation de l’affectivité.”
8 Most experiments in psychology are constructed
on the ignorance of subjects as to what is really
driving the research. Stanley Milgram, for
example, in his famous experiment, makes out he
is conducting research on the effects of electric
shocks in training. In fact, the true object of the
experiment is the capacity of the subjects to be
obedient – without realizing to what point the
apparatus is only measuring the subjects’ submission to the researchers. The so-called ignorance of the subjects is incidentally often cast as
“silent consent,” but they have, for the most part,
understood what is going on, and have at the
same time perfectly adapted to the idea that what
is expected of them is simulated naivety.
9 In this, our work links in at least two aspects, to
Jean-Marie Lemaire’s proposed clinical work in
consultation clinics. One is the active search for
expertise as resource, especially by insisting on
the fact that the social workers, in situations of
multiple difficulties, are brought in by the users.
Secondly, it is all about looking, to the best of
one’s ability, for the sites where conflicts, dissent,
and disagreements are practicable. See Lemaire,
“Liens soignées, liens soignants.”
10 Here we are inheriting a whole tradition in
pragmatic sociology, going from John Dewey to
Bruno Latour and passing through Luc Boltanski
and plenty of others. However, this position is
often only made possible after critical work has
been done. So, what can one do when strategies
to mitigate suffering are at the same time those
that paralyse thought?
11 The fact that interpretation always comes
afterwards must on no account make one think
that the stance of the inquiry is not affected. The
very fact of replying to questions concerning biography, infant traumas, “life stories,” as is the
case with numerous projects, and the fact that
those interrogated, in general, don’t allow themselves to make remarks such as “But what’s that
got to do with my project?,” shows that from the
very start they submit themselves to the researcher’s interpretation.
bibliography
Boltanski, Luc, and Laurent Thévenot. On
Justification: Economies of Worth. Trans. Catherine
Porter. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. Print.
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Chauvenet, Antoinette, Vinciane Despret, and
Jean-Marie Lemaire. Clinique de la reconstruction.
Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996. Print.
Darré, Jean-Pierre. La Production de connaissances
pour l’action. Arguments contre le racisme de l’intelligence. Paris: INRA/Fondation Maisons des sciences
de l’homme, 1999. Print.
Zask,
Joëlle.
“La
Politique
comme
expérimentation.” By John Dewey. Le Public et ses
problèmes. Trans. Joëlle Zask. Pau and Paris: PUP/
Farrago/Léo Scheer, 2003. Print.
Darré, Jean-Pierre. Le Sens des pratiques.
Conceptions d’agriculteurs et modèles d’agronomes.
Paris: INRA, 2004. Print.
Despret, Vinciane. “L’Effet sans nom. L’Anonymat
dans les pratiques de la psychologie.” Web. <http://
www.vincianedespret.be/2010/04/leffet-sans-nom/>.
rond, 2002. Print.
Dewey, John. The Public and its Problems.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1984. Print.
Hennion, Antoine. “Affaires de goût. Se rendre
sensible aux choses.” Sensibiliser. La Sociologie dans
le vif du monde. Ed. Michel Peroni and Jacques
Roux. La Tour d’Aigues: L’Aube, 2006. 161–74.
Print.
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An
Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford:
Lemaire, Jean-Marie. “Liens soignées, liens soignants, cliniques de concertation et violences de
quartier.” Cahiers de psychologie clinique 28.1
(2007): 99–120. Print.
Porcher, Jocelyne. “L’Occultation de l’affectivité
dans l’expérimentation animale. Le Paradoxe des
protocoles.” Nature, Sciences, Société I (2002): 33–
36. Print.
Porcher, Jocelyne, and Christine Tribondeau.
Une vie de cochon. Paris: La Découverte, 2008.
Print.
Stengers, Isabelle. Cosmopolitics I. Trans. Robert
Bononno. Minneapolis and London: U of
Stengers, Isabelle. Cosmopolitics II. Trans. Robert
Bononno. Minneapolis and London: U of
Trans. Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis and London:
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Jocelyne Porcher
143 rue Marc Rigal, C322
34070 Montpellier
France
E-mail: jocelyne.porcher@supagro.inra.fr
Stephen Muecke
School of Humanities and Languages
University of New South Wales
Sydney, NSW 2052
Australia
E-mail: s.muecke@unsw.edu.au
ANGELAKI
For four months in 2007–08, Paris’s Parc de la
Villette housed a multimedia art exhibition
entitled Beasts and Humans. Located in
Paris’s 19th arrondissement, the park is historically and culturally important: today it is a
sprawling park system of concert venues,
museums, green space, pavilions, cinemas,
and more, but a century and a half ago the
area, then on the outskirts of the city, was an
abattoir district. Beasts and Humans was
housed in the newly renovated “Grand Hall,”
formerly a slaughterhouse, and the first
image that visitors would see as they entered
the hall was that of a long shot of a cow ruminating in a moving image by the experimental
filmmaker Georges Rey. As then-President of
the Park Jacques Martial puts it in his Foreword to the book, “this cow ties together the
history, heritage, and present” of the area,
and does so by staring them in the eyes, “awakening their humanity” (5). The exhibit
featured moving images, photography, installation art, drawings, cultural and scientific
artefacts, and more, all showing a diverse representation of animals and their varied lives.
Vinciane Despret was one of four experts on
the commission of this exhibition, and acted
as scientific and cultural advisor, as well as
author of the exhibits’ descriptions and eventual book, the eponymous Beasts and Humans.
In the final page of her book, Despret writes
that one of the requirements they hoped to
achieve was to bear witness to the “joyous
transformation” of both humans and
animals, both historically and in the present,
and to show how we have all, humans and
animals, transformed and changed together.
What began as an epistemological enterprise
vinciane despret
translated by brett buchanan
BEASTS AND HUMANS
ended with an open political question: with
whom do we wish to live, and how?
The book has five parts: (i) Introduction,
(ii) Animals transform humans, (iii) The
animal is a stranger to humans, (iv)
Animals have jobs, and (v) Animals impose
choices. The selections translated here are
taken from the second and fifth parts, as well
as a previously untranslated fable. With the
first, Despret draws from the ancient Greek
concept mētis to highlight a form of cunning
intelligence that is shared and learned
between humans and animals. It is an overlooked and often neglected form of intelligence, especially in comparison to phronesis
or sophia, but, as Despret notes, humans have
been transformed by what they’ve learned,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039846
105
beasts and humans
habitually and bodily, by their proximity to
and with animals. The second selection showcases how animals continue to surprise and confound humans’ expectations. Drawing on two
different cases where vultures have been reintroduced into extirpated areas, we read how
the success and achievement in one area is
not necessarily duplicated elsewhere, and how
different forms of knowledge (lay and expert,
human and animal) converge, overlap, and
diverge. In the book Bêtes et hommes this
flows into the discussion of an incident
between a fish farmer and some otters that, in
the exhibition itself, Despret related in the
alternative form of a poetic fable (in the
spirit of la Fontaine), and accompanied by
Edmond Baudoin’s painting (reproduced in
this issue). Translated by Matthew Chrulew,
the fable mimics the push and pull between
the otters and the fish farmer as each attempts
to outwit the other and lay claim to the fish,
with much amusement and consternation
along the way.
mētis
I
s the difficulty of creating stories with
animals related to the reasons that led to
the disappearance of mētis?1 For the people of
ancient Greece, this term meant a form of
thought and mode of knowing acquired
through contact with animals. In particular,
mētis stands out as the art of laying and avoiding traps. To use the definition given by
Marcel Detienne and Jean-Paul Vernant, it
translates as “a type of intelligence and of
thought, a way of knowing; it implies a
complex but very coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behavior which combine
flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind,
deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired
over the years” (Detienne and Vernant 3).
Under the same term, mētis united the intelligence of gods, heroes, fishers and hunters,
frogs, octopi, foxes, and many other animals.
Its close connection to these various figures
might explain its progressive abandonment
from our language and philosophy. It testified
a little too eloquently to the surprising complicity by which humans learned a certain art of
invention and thought from animals. Aristotle,
to mention only him, never hid his distrust for
mētis, for in his Nicomachean Ethics he critiqued the fact that some of his contemporaries
didn’t hesitate to attribute phronesis, the practical wisdom of prudence that rationally guides
behaviour, to some species of animals.
For the Greeks, among the countless animals
with mētis, two deserve mentioning. The
octopus and the fox have the value of being
true models, and besides, the fox is comparable
to the octopus due to its ability to play dead
when approached by a flock of prey.
“Like the fox, the octopus defines a type of
human behavior: ‘Present a different aspect
of yourself (epı́strephe poikı́lon ēthos) to each
of your friends’” (Detienne and Vernant 39).
Odysseus is the hero of mētis, as he puts on a
different face to everyone, and the Greeks
observed that the octopus brought the art of
camouflage and transformation to the limits of
what was imaginable – it is capable of taking
on the appearance of the most diverse things,
like stones, and can blend into the environment
to the point that it becomes invisible. Mētis
deploys itself as an intelligence of traps and
cunning; in the animal world, like in the
human world, power relations are constantly
distorted by its intervention. In order to
defend themselves, those who have neither
power nor weapons received another resource
from the gods, an intelligence rich in cunning
and strategies.
It’s thus in the very experience of the animal
world that mētis finds itself strengthened, and
packed with all the necessary resources. In his
treatise on animals, Plutarch insists that
hunting octopi develops practical skills and
intelligence. All of the descriptions show this
similarity. The hunter and fisher must have
the very same qualities as those they’re trapping: vigilance (the animals they lie in wait for
never give up their vigilance), cunning, speed,
trickery, and camouflage (the art of seeing
without being seen). These terms are common
to both human and animal, especially the term
polútropos that refers to both the octopus and
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despret
human with mētis, the “man of twists and
turns,” thus accentuating their kinship.2 This
kinship unfolds both metaphorically as well as
through action and practices; for the human
who confronts the animal, it consists of learning
from the animal’s intelligence and imitating him
so as to triumph over him.
However, mētis is not simply an appropriation of technique, as is the case in the examples
above. It is towards a real transformation that
humans are called. When Odysseus is compared
to an octopus because of his cunning forms we
realize that this analogy implies a metamorphosis, and active identification, of his entire being.
Because he learned this cunning from a long tradition of relations between the Greeks and
marine animals, Odysseus had become like
“some octopus.”3 The epic of Odysseus, in the
hands of Homer, inscribes itself therefore
within another story, a story through which
humans, in a relation that has both complicity
and rivalry, have learned a thing or two from
animals who transform their being. It is a
story of “becoming with.” A story of the
active construction of resemblances.
This active construction of resemblances –
and it is in this that it clears itself of an anthropomorphism that would only bring the other
into oneself – subjects itself to a demand: that
of entering the world of the other, to think as
he or she thinks, to allow oneself to experience
their desires and affects. In short, to extend
one’s being to the being of the other.
Some two thousand years later, albeit in an
entirely different manner, a theory will
propose to follow through with this project:
the theory of the Umwelt. Except for one
small difference, which inverts the perspective.
It isn’t the possibility of resemblances and
identifications with animals that guides this
project; rather, it’s an intuition of their
profound strangeness.
[…]
achievements and their excesses
Of all the situations that we’ve encountered, a
common thread can be drawn: over the course
of centuries, we have placed our trust in
107
nature because it has seemed to be a reserve of
stability and immutability, a bastion of strength
in the face of an unstable human world that is
always in the midst of controversies and negotiations. Animals have switched over to the
side of humans, and we cannot trust them
except on this one point: no matter what you
propose to them, they will surprise you. It is
always risky to bet the future on what they
will offer to a proposition. What counts as an
achievement here might over there, a hundred
kilometres away, be met with the worst difficulties. Here and there; but what changes?
Here or there, it is nevertheless the same
desire: we want to live again with vultures.
Necrophagous, or scavenger, species are not
only vulnerable; they also do extremely useful
work. Here we find the Jonte gorges in Grand
Causses Regional Natural Park, in central
south France. Some ecologists asked some naturalists from the Pyrenees region for help; the
latter accepted, and brought along a few vultures. But how does one convince the local
farmers of the merits of the vultures’ return,
especially in so far as vultures were over centuries eradicated by these farmers’ ancestors? An
old shepherd will play the role of mediator. He
is passionate about these birds and will slowly
convince the local population of their benefit.
The support of the farmers will be decisive
because they are participating in the project by
stocking the feeding areas with animal cadavers.
Things have proceeded rather well so far. The
farmers’ waste is recycled by the vultures,
which is interesting economically speaking.
Here, therefore, is an achievement in breaking
from old and impolite habits by finding new
interests that, this time around, converge.
There, by contrast, the alliance will encounter
the worst difficulties. There is the Pyrenees. In
order to invite the vultures, they were similarly
offered sites for feeding. The animals responded
with enthusiasm; with a little too much enthusiasm really, for after a while the vultures
proved to be too numerous for the ecosystem.
“What has changed from one situation to the
other?,” we asked ourselves. It is precisely the
achievement: these situations are always at risk
of unpredictable successes. The opposite of an
beasts and humans
achievement, in other words, is an excess of
achievement. The feeding sites had to be
closed down, and in response to this, the vultures began to behave in frankly uncivil ways:
they renounced their comfortable and peaceful
necrophagous positions, it would seem, in
order to adopt predatory practices on livestock.
And so now one finds these inconsistent birds
(volatiles) proposing a category change: after
centuries of good and loyal service in the cleaning of carcasses, they purport to reach the
dignity of predator. The conflict between the
vultures and farmers now moves over to one
between farmers and naturalists: for the
former, the vultures have well and truly
changed categories. This could modify the conditions of their protection agreement: this in
fact happened in Germany, where the agreement
was challenged in the mid-1990s when fifty or so
ravens invaded the idyllic region of the Swabian
Alps, close to the town of Balingen, and, according to witness accounts, proceeded to attack
livestock (cf. Despret, “Enigma of the
Raven”). The farmers affiliated themselves
with hunters in order to demand that the law,
which has protected ravens since their nearextinction, be lifted. Should this not also apply
to the vultures? The ecologists, one may
suspect, will not be prepared to consider a
change of categories. This lends itself to the
thought that, beyond the rather concrete
stakes of this story, lay knowledge and scholarly
knowledge may not have the same confidence
with respect to the reliability of categories or,
according to some, the same flexibility. The
fact remains that, according to the ecologists,
the vulture would still be unfairly accused: a
vulture cannot attack a living animal because
he doesn’t have the means to kill it. All of
these incidents occurred on the basis of a
tragic misunderstanding: the animals who were
attacked were all sick, but because of their
immobility, they were seen by the vultures to
be dead. This is also the argument that, in Balingen, ended up saving the ravens from
condemnation.
Ravens, as related by an old Inuit legend,
received an assignment, at the origin of the
world, to make it a little less perfect – the
gods had quickly understood that a perfect
world would be profoundly boring. Ravens
were thus specially tasked with complicating
the lives of humans, who were themselves, it
must be said, created as a menagerie for the
amusement of the gods. They put such an
effort in playing the trickster – e.g., reversing
the flow of rivers, replacing the leaves off trees
with fat – that the gods had to put the brakes
on their enthusiasm: humans no longer had
the upper hand.
complications
And this is exactly what characterizes the new
adventures of cohabitation: they complicate
our lives. They force inventiveness. In this
respect, otters have nothing to envy in crows,
for they could just as well have been mandated
by who knows what mischievous gods to
annoy humans.
When recounted after the fact, the situation
is almost funny: we must wonder whether
otters acquired a sense of humour during their
contact with humans, unless it is a taste for provocation. Hasn’t this been considered with
respect to wolves who, as some farmers claim,
taunt them right under their noses and in the
light of day when they attack livestock?
Making peace with animals who are quite
clearly not ready to make any
concessions requires a bit of
courage and imagination; and
this is all the more so when
dealing with beings who are
quite resourceful, like otters.4
the author.
notes
Translated from Vinciane Despret, Bêtes et
hommes © Editions Gallimard, Paris, 2007, 38–41,
128–30.
1 The timidity of anthropologists and philosophers, nevertheless, has a few exceptions. One
108
despret
can find an hypothesis on these exchanges of
properties in Robert Maggiori’s wonderful book
Un animal, un philosophe, which shows, through
many philosophical tales, the profound
diversity of our ways of entering into relations
with animals.
2 The “man of twists and turns” is a reference to
Odysseus, and is drawn from the opening lines of
Homer’s The Odyssey: “Sing to me of the man,
Muse, the man of twists and turns […]” (Prologue,
line 1). [Translator’s note.]
3 Homer, The Odyssey, Book V, lines 476–78: “Like
pebbles stuck in the suckers of some octopus /
dragged from its lair – so strips of skin torn /
from his clawing hands stuck to the rock face.”
[Translator’s note.]
4 Two French researchers, the ethnologist Patricia Pellegrini and the sociologist Elisabeth Remy,
carried out a nice study on the various arrangements to which the otters invited us: the one we
are recounting here, on the one hand, and on the
other hand, that of the creation of “otterducts,”
namely aquatic tunnels designed to facilitate the
passage of otters under highways. They show that
these arrangements have largely contributed to
feeding the knowledge of naturalists, who, due to
the discretion of these animals, are often not well
known.
bibliography
Despret, Vinciane. “The Enigma of the Raven.”
Trans. Jeffrey Bussolini. Angelaki 20.2 (2015):
57–72. Print.
Detienne, Marcel, and Jean-Paul Vernant. Cunning
Intelligence in Greek Culture and Society. Trans.
Janet Lloyd. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Print.
Homer. The Odyssey. Trans. Robert Fagles.
New York: Penguin, 1996. Print.
Maggiori, Robert. Un animal, un philosophe. Paris:
Julliard, 2005. Print.
Remy, Elisabeth, and Patricia Pellegrini. “Changer
nos habitudes de prédation: L’Exemple de la
loutre et du pisciculteur.” Éducation relative à l’environnement 5 (2006): 51–64. Print.
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Brett Buchanan
Sudbury
Ontario P3E 2C6
Canada
ANGELAKI
vinciane despret
THE OTTER AND THE
FISH FARMER
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039848
115
the otter and the fish farmer
A young man with a comely face and ambitious plans
Chose to earn his living breeding fishes.
From its old owner he bought up a beautiful expanse
To host them and achieve his wishes:
Wooded fields, meadows, ponds and a river;
Of singing waters though harsher winters.
How he got a fright
At the dawn of a promising future
To discover, at the fall of night
How many strange visitors
Were guests at the christening of the site
To shamelessly feast around his labour.
Nothing seemed to rein in the romp, nothing curbed their appetites
All: young fishes, plump mothers, breeders, and even, our man was nonplussed,
Ten kilo fishes,
The finest and the biggest
Prematurely finished their lives
In gluttons’ guts.
The young man was conciliatory,
He did not want hostility
There certainly must be
Arbitration channels
With the voracious mammals.
What had been done by his predecessors
Faced with this war?
“You’d rather not know” – they avoided the issue
For the scamp, I remind you
Has the protection
Of many conventions.
Some methods talk of welfare
A silent smile sometimes says a lot
Like a rifle shot.
Our man is gallant, as I have told
He doesn’t want harsh methods, just a little resolve
He appeals to the authorities,
Seeks a compromise with the environmental ministry
The response, he notes, disappoints somewhat: “If the otters are there;
“They were already there.”
In a nutshell
They washed their hands well
And left the waters
To the otters.
Our pisciculturist is undeterred
The centre for otter preservation is called in turn
116
despret
Observing overnight, there are clues, evidence of plunder
Discovering especially the rascals’ wily plots
The weak armour of the fences they easily sunder
Thinking: so little work for such a jackpot.
If this fencing cannot stop them
Maybe a little shock, just one blow
Will discourage the mammalian deviants
Who will learn from their woe.
The punishment can be lenient
Electrical wire will do fine
The parry is prepared; he’s drawn the line.
The wire, however, should be kept from the ground
And not touched by the snow that in winter abounds.
This is where the villains
From this wise precaution
Will derive the real lesson:
Within a few days, the trick is unravelled
And beneath the wire, the otters still travel.
The solution might come from light – why had he not thought of it?
That should scare them, on each of their visits
A good fright: lamps that light up will make them scuttle
And take away their mettle.
Except that otters are creatures of habit
And habits are formed and modified
– As they have already well testified
Faced with danger when formerly diurnal
They escaped the hunt by becoming nocturnal –
Showing that the harshest adversities
Are often founts of creativity.
If the light bothers them momentarily
They get used to it very quickly
And even seem to enjoy diverting the lure
To taunt the fish farmer.
All that remained was an appeal to the dogs
Who would guard the ponds
They are left in the garden at night
They do their work, they chase, bark and bite
Then each can rest, trouts and humans.
This should be the right solution.
The affair, however, met still more wrinkles,
And like the sprinkler sprinkled,
117
the otter and the fish farmer
One discovers in the morning, a dog’s bloody shoulder,
Bitten by a frightened otter.
Perhaps geese might prevail?
But what could they do where dogs have failed?
It all happened there, and after every try,
He had to begin again:
Enclosures, electricity, dogs, lights, odours, fences low and high
They jump, crawl, bypass, ignore; nothing frightens them.
But the otters have allies
Since it comes to preventing war
Choosing peace will get its reward
And the Ministry, this time
Will care for the ponds, the fish, the otters and the farmer.
And that is why, around ponds now with protection
By the miracle of an agreement
Humans, otters, trout, farming and conservation
Engage together in an experiment
Around the best solutions.
note
Translated from Vinciane Despret, “La Loutre et le pisciculteur,” exhibited at Bêtes et hommes, Parc de la
Villette, Paris, 2007–08.
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Matthew Chrulew
Curtin University
GPO Box U1987
Perth, WA 6845
Australia
ANGELAKI
Vinciane Despret’s short 2009 book Thinking
Like a Rat is a continuation of her concept of
asking good questions in animal research and
use of the tools of biosemiotics and cognitive
ethology to address how animals perceive,
interpret, and act upon research situations.
She asks, prominently, what does the maze
mean for the rat? In doing so she points out
that behaviorist research using rats and
mazes failed to inquire how the rats perceived
the mazes and what the rats found interesting.
It also overlooked the ways in which the maze
itself was fashioned as a tool that intersected
heavily with the everyday habits and navigation of rats living within the walls of a
human built environment. Departing from
that research and drawing on the critiques of
the experimenter effect and the perception of
expectation in research, she opens up the field
of research involving animals and humans to
include more understanding of how animals
perceive contexts of research and form intersubjective ties with human scientists as well as
other animals that affect the outcome of the
research. She points out that animals, like
human research subjects, are canny observers
of the process who often have a good idea of
what the research is designed to reveal, regardless of the lures, dissimulation, and other tools
used to mask the true questions at hand. She
proposes developing interesting questions that
give animals a chance to demonstrate their
interests and be interesting in lieu of reductive
and standardizing set-ups that seek to hide the
true questions at hand or treat all individuals
as the same. Interesting research asks
animals about their interests and ways of
doing things rather than attempting to force
vinciane despret
translated by jeffrey bussolini
THINKING LIKE A RAT
an answer to a question that may or may not
be of importance to them. The book is divided
into six chapters and an interview discussion.
The first chapter is devoted to “Lures and Artefacts” as important concepts and practices in
research with animals. The second chapter
asks what happens “if researchers are nice
with their animals,” opening up the considerations about how good questions and genuine
interest in the life and mind of an animal
can produce much more fascinating results
than stultifying repetition. Chapter 3 asks
“what a maze can mean” to a rat who experiences it, and how it is that rats recognize and
navigate different parts of it. The fourth
chapter looks at the perception that animals
have of human expectations and how this can
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121
thinking like a rat
be a major factor in results, as the animals ask
themselves “what does it (the human) want of
me?” Chapter 5 investigates the idea of
response and says “the question of response is
a question whose answer changes everything.”
The final chapter says that “joy is demanding”
and takes account of how recent research in
judgment and emotions opens a fertile field
for considering how animals judge the questions of research and what they feel about the
activities and situations involved. The interview and discussion gives an elucidation of
some of the themes and concepts Despret introduces in the book.
lures and artefacts
I
n the mid-1960s experimental psychology
received severe critiques on the subject of
the validity of its experiments: experimental
subjects conform most often to the expectations
of their experimenters. This is to say, as the
American psychologists Martin Orne and
Robert Rosenthal will each argue in their own
way, that every experiment relies in large part
on an artefact: the scientists think that the subjects respond to the question that is posed to
them, but the subjects, in fact, respond to
another question.
If I propose to take an interest in this and to
make this detour it is because these critiques
touch very close to the subject that I would
like to explore. They interrogate the way in
which the subjects of the experiments and
their responses are affected by the way in
which they live and actively take into account
that which is expected of them. In sum, we
will see, these two critiques pose the problem
of the “point of view” of those whom the
science investigates, the “point of view” on
the question that is addressed to them, or on
the protocol to which they are submitted, and
how they respond to what they interpreted the
question of the experimenter to be. Now, it is
exactly this that seems to constitute, even if
later and in forms surpassing that of critique,
a remarkable slide in research on animals:
beginning to take into consideration the point
of view that animals have on the way in which
they can take a position in relation to what is
proposed to them in scientific research.
The critiques of Orne and Rosenthal emerged
at the same time, during the 1960s; both of them
emanate from the very interior of psychology
since they were both trained by practitioners
of experimentation. Their critiques are
founded on relatively close empirical premises
and are presented in a very similar form:
many of the convergences will nonetheless paradoxically lead to very different, even antagonistic, responses and propositions.
We should specify that their critique was not,
in and of itself, an absolute novelty. Psychologists were well aware that their subjects could
be influenced by what the scientist was looking
for. This was incidentally the reason why, in
the research, the experimenters tried most
often to camouflage the real questions guiding
their research, which would permit them to eradicate the hypothesis according to which the
subjects would do what was demanded of them
because the researchers asked them to do so.
From the fact that they do not know what is
expected of them, because it is hidden from
them, the subjects do not do what they do
because the experimenter asked them to do so,
but for more abstract and more general
reasons. This, according to the psychologists,
would therefore guarantee the “ecological validity” of the experiment. This describes or
demonstrates something that would apply
outside the laboratory, which would not be the
case if the subjects had done what they did
because the scientist had asked them to do so:
that which they did by means of this strategy,
they would do in other circumstances.
When the psychologist Stanley Milgram, to
take up a famous experiment dating from the
same period, undertakes to study the capacity
for obedience in humans, he does not ask his
subjects: “are you capable of electrocuting
someone because I ask you to do it?” He pretends, on the contrary, that they are taking
part in an experiment on the effects of punishment in the learning setting, and that they
must give electric shocks to a “student” when
he does not respond correctly to questions that
they must pose to him (the experimenter
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despret
convinces them that he is also a volunteer in the
experiment). Since the subjects do not know
that they are taking part in research on obedience, Milgram feels well justified in claiming
that the true stakes of the experiment will not
guide their responses. The problem of expectations, it was thought, had found its solution.
Orne and Rosenthal will, however, take up,
each in his own way, this critique of the influence of the experimenter and take it further.
On the one hand, this matter of the effect of
the question was until then confined almost
exclusively to experiments with humans, since
it was believed that they were the only ones sensitive to expectations.1 Rosenthal extends it to
animals: they too would be affected by what is
expected of them by the experimenters, and
this would modify their performances.2 On the
other hand, if human psychology had thought
to find a solution to this problem of expectations
in hiding from its subject the real stakes of each
experiment (as I just indicated in the case of
Milgram), Orne shows that this solution raises
still more difficulties than it resolves. The subjects, most of the time, not only predict what
the experimenter expects of them but they
conform to it with such good will that the care
taken to hide these expectations cannot but
underscore their extreme importance (Orne;
Orne and Holland).
Starting with the work of Orne, we’ll
approach that of Rosenthal in the next
chapter.3 In the beginning, this experimental
psychologist, a specialist in hypnosis, did not
have a critical dismantling of the way in which
experiments were conducted in mind; he
simply wanted to find the experimental dispositive that would allow him to discover a reliable
marker of difference between the subjects who
had been hypnotized and those who had not.4
In fact, nothing up to that point in the experimental procedure guaranteed that one was
dealing with a subject really under hypnosis,
and not with a subject that was simulating it.
Every procedure indicating hypnosis was consequently always suspect, since one could never
prove that the phenomenon the effects of
which one was trying to elucidate was indeed
what one claimed to have set up. Orne therefore
123
considers a situation that can “make a difference”: according to him, the capacity to tolerate
an annoying task and to do it well over a long
period of time and simply because the experimenter had asked for it would clearly create
the contrast. Hypnotized people should, in principle, show a very different deference from that
of normal subjects.
Orne starts with the test group, composed of
non-hypnotized subjects. He asks them to
conduct an absolutely absurd, repetitive, and
tedious task. This was to resolve some two
hundred additions on a sheet of paper and, at
the end of this, to fish for a card that would
invariably give a directive to tear the completed
paper into thirty-two pieces, then to take
another calculation paper, resolve the two
hundred additions there, take another card
that would invariably have a directive to … It
would be the experimenter who, after more
than five hours of observation, blinked first.
And when the subjects were asked why they
did all this work without objecting and
without posing other questions, they responded
that they had thought that it was a test of endurance. And they obeyed because a scientist asked
them to. That is to say that they did not respond
to the question that the scientist thought he was
asking but to the way in which they interpreted
that which was expected of them, in the very
particular context of the laboratory.
Now, Orne remarks, if I had asked my secretary to do a fortieth of this task, she would
have refused. He continues, if you ask some
people in your entourage whether they agree
to do you a favor, and on their affirmative
response you tell them to do five push-ups,
they will respond “why?” If you ask a group of
people if they want to take part in a scientific
experiment and, after their agreement, you tell
them that you expect them to do five pushups, they will ask “where?” Deference, Orne
concludes, evidently cannot constitute the
acceptable criterion of difference between hypnotized subjects and “normal” experimental
subjects.5
In light of what his subjects responded to
him, Orne goes further in concluding that the
lure utilized to mask the expectations, in
thinking like a rat
psychology, far from resolving the problem,
only complicates it. A simple dispositive suffices
to show this: Orne brings the subjects together
and tells them what will be asked of them and
what they will have to do in the course of the
experiment. He carefully describes the protocol
and the tasks to execute without telling them
more about it than if they were really participating in the experiment, therefore hiding, as is
done in these types of situations, the real
stakes. He asks them at the beginning of
these explanations what, in their view, the psychologist is really looking for: the subjects
then formulate very precise and pertinent
hypotheses.
This has since been nicely shown by an investigation of that famous experiment of Milgram’s
that I referenced above. The scientific journalist
Ian Parker went to re-interview the subjects who
had taken part in the experiment, forty years
later. Most of them told him that, if they had
played the game, it was precisely because they
had understood that the experiment must
necessarily have been rigged, since it is clear,
according to them, that electrocuting people is
not allowed in universities. Certainly, one can
always suspect that persons retroactively
revisit the story and seek to give themselves a
clear conscience by always pretending to have
known that it was, as the children say, “only
make believe.” The fact remains that the arguments make good sense: it would be difficult
to imagine sending – with the blessing of a scientist, and under his responsibility – lethal
charges to another human in a respected university – to an animal, we should note, it would be a
different matter. The people interviewed, on the
other hand, proposed explanations that seem
convincing to me: some said, for example, that
at the moment when the supposed victim
screamed in pain they turned worried toward
the desk of Milgram and his assistant watching
the operations, behind glass, and saw them
laughing – or undisturbed. They concluded
from this what they should conclude. When
Ian Parker asked them why they then continued, and why they said nothing, since they
had taken account of the fact that all of this
was nothing but a farce, they responded that it
was “for the sake of science.”6 Since they were
asked to …
The allure of a paradox in this type of
research should not be ignored. When psychology inquires into this problematic deference on
the part of the subjects, what it covers over or
deliberately ignores is that this deference is
not an inherent characteristic of humans, it is
due to the organization of the research itself.
Everything points to the necessity of this: the
rigid and constraining protocol, the fact that
the scientist distributes expertise in a very
asymmetrical manner, a situation close to that
of the examination, the supposed or induced
ignorance of the subjects, etc. Now, psychology
treats deference not as an effect of what it
imposes but as an essential characteristic that
it acts to counter. Which leads to a paradox: psychologists construct dispositives that give rise to
deference and must do everything possible to
neutralize it. And, as in every situation with a
lure, they are then obliged to keep asking:
“but did my subjects really believe me? Did
they not nonetheless understand what I was
looking for and respond to that very question,
without my knowledge?” They also use posttest questionnaires to verify that the subjects
have indeed been taken for a ride. Now, and it
is Orne who emphasizes this, the subjects, in
this case, knowing that the fact of having understood the hypothesis will invalidate their
research, prefer to say nothing and to continue
pretending to have responded in all naivety –
it is what is called the pact of double ignorance,
since neither of the two, neither the experimenter, nor the subject, really has the desire
to say or to know what is really at play: on
either side, this would ruin the experiment. It
would thus be much better, concludes Orne,
in the experiments, to count on the collaboration of the subjects rather than on their socalled gullibility.
what a maze can mean
In proposing to translate what happens to rats in
terms of meanings, I draw here on the very
important work of the naturalist Jakob von
Uexkü ll, and his theory, especially that of the
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Umwelt. And since we are with the rats here, it
is with them that I propose to consider the ways
in which this theory could open up for the
animal, at least partially, the question of point
of view.
Some biographical elements are in order.
Jakob von Uexküll was an Estonian naturalist
(1864–1944). After studies in biology, he took
part in a comparative study of invertebrate
physiology. This research led him, contrary to
what the practices of the time encouraged
doing, to want to enlarge his perspective and
to consider the totality of the organism in
relation to its environment (milieu), an environment that he will define as a concrete or lived
one: the Umwelt.
The intuition from which this theory departs
is to all appearances quite simple: the animal,
endowed with sensory organs different from
our own, cannot perceive the same world as we
do. Bees don’t have the same perception of
color as we do, we do not perceive scents in
the same way that butterflies do, and we are
not at all able to sense, as a tick can, the odor
of the butyric acid released by the sebaceous follicles of mammals. It is there that the theory will
take a courageously original turn, for perception
will be defined not as a form of “reception” but
as an act of creation: the animal does not perceive passively, it “fills its environment with
perceptual objects,” it constructs its environment by peopling it with perceptual objects
that, from then on, become perceived. In
other words, perceptions are not passive, they
are the object of an activity by which the
animal will perceive them. The activity of perception is above all an activity that confers
meaning. Only that which has a meaning is perceived, just as only that which can be perceived,
and which is important for the organism, is
accorded a meaning.
The Umwelt, or lived world of the animal, is
above all a world where things are only perceived, on the one hand, because they are captured by particular sensory equipment – the
butterfly lives in a world of luminous intensities
and of odors, for example – and, on the other
hand, to the degree in which they have taken
on a meaning. And it is with these meanings
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that the animal constructs its perceptual universe. Time, space, place, path, way, house,
odor, enemy, each event in the perceived
world is an event that “signifies,” which is not
perceived except in that it signifies – and by
that which it signifies – an event that makes of
the animal a “lender” of meaning, that is to
say a subject. For each perception of meaning,
according to Uexkü ll, implies a subject, just as
each subject is defined as that which accords
meaning. How do things acquire a meaning?
Quite simply, Uexkü ll responds, through
action. The animal never enters into a relation
with an object as such. The object is constituted
in action; its meaning does not emerge except in
relation to action that can be practiced.
Objects are not alone in having meanings
accorded to them. Inspiring the work of
Konrad Lorenz, in fact, Uexküll will hold that
the Umwelt is at the same time an environment
of relations, that is to say an environment in
which beings will take on various meanings for
one another. Consequently, if it is perceived,
no animal can be neutral in the environment
of another; that is to say if it can be accorded
a meaning, or if it can be seen to be accorded
one. What does a jackdaw mean in the life of a
jackdaw, or rather, what does this jackdaw
mean in the life of this other jackdaw? This is
the question that Lorenz will pose to Tchock,
the jackdaw he adopted. It is a strange lure
that made this type of research possible:
Lorenz himself became the alluring producer
of sociality, an enticement for meanings (since
lures are frequently required in order to
convey the meanings of an animal). By adopting
a young jackdaw, Lorenz shows that a human
can take on the meaning of “socius” and subsequently learn what “socius” means in the life
of a jackdaw. The jackdaws who live in society
have the habit of associating, for their whole
lives, with a companion (socius) with whom
they carry out various activities together.
Tchock, who was raised by Lorenz, thus took
him for a maternal socius. He followed him
everywhere and asked him to give him food.
He later tried to teach him to fly; but after the
failure of his repeated attempts the jackdaw
finally gave up and considered Lorenz as an
thinking like a rat
activity companion, acceptable, certainly, but
limited. This original adventure shows us that
meanings are not fixed once and for all,
flowing from elementary needs of the organism:
they are flexible, can apply to other beings,
extend to unforeseen situations, change, and
even invent and create new relational uses.
It is time now to return to the rats, with the
goal of asking them, in accordance with a tradition that I am, however, interrogating, to
help me to test a hypothesis: when observing
rats, what can produce the activity of translating
their behaviors in terms of meanings?
“Thousands of experimental series have been
made in the past decades by numerous American scientists,” Uexküll writes, “who tried to
determine how soon an animal was able to
learn a certain pathway, through requiring
widely varied animals to orient themselves in a
maze … They have neither investigated the
visual, tactile or scent cues, nor given thought
to the application of the coordinate system by
the animal – that right and left is a problem in
itself has never struck them. Nor have they
ever debated the question of the number of
paces, because they did not see that in
animals, too, the pace may serve as the
measure of distance” (“Stroll” 51).
The critique is certainly merited, but its accuracy requires some clarification. The behaviorists, and John Watson in particular, did in fact
very much consider the influence of optical,
tactile, and olfactory perceptual characteristics.
I would not, however, go so far as to say that
they examined them. Unless one confuses the
term “examine” with that of “neutralize.” For
that is indeed what Watson did, in a procedure
that, if one were to think of it as resembling an
examination, would guide the patient toward a
sadistic torturer rather than to their doctor: he
removed the rat’s eyes, olfactory bulb, and whiskers, which are essential to the sense of touch in
rats, before throwing it into the exploration of
the maze. And since the rat no longer wished
to run in the maze or go in search of the food
payment, he starved him: “he began at once to
learn the maze and finally became the usual
automaton.”7 Of course. All that he proves is
that, if we remove the conscience from a
psychologist, he continues to write.8 Who has
become the automaton in this story?
This falls far short. And it is certainly very far
from the universe of meanings. For that matter,
this is even further from it since the being
issuing from this systematic practice of destruction is no longer, for the psychologist, a rat. If
the world had probably lost all meaning for
this de-sensed rat, the rat itself had lost all
meaning for its experimenter – that is, if it
ever had one for him. It is a new organism,
reduced to a minimum of its sensations, and
who, from this fact, counts for all the others.
This is the goal of the procedure: search out
the lowest common denominator, the “leftover,” the automaton, the behavior that, from
one species to another, will render all organisms
commensurable (Burt). And this commensurability, it can be underlined in passing, bears
on the criterion par excellence for a society
haunted by the idea of production and efficiency
(Haraway 43ff.): the time required to run a
maze.
All of this, one can see, has nothing to do with
the meanings that the maze can take on for the
rat. We haven’t learned much of value; it is on
this point that Uexkü ll will resume his critique,
in his essay on the theory of meaning: “In this
way, American researchers have attempted tirelessly, in thousands of experiments, beginning
with white rats, to study the most different
kinds of animals in their relations to a maze.
The unsatisfying results of these labors, which
were conducted with the most precise methods
of measurement and the greatest skill in calculation, could have been predicted by anybody
who had come to the realization that the tacit
assumption that an animal could ever enter
into a relationship with an object is false”
(Uexküll, Foray 139; Despret cites Uexkü ll,
Mondes animaux 94).
One can note in passing that this critique
finds an echo today in the research on wellbeing. When we ask chickens about their preferences, Robert Dantzer explains, we generally
ask them what effort they are ready to agree to
for a particular environment. The bird has use
of two keys that it can work with its beak to
narrow (with one key) or augment (with the
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other) the size of the cage. One can note, he continues, not without a point of irony, that the
space the chickens grant themselves differs
little from commercial conditions. One could
conclude from this therefore that it is the
optimum space for chickens. “But this would
be a bit hasty and neglect a major epistemological problem, namely that it is not straightforward to enter into the subjective universe of
an animal in interrogating it through an experimental dispositive thought up by a human. It
is possible that the animal responds in the
experimental dispositive on the basis of very
different elements, for example the proximity
of a congener, but not the representation of
the space in itself as such” (Dantzer 99).9
To return to the rat: on the basis of what
elements does it respond when it is submitted
to the demand to traverse the maze? Posing
this question goes back to asking what this particular experimental dispositive can mean for a
rat. How can this traversing come to be, from
the point of view of the rat, that which
Uexkü ll calls a “familiar path”? How do the
rats, in pretending to respond to the questions
of the behaviorists (in this case, the question
is: what is the abstract relation of a being, whatever it may be, that which the behaviorists call
an organism, to a neutral object?), respond in
fact to another question? For it is indeed this
that it concerns: the artefact par excellence.
The rats respond to another question than the
one the experimenter poses to them. And the
experimenter can never suspect this would be
the case, simply because he never took into consideration the point of view that the rat could
have of the situation.
The problem can be posed differently, on the
basis of another supposition, that will allow us
to affirm Uexkü ll’s hypothesis by adding some
clarifications to it: why do rats always touch
the walls as they go along them? It is this that
all those who have been able to observe rats,
notably when they invade our houses, have
been able to affirm. Responding to this question
will give us some indices as to what a “familiar
path” can be for a rat. We must, however, reformulate the question, exiting the why of causes
and entering into the regime of meanings:
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from this perspective, what does a wall (something to run along) mean for a rat? The American biologists who observed them invented a
term to characterize rats: they are “haptophiles,” they like to touch. The wall therefore
has the meaning of “thing to touch.” But a
slightly more complicated hypothesis could
make sense of this characteristic (Sullivan 12).
Rats developed a particular kinesthetic
memory, since the rat must resolve this
problem in its everyday activities. And its haptophilia is a response to this problem. In its
daily peregrinations that lead it from the nest
to different places of exploration that will
permit it to feed itself, how can it find the
return path? How to memorize the indications,
and all the more so since the majority of these
are indications that have meaning only for
humans – objects, name and number of the
street, right, left, or indeed even maps or
designs? The rat resolved this problem by
mapping its route in another manner. It
inscribes the course of its route in its body in
the form of lines, curves, and turns, or even
roughnesses, textures, sensations of cold or
humidity – what do we know about what the
body of a rat can sense?
The rat draws, marks, soaks up, in its
muscles and on its skin, the map of a lateral
landscape. And it is the agreement of this map
with the sensations that it will check on the
return route that will tell it that it is indeed
going the right way, and that the nest will be
there, at the precise place where all the sensations will have finished unfolding. The
relation to the trace is inverted: it is no longer
only a matter of “marking” the places one
passes, like rats and many animals do, extending
their bodies to the limits of their territory with
many doses of odiferous substance, it is also a
matter of letting itself be marked by the space,
itself organized by the trajectory, and of incorporating the organization.
All this is to say: the maze was built by
actively integrating a characteristic of the rat;
one could say it is “rattish,” in slightly mimicking Uexkü ll. But it integrated this characteristic
by retranslating it as an abstract characteristic –
the dispositive will for that matter apply to a
thinking like a rat
considerable number of animals, inasmuch as it
is the object on which is built an infinite series of
comparisons between what will become organisms. Doing this, by effacing the link, the singular accord that can be woven between the rat and
the structure that is presented to it, by rendering unthinkable the event of what a maze
could constitute for the rat, the experimental
dispositive pulls the rug out from any questioning on the subject of the rat, on all that which it
could bear witness to regarding what is interesting for it. Since the rat does not respond to the
question of learning, he responds to the question of an architecture that constitutes the
world for him. Which is altogether different.
And which cannot, from the manner in which
the things are organized, be predicted.
Of course, we are here in the territory of
meaning and points of view. I remain,
however, with my question: how does the rat
interpret this particular dimension of the experiment that sets her within a question from a
human, how does she translate what is expected
of her? How does she interpret what is wanted of
her, when she is made to run, when she is
rewarded, or when she is blinded and each of
her sense organs is removed before she is
starved? To this question, which is perhaps a
contemporary question, at least in the domain
of the sciences, Uexkü ll makes no response.
These are the limits of his field of inquiry. For
if Uexküll can attribute a subjectivity to the
animal, and if the Umwelt is also a social
environment, it seems to me that his interest
is particularly focused on the physical environment and its objects. The “animal’s own
world” can, with difficulty, include the human
observer as an observer. The “own world”
does not appear as a world subject to the
double hybridization that requires the interspecific encounter and the crossing of an experimental universe with that of an experience of
life. In other words still, even if the “own
world” of Uexküll can aspire to “thinking as”
another animal, only with difficulty can it envisage a “thinking with” this other animal.10
Besides, the animals that Uexküll, as a biologist, focused on (ticks, flies, sea urchins), are
relatively simple organisms, of whom it could
not be said, to put it somewhat simply, that it
is easy to interest them in our problems.
The fact remains that the contrast set up
regarding the ways of thinking what a maze
can represent maintains its full pertinence,
and gives a measure of the cost, in terms of
knowledge, of failing to take the animal’s
point of view into account. The maze can authorize neither the question of the “familiar
path” nor that of the meaning of the wall, still
less its meaning as event in the world of a rat.
It forbids doing so all the more surely since it
is constructed in such a way that this question
cannot be opened, since the rat cannot do
other than follow along the walls. And when
an animal cannot do other than what he is constrained to do, when he does so only because
he does not have other possibilities or other
choices, then there is a certitude: this has to
do with an artefact. At the very least with one
artefact.
what does it expect of me?
I closed the preceding section in a somewhat
elliptical manner, by affirming that the situation
in the maze presents at least one artefact, leaving
one to think that there would then be others.
One will recall that, regarding the experiments
of human psychology, I defined as artefactual
the situations where the being who is interrogated responds to a different question than the
one the scientist poses to her. But there are
many ways of responding to another question:
there are therefore as many possibilities of
artefacts.
If I broached this problem at the beginning of
the book it is for a simple reason: when the question of the artefact is posed – I learned in the
course of this research – there is frequently
something interesting that opens up as possible.
It appeared to me that, most of the time, the
hypothesis of the existence of an artefact accompanies the possibility of taking into account the
fact that the animal would have a point of view
on the situation. Certainly, this possibility can
be ignored, can lead to, as Rosenthal pointed
out, the will to a larger epistemological sanitization, where the researcher does not take full
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measure of what his anxiety prompts in the
course of research. When this anxiety, in lieu
of expanding the imagination, paralyzes it. I
also equally learned to recognize, under the
form of the injunction of “more control,” the
little red light that announces this paralysis.
And I admit to being a bit sad each time that
a good opportunity was missed: what I
thought to be a promise will not be kept. For
there is something promissory each time the
anxiety of the artefact is profiled in the sciences
that mobilize the beings that respond to it. Consider, then, how the promises weaken and what
favors the fact that they can receive, as a
response, that which they take on.
In an article evaluating the research on
relations between humans and livestock
animals, the authors note that the animals can
react to the observers. However, they continue,
these are not the only elements taken into
account by the animal: “Researchers must also
consider the animals’ expectations during a
test. For example, choice tests measuring
animals’ preferences for or aversion to different
handling procedures indicated that they could
predict which procedure was likely […] from
environmental or human cues.”11 That is to
say, and I follow here the authors’ conclusion,
that generalization becomes problematic. Each
experiment indicates not only the manner in
which the animals generally experience the procedures but the way in which each of the animals
lives them as a function of the perception that it
has of them, as a function of what it expects.
One can see that the problem of expectations
is here attributed to the subject of the experiment and that it conveys the way in which the
animal actively integrates what is expected of
it. Certainly, generalization is in that case
compromised.
In fact I will go further in affirming that there
is no artefact unless there is generalization. If
one knows to what specific question this
animal here, with perceptible or deducible
expectations, in this particular context,
responds, then there is no artefact. This
clearly does not resolve the problem of generalization.12 That which, one senses, can just as
well open either onto a need for more control
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(even if somewhat vain), in virtue of which the
researchers get it into their heads to neutralize
everything that could permit the animal to interpret what is expected of it; or, in a more fecund
manner, onto the fact of becoming interested in
how the animal interprets the situation. In the
first case, one does not eradicate the artefact –
since animals always expect something, therefore always respond to another question; in the
second, we subordinate the results to the question: “To what did it respond?”
The way in which the expectations of the
animal affect the experiments was well noted
by some animal professionals, and some scientists, in research designed to evaluate certain
foods for farm animals.13 It would seem, when
we observe the ways they behave, that animals
interpret these dispositives for what they are:
exceptional dispositives. But for some of them
the term “exceptional” would seem to take on
a double meaning: “this is not usual” and
“this will not last.” Things become more complicated. In fact, everything about them indicates exceptionality: the time of the
experimental dispositive is not the same since
it is set within a provisional and short time
(five days of testing, corresponding to the
work week) while the time of the farm is a
time of accumulated memories and experiences.
That which is given to the animal as food also
falls under the exceptional, since new types of
feed will be tested.
Now, if animals eat these types of fodder with
less appetite, it is for a very simple reason:
because it is not the same thing that they are
used to receiving. “From the point of view of
the animal, the memory of the food eaten
before plays a role, and thus it eats less than
in usual circumstances: the results, then, say
nothing about the situation but instead about
the manner in which the animal interprets the
transition. It expects something else, thus
what one gives it is not the sole cause involved.
This has to do with the effects of the transition
because the animals, and it is the animal experts
like farmers and shepherds who tell us this,
know that this situation will not last. In the
same way, when one tries a new dry fodder
with a group of cows, and they see that the
thinking like a rat
group next to them receives fresh grass, they
stop eating and think: ‘we too are going to
have some of that’. And thus the results of the
experiment are dependent on what takes place
in the experiment next to it, but no one takes
account of the fact that the researches are compartmentalized.”14 One could not give a better
definition of the artefact: animals certainly
respond to a question, but it is not the one we
pose to them. The humor of the situation is
too nice not to be underlined: the researchers
compartmentalize the research; the animals do
not stop prompting them to decompartmentalize it.15
At this point in my exposition you could
respond to me that all these critiques go
against my hypothesis, that things haven’t
really changed since what they are directed at
is the fact that researchers do not take into
account the point of view of the animal. I am
going to try to respond.
First of all, I approached the problem from
the point of view of the artefact. I recall here
that it was in this manner that it was possible
to get bearings on the moments when the
researchers pose the question from the point
of view that the animal can have on the experimental situation. Now, the artefact always constitutes the object of a critique: a critical worry
when the researcher ponders her own work; an
accusation when another researcher says of the
work of a colleague: “you didn’t think of” or,
to take back up the terms that Dantzer used,
regarding the cages and the chickens, “you
have been a bit hasty.” In a certain manner,
when Waiblinger affirms that the animal can
predict what will be offered to it, or when
Meuret suggests that that animals think “we
are also going to have some of that,” we are
very much within this perspective: animals do
not judge an abstract situation, but a situation
offered to them as it is offered to them.
Following this, I can confirm that some
researchers have crossed the divide that consists
in taking into consideration the animals’ points
of view on the situations presented to them –
but not all researchers. And the critiques are
evidence of those, and for those, who have
crossed the divide.
Finally, the critique can just as much take the
form of anxiety. In this frame, it would mean
that the researchers actively and explicitly
started to take into account the fact that the
animal poses, to her researcher, the question:
what do they want of me? When, for example,
Meuret describes his own research, his approach
seems to me particularly exemplary of this
possibility of considering, actively, the manner
in which the animal itself actively takes the
questions and the presence of the researcher
into consideration. Meuret observes sheep and
goats and a part of his research consists in evaluating what they eat when we put them in unfamiliar situations such as zones of underbrush
clearing (to avoid forest fires). After a first
stage of reciprocal habituation between the
animals observed and their observers, each
researcher on the team follows, each day, an
animal and observes what they eat all day.
Each detail is carefully noted, each species of
plant inventoried, each bite recorded. The
proximity is complete, the interest for the
observed is unflagging.
The scientific method requires that the
animals be chosen randomly, in order to constitute a random sample. But this random choice
can turn out to be disastrous, for many
reasons. The procedure therefore requires
going through a series of steps. As such, the
second step is designed “to identify animals
within the group that can be monitored uninterruptedly from a very close distance. While alternating movement within the group and close
monitoring, the observers look for individuals
which seem indifferent to their permanent presence. The full-time presence of an observer
automatically changes the social status of an
individual. This is why, at the beginning of
this step, the individuals to be sought should
neither be a leader nor an aspirant leader.
Here again, it is important to listen to the
herder’s advice if he knows well the social hierarchy within his flock. At the end of this step,
about 15–20% of the individuals are considered
to meet the prerequisites for full-time close
monitoring” (Agreil and Meuret 101–02). In
this manner, for certain goats, Meuret explains,
the fact of being the object of an intense interest
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on the part of the human gives rise among them
to forms of conduct such as that of wanting to
supplant the others, to take their food, even of
seeking fights. For others, being the object of
a researcher’s attention will provoke the aggression of their companions, as if the observer’s
interest conveyed a desire on the part of the
goat to change its place in the hierarchy. And
this introduces a famous disorder into the
group. On the other hand, Meuret continues,
we no longer really know what we are seeing:
what a goat eats in natural conditions, or on
the contrary, what a goat eats when it wants to
show to others its superiority since, suddenly,
it thinks that its status has changed.
Of course, one could always translate the preceding into the shoddiest and most conventional
version of the artefact: we influence that which
we observe! But if this version seems shoddy
to me, and if I oppose this somewhat lazy conclusion with which the systematic theories
have pestered our ears, it is only because it
reduces the problem to its simplest expression.
Because it supposes, once again, that there
would be an active, influencing observer, and a
passive observed, whose sole activity would be
to be influenced. Now, there are many signs
that say otherwise, that say that this has to do
with beings who negotiate the conditions of
research, who mutually affect one another,
who exchange judgments and opinions, who
reciprocally modify one another and who know
that they do it.
Michel Meuret does not speculate on the fact
that he influences the goats or the sheep that he
observes, he actively asks them to take a position in relation to his proposals and he is in
harmony with theirs.16 He expects, and he
expects of the sheep and goats, that they
respond to him, contest, and protest. And this
implies something other than a simple reflexivity on the question of influence: it demands
attention.17 The concern could be exclusively
epistemological, and in fact it is epistemological, but not exclusively. Yes, it is a matter of
not disturbing, of not creating an artefact, but
there is also a quality of the relation, a
concern for the comfort of the animal, a rightness of the relations that transpire as much in
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the writings as in what he relates to me.
Meuret explains, for example, that at the third
step (we had remained a bit with the second)
the candidates observed are abandoned if their
attitude testifies to “the interest, the anxiety of
a discomfort due to the close and constant presence of the observer.”18 Why is interest a bad
motive, in this frame? Because the animal
must be interested in other things besides the
human being, it must continue to live its life
as a goat or a sheep. The choice of the “good”
animal is founded on a very simple conviction:
the animal responds to her observer; and it is
what her response indicates that will constitute
the criteria permitting the continuation, or not,
of the observation. A last remark from a
researcher illustrates this in an even clearer
manner: “ … a good sign to start an observation
is when an animal pushes you because you are in
the way of what it covets: this says that it is
capable of demonstrating that you are bothering
it.”19 You want to practice
habituation and be certain not
to disturb the animals? The solution, as simple as it is, took
time to emerge: all you have to
do is ask them.
the author.
notes
Translated from Vinciane Despret, Penser
comme un rat © Editions Quae, Versailles, 2009,
8–15, 28–45.
1 Certainly, the investigation conducted in Berlin
in 1904 about the case of the famous clever
Hans, the horse who knew how to count, could
be considered as the start of the critical elucidation
of the effect of human expectations on an animal.
However, the point of focus of the research,
oriented toward the human factor and heavily
laden with the mechanism typical of the emerging
behaviorism, minimized the point of view that the
horse could have on the situation. To put it in
terms that will emphasize my process, the horse,
thinking like a rat
in the perspective adopted, did not “respond” to
the expectations but “reacted” to them. On this
subject see Despret, Hans.
2 One finds an account of his research in
Rosenthal, Experimenter Effects.
3 The analysis of Rosenthal’s research is contained
in the following chapter of Despret’s book, but is
not included in this excerpt. [Translator’s note.]
4 The French term dispositif has an important
specificity that has caused difficulties in prior translation and in capturing the range of meanings that it
covers (including technical, military, legal, and
ontological/arrangement dimensions). The term is
at once an everyday, general term for referring
to machines and devices of all kinds (such as
cameras and pencil sharpeners but also airplanes)
and it is a philosophical concept that has been
drawn upon by Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault,
Louis Althusser, Giorgio Agamben and many
others. Owing to the technical connotations of
the term, it has often been rendered as “apparatus”
in English, but this presents a major problem since
the French term appareil, much more closely
related to “apparatus,” is used as distinct from dispositif by the thinkers mentioned. Owing to the
specificity of the concepts, there is an increasing
use of the English term “dispositive” to capture dispositif and the distinctions from appareil. Timothy
Armstrong’s earlier translation of Deleuze’s
famous essay on Foucault’s use of the concept
uses “social apparatus” to distinguish it from
“apparatus” and to emphasize the social and assembling dimensions. These social and assembling
dimensions are particularly important to Despret’s
use of the concept in the philosophy of science and
ethology. See Gilles Deleuze, “Qu’est-ce qu’un dispositif?” in Michel Foucault philosophe (Paris: Seuil,
1989), Giorgio Agamben, Che cos’è un dispositivo?
(Rome: Nottetempo, 2006), and Jeffrey Bussolini,
“What is a Dispositive?,” Foucault Studies 10
(2010): 85–107. [Translator’s note.]
5 Since then, the possibility of discriminating
between subjects really under hypnosis and subjects simulating it has been able to be staged experimentally. Thus, for example, a hypnotized subject
can be convinced that he no longer knows how to
read. “Not being able to read” seems impossible to
simulate: when we know how to read, in normal
conditions, the letters make sense in a fashion
that cannot be ignored; we can no longer “not
know how to read.” If one presents subjects with
an image representing the word “blue” written in
yellow, the non-hypnotized subjects will show a
latency time when one asks them the color of
the letters, the meaning “blue” interfering with
the answer “yellow”; the subjects under hypnosis,
for their part, do not demonstrate this latent delay.
6 Parker, “Obedience.” For an analysis of the
question of the authority of the scientist, and the
way in which subjects actively take account of
what is asked of them, to which the present text
remains, across the years, profoundly indebted, I
refer to Isabelle Stengers, Invention of Modern
Science.
7 Watson, “Kinaesthetic and Organic Sensations”
2–3; cited in the wonderful little book by the
English historian Jonathan Burt, Rat (103).
8 For a more extended analysis of what this type of
experiment does to the experimenter, see Vinciane Despret, Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau.
9 We find elsewhere, in an article by Isabelle Veissier and Bjorn Forkman, a very clear critique on the
ties between different types of defining well-being
(and therefore of testing it experimentally) and
the different philosophical conceptions that
preside over each of these definitions.
10 I would like to thank my philosophy colleagues
at the University of Liège, and particularly Julien
Piéron and Stéphane Galetic, whose attentive
interest, commentaries, and discussions helped
me greatly in analyzing the work of von Uexküll.
11 I have referred to this article before in terms of
the illumination of the little red light (the models
should permit more control): I try here to continue along the lines of interest opened up.
Waiblinger 197 for what follows.
12 François Calatayud asks whether it really
makes sense to present “to different individuals
conditions that one imagines to be equivalent in
order to test a hypothesis regarding an average
individual.” The notion of meaning, he explains, is
incompatible with an average individual, and this
is the case, the author continues, even if one is
able to bring forward two beings who have “the
same usage of the world.” Text from the conference “From natural behavior to the discourse of
ethology: Reflections on the place of subjectivity
in ethology,” presented at the colloquium organized by Florence Burgat, Comment penser le comportement animal (How to Think Animal Behavior),
132
despret
EHESS, Paris, 21–22 Jan. 2008. Burgat, Comment
penser le comportement animal.
13 In this regard, see the work of Michel Meuret.
In addition, Meuret agreed to take part in a long
interview with me in June 2008 in which we
were able to raise many of the questions that
gave rise to this research.
14 In the same interview with Michel Meuret.
15 This humor of the situation appeared to me
most clearly in following the work of the consultant clinicians already mentioned (Hellal). Far be it
for me to compare animals and humans, but the
institutional structures and the type of intelligence
that they can give rise to are important. These clinicians based their work on the fact that the teams
of social workers confronted with multiple cases
of distress, and who frequently work with the
same family, but in ignorance of what their colleagues are doing, must learn to follow the decompartmentalizations that the families who call them
present to them.
16 One recognizes, under this formulation in
terms of “propositions,” the mark of the work of
Bruno Latour, notably in The Politics of Nature.
17 The animal professionals of the Theix Center
emphasize that the term “attention” largely overflows the dimension of “well-being.” “Paying attention” is to take care of, but it is also “to mind,” that
is to say to pay attention to someone and not to
ignore possible disagreement. For example,
“paying attention, they say, is to put limits on
what one does but also on what the animal does
(‘a just environment’ they also say).” This
dimension of attention insists on the fact that all
research is intrinsically founded on collaboration,
whether or not one ignores it, but they do
not ignore it and say that they are not able to
forget it.
18 Meuret interview with Despret, 2008.
Burgat, Florence, ed. Comment penser le comportement animal. Contribution à une critique du
réductionisme. Paris: EHESS/Quae, 2010. Print.
Burt, Jonathan. Rat. London: Reaktion, 2006. Print.
Dantzer, Robert. “Comment les recherches sur la
biologie du bien-être animal sont-elles construites?” Les Animaux d’élevage ont-ils droit au
bien-être? Ed. Florence Burgat and Robert
Dantzer. Paris: INRA, 2006. 85–103. Print.
Paris: Les Empêcheurs de penser en rond, 2004.
Print.
rond, 2002. Print.
Haraway, Donna. Simians, Cyborgs, and Women.
New York: Routledge, 1991. Print.
Hellal, Selma. De proche en proche. Proximité et
travail de réseau en Algérie. Algiers: Barzakh, 2008.
Print.
Latour, Bruno. The Politics of Nature. Trans.
Catherine Porter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP,
2004. Print.
Latour, Bruno. Politique de la nature. Paris: La
Orne, M.T. “On the Social Psychology of the
Psychological Experiment: With Particular
Reference to Demand Characteristics and their
Implications.” American Psychiatrist 17.11 (1962):
776–83. Print.
Orne, M.T., and C.H. Holland. “On the Ecological
Validity of Laboratory Deception.” International
Journal of Psychiatry 6.4 (1968): 282–93. Print.
Parker, Ian. “Obedience.” Granta 71.70 (2000):
101–25. Print.
Rosenthal, Robert. Experimenter Effects in
Behavioral Research. New York: Appleton, 1966.
Print.
19 Meuret interview.
Trans. Daniel W. Smith. Minneapolis: U of
bibliography
Agreil, Cyril, and Michel Meuret. “An Improved
Method for Quantifying Intake Rate and Digestive
Behaviour of Ruminants in Diverse and Variable
Habitats Using Direct Observation.” Small
Ruminant Research 54.1 (2004): 99–113. Print.
133
Stengers, Isabelle. L’Invention des sciences modernes.
Paris: La Découverte, 2000. Print.
Sullivan, Robert. Rats: A Year with New York’s Most
Unwanted Inhabitants. London: Granta, 2005. Print.
thinking like a rat
Uexküll, Jakob von. A Foray into the Worlds of
Animals and Humans. Trans. Joseph D. O’Neill.
Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2010. Print.
Uexküll, Jakob von. Mondes animaux et monde
humain. Trans. P. Muller. Paris: Denoël, 1965. Print.
Uexküll, Jakob von. “A Stroll through the Worlds
of Animals and Men: A Picture Book of Invisible
Worlds.” Instinctive Behavior: The Development of a
Modern Concept. Ed. Claire H. Schiller. New York:
International UP, 1957. 5–80. Print.
Veissier, Isabelle, and Bjorn Forkman. “The Nature
of Animal Welfare Science.” Annual Review of
Biomedical Sciences 10 (2008): T15–26. Print.
Waiblinger, Susan, et al. “Assessing the Human–
Animal Relationship in Farmed Species: A Critical
Review.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 101.3–4
(2006): 185–242. Print.
Watson, John B. “Kinaesthetic and Organic
Sensations: Their Role in the Reactions of the
White Rat to the Maze.” Psychological Review:
Monograph Supplements 8.2 (1907): i–101. Web.
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Jeffrey Bussolini
USA
ANGELAKI
In many ways, Despret’s publication of Que
diraient les animaux, si … on leur posait les
bonnes questions? (2012) represents the
epitome of her style and approach to philosophical ethology. Witty, irreverent, and always
surprising, the twenty-six chapters of this abecedary playfully question many of our
popular and scientific understandings of
animal behaviour. Whether it is “D for Delinquency,” “G for Genius,” or “Y for
YouTube,” these chapters open with seemingly
innocent anecdotes of animal behaviour – in
the field, in laboratories, on television, and so
on – and proceed to show that so many of our
implicit understandings about animals, their
habits, and cultures are subject to re-questioning. Despret covers such stories as how elephants learn to paint in Thai sanctuaries,
how vervet monkeys enjoy an alcoholic beverage
or two, and what might happen when one urinates in front of baboons. Many of these
stories have been internet or newspaper fodder
(“Animals Have Sex in Public!”), not to
mention the subject of countless scientific
studies; but with Despret, these stories lose
any sense of familiarity as she recasts the
players as intentional agents who, despite our
attempts, show just how unfamiliar and wonderfully surprising the world actually is. And
yet, within the midst of this re-enchantment
of our multispecies worlds, animals are familiar, have individuality, personality, intelligence. As an abecedary, every letter from A to
Z, like each and every animal and species,
makes a case for the importance of the seemingly insignificant. Not unlike a mosaic,
every story throughout the book’s chapters
depicts a world in miniature, where humans
vinciane despret
translated by brett buchanan
ANIMAL ABECEDARY
“o for œuvres” and “q for
queer”
and animals co-exist, at times knowingly and
innocently, at others ignorantly and questionably, but always, without a doubt,
meaningfully.
In these two selections – “O for Œuvres” and
“Q for Queer” – Despret takes two different
bird species (the bowerbird and the king
penguin) as her muses in order to look more
closely at the notions of art and sexual identity. In the case of the bowerbird, how and
why do their spectacular mating arches count
as “art,” or not? What is it that “art” does,
and how might the bowerbirds’ “art” produce
a new agency, not only in their prospective
mate but in us, the observers? In the case of
the penguins, why should it be surprising that
the natural/cultural worlds of animals are
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039852
137
animal abecedary
full of rich, complex, and shifting sexual identities? How might we reconsider the all-toooften implicit political agendas involved in
biological observations, classifications, and
ontological constructions? The worlds of
animals are far more instructive and interesting than we tend to admit.
o for œuvres1
do birds make art?
C
an animals create works of art? The question is not far off from the one that asks
whether animals can be artists. To test this, at
least speculatively, raises again the question of
intention, which in principle should preside
over any work. Must there be an “intention”
in order to make a work, and, if there must, is
it the intention of the artist that determines,
or not, whether she is the author of the work?
Introducing animals into the posing of this
problem has the merit of making us hesitate
and slow down. Bruno Latour has made us sensitive to these hesitations by proposing a reconsideration of the distribution of action in terms
of “making” [ faire-faire].2
It is worth considering the splendid arches of
the pink-naped bowerbirds, which are much
more interesting than they at first seem for the
fact that these birds have re-appropriated, for
the sake of their own works, some of our artefacts and put them to use in their compositions.
If one pays attention to the work accomplished –
one merely has to enter the name of the bowerbird in any search engine – one can see, thanks
to the camera work of biologists, that there is
nothing accidental about the composition; it is
all organized to create an illusion of perspective.
According to the biologists, it is all staged to
make the bowerbird dancing in his arch
appear larger than he actually is. We are therefore dealing with a scene, a staging [une mise
en scène], and a truly multimodal artistic composition: a sophisticated architecture, an aesthetic balance, a creation of illusions designed
to produce effects, and a choreography that concludes the work. In short, what the philosopher
É tienne Souriau would likely have recognized as
a poetry of movement. This skilfully orchestrated illusion of perspective refers us to how
he proposed to make sense of simulacra. They
are, he writes, “sites of speculation on
meaning” that indicate that one can no longer
clearly have in nature the capacity for making
being out of nothing, in the desire of the other.
Making being out of nothing in the desire of
the other: is this a work in the sense that we
understand the bird to be the true artist and
author? I am temporarily leaving to the side
the sterile and boring debates that attempt to
reduce the animal to instinct, and that, in
order to provide an account of the work accomplished, provide us with explanations of the causally deterministic and biological kind. It is also
worth noting, just in passing, that in terms of
these kinds of explanations, sociobiologists
have similarly tried to apply them to humans:
every action and every accomplishment
describes nothing more than a program to
which one is genetically bound and whose goal
is to better perpetuate one’s genes. I leave it
up to the reader to describe this in more carefully chosen terms. The fact that these explanations are in such bad taste and so
impoverishing ought to prevent us from using
them with non-humans who have already been
so abused by theory!3
On the other hand, I could take up the way
that the question is posed by Alfred Gell, the
anthropologist of art, when he asked it not
about animals but about artistic productions
in cultures that do not consider their productions artistic (Art and Agency). Gell’s
problem is the following, albeit summarized a
bit quickly: if one considers art to be what is
received and acknowledged as such by the institutionalized world of art, then how should one
consider productions from other societies that
we consider as artistic whereas these societies
do not themselves accord the same value to
the objects? To not do so, as has been the practice for so long, would return the others to a
status of primitives expressing their primary
needs in spontaneous and childlike ways. To
do it anyways, as Gell explains, obliges the
anthropologist who is studying the creation of
objects in other cultures to impose on these
138
despret
cultures a completely ethnocentric frame of
reference. Indeed, if one considers that some
of the objects do not have any aesthetic value
either for the ones who produce them or for
whom they are made, then the solution that consists in placing each production in the cultural
framework of the one designating the rules
and criteria of aesthetic taste does not solve
the problem. Put more simply, a shield, for
example, is not art for “them” but for “us.”
How to escape this impasse? Gell proposes
that the problem be redefined. Anthropology
is the study of social relations; one must also
therefore consider studying the production of
objects within these relations. In order to
avoid falling back into the impasses that I
have just recounted, however, the objects themselves ought to be considered as social agents
endowed with the characteristics that we give
to them. Gell, therefore, attempts to take the
question of intentionality out of the narrow
framework in which our concept has confined
it, and instead open up the notion of the agent
– as a “being endowed with intentionality” –
to others besides human beings.
A decorated shield, to take up again the
problem of carried objects, has for us an aesthetic value, but it doesn’t have this value in
the context of a battle in which it is used. It
elicits fear, or fascinates, or captivates the
enemy. It signifies nothing, and symbolizes
nothing; it acts and reacts, it affects and transforms. It is, therefore, an agent, a mediator of
other agencies [agentivités]. The concept of
agency (which the French translator of Gell’s
Art and Agency translates as “intentionality”
[intentionnalité]) is therefore no longer posed
as a way of classifying beings (those who
would be ontological agents, endowed with
intentionality, and those who would be ontological patients, devoid of intentionality). Agency
(or intentionality) is relational, variable, and
always inscribed within a context. The work
not only fascinates, captivates, enchants, and
traps the recipient; rather, it is the agency contained within the very material of the work to
be made that controls the artist, who thus
takes the position of patient. If I understand
Gell in Latour’s terms, the work makes
139
happen [ fait-faire]; the shield makes the artist
make (the artist is made-to-make by the
shield), it makes the one using it (for example,
it can make one more daring in battle), and it
makes the enemy warrior (for example, be fascinated, scared, captivated by it).4 In our relations
to works, Gell says, we are quite similar to how
the anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor
described the indigenous peoples of the Antilles: they claimed that it was the trees that
called to the sorcerers and gave to them an
order to sculpt their trunks in the form of an
idol.
By distributing intentionality in this manner,
Gell agrees in a certain way with what Souriau
proposed, albeit with much more speculative
prudence. According to the latter, the work
imposes itself on the artist, or if I were to use
Gell’s terminology, “it is the work that is the
agent,” it is the work’s intentions that are
insisted on, and it is the artist who is the
patient. Nevertheless, if I now want to ask
about the possibility of art among animals,
and to do so seriously, I must abandon Gell
and align myself with Souriau. For even if Gell
clearly redistributes intentionality and agency,
he reduces the redistribution, despite a few
worthy attempts, to a relation between the
work and its recipient. He writes, “Anthropologists have long recognized that social relationships, to endure over time, have to be founded
on ‘unfinished business’. The essence of
exchange, as a binding social force, is the
delay, or lag, between transactions which, if
the exchange relation is to endure, should
never result in perfect reciprocation, but
always in some renewed, residual, imbalance.”
He continues, “So it is with [decorative] patterns; they slow perception down, or even halt
it, so that the decorated object is never fully possessed at all, but is always in the process of
becoming possessed. This, I argue, sets up a biographical relation – an unfinished exchange –
between the decorated index [which means the
“work” object as carrier of intentions] and the
recipient” (Gell 80–81). In short, the speculative
leap that distributes the intentions between the
work and artist is not carried through to its end,
for Gell clearly hesitates to make Antilleans of
animal abecedary
us, a sorcerer of the artist, and a summoning
agent of the work.
This question is posed entirely differently
by Souriau when he evokes, in his 1956
paper “From Modes of Existence to the
Work to be Made,” and in terms that appear
to be similar, the existential incompleteness
of everything.5 But the incompleteness of the
work, for Souriau, is not found between the
work and its recipient, but rather between
the work to be made [l’œuvre à faire] and
the one who will devote him or herself to the
work, the one who “must respond to it,” the
one held responsible. Works to be made are
real beings, but whose existences demand promotion on other planes. They are deficient in
existence, if only because they only benefit
from a physical existence. A work, in other
words, calls for its fulfilment on another
mode of existence.
Can we return to the problem of animal
artists with what has been proposed here?
Souriau anticipated this question with his
book The Artistic Sense of Animals.6 From
the very first pages he evokes the sense that
his response will take: “Is it really blasphemous to think that art has cosmic foundations
and that one can find in nature the same great
instaurating [instaurateurs] powers?” The
term “instaurating” is not chosen by accident.
Souriau did not use “creator” or “constructor”
(even if he at times considers these terms as
equivalent, we are still well before the arrival
of constructivism, so “construct” is not yet a
loaded term). Instaurating means something
else.7
The work, as we’ve just seen, calls for its
accomplishment on another mode of existence.
This accomplishment requires an instaurating
act. In this sense, if one can say that the
creator carries out [opère] the creation, the
being of the work nevertheless exists before
the artist has made it. However, this being
could not have made itself by itself. “To instaurate is to follow a path. We determine the being
to come by following its path,” he writes. “The
being in bloom,” he continues, “reclaims its
proper existence. In all of this, the agent has
to bend to the work’s own will, to divine its
will, to abdicate himself for the sake of this
autonomous being that he is seeking to
promote according to its own right to
existence.”
To say that the work of art is instaurated,
then, is neither to attribute causality somewhere
else nor to deny it. It is to insist on the fact that
the artist is not the cause of the work, and that
the work alone is not its own cause; the artist
carries responsibility, the responsibility of one
who hosts, who collects, who prepares, who
explores the form of the work. In other words,
the artist is responsible in the sense that he
must learn to respond to the work, and to
respond to his accomplishment or his failure
to accomplish such work.
If we return, then, to our question, can we
imagine speaking about natural beings as
masters of a work? To be sure, when
Souriau engages with this question in his
book on the artistic sense of animals, he
seems to hide at times behind a form of vitalism that is particularly noticeable in the commentaries that accompany the images: “Life is
the artist, the peacock is the work.” For that
matter, however, in returning to the birds
one discovers this surprising proposition
beside a photo showing a zebra finch in the
process of making its nest: “The call of the
work.” Here, quite clearly, it is no longer a
matter of an abstract nature but rather of an
instaurating being, responding (as the one
responsible) to the challenging demand of
accomplishing a work. Beneath this title,
Souriau explains that “often the nest is made
by two of them, and its preparation is essential
to sexual courtship. But occasionally a celibate
male will begin this work alone.” A female
could join him and help, he says, and it is
in this sense that the nest is a work of love,
or rather, as he corrects himself, “a creator
of love: the work mediates.”
Invoking love the way he does makes me want
to prolong it. The work really has the power to
captivate those who carry out its accomplishment. It is thus a completely different theory
of instinct that we are invited to consider. It is
a theory of instinct that, far from mechanizing
the animal and returning it to biological
140
despret
determinism, instead offers, in a speculative
mode, much more fruitful analogies.
Let us return for a moment to the nests of the
bowerbirds that I raised earlier and take up
again the question where it was left off, somewhat entangled between instinct and intentionality. I am not responding to the question of
knowing whether or not these birds are artists,
for it is no longer here that the problem interests
me. If I were to go back over one of Gell’s
examples, namely that of the shield, then by following the analogy one could maintain that
these nests are objects that captivate, transform,
and produce beings that fall in love, or that they
enamour, fascinate, and have an effect on them.
But if I follow the path opened by Souriau, and
interest myself not in the relation with the recipient but instead with what deploys the instaurating act of the nest, then I could also suggest
that the pink-naped bowerbirds are well and
truly captivated by the work to be made, and
that it is really this that dictates the work’s
need to exist. “This must be.”
Of course, our preferences tend to instead
favour the idea that a work can only be made
by someone, that the work is less dispersed,
for this is how we consider art, in a kind of
exceptional status. It is without doubt this
lack of exceptionality that justifies the cumbersome recourse to the argument: if everyone
can do it, it must be instinct. It’s true that for
these birds the making of this work is tied to
vital questions, since the making-of-the-work
[le faire-œuvre] is for each bird the condition
of its preservation. Without the work there
will be no descendants who themselves will
make future works. But do not confuse a condition of preservation with a condition of existence, and do not confuse what the work makes
possible with its motive. Or, at any rate,
abandon the concept of instinct, but guard preciously what it makes us feel, what feels like a
force in the face of which being must bend –
like we sometimes do in the face of love. No
matter what utilitarian aim we might impart to
these works, we know that birds do not have
this utilitarian aim in mind (the motives are
always identifiable a posteriori, a convenient
rationalization that, from a biological point of
141
view wherein everything is pertinent, is not
what one might say matters). What instinct
both affirms and masks is the call of the thing
to be made. That some things are beyond us.
The captivation known to some artists. That
this must be made. Period.
q for queer
are penguins coming out of the closet?
Queer: strange; odd. Slightly ill. Usage: the
word queer was first used to mean “homosexual” in the early 20th century … In recent
years, however, many gay people have taken
the word queer and deliberately used it in
place of gay or homosexual, in an attempt,
by using the word positively, to deprive it
of its negative power.
New Oxford American Dictionary 1387
Between 1915 and 1930 a group of penguins
lived at Edinburgh Zoo. Over the course of
these years a troop of zoologists meticulously
and patiently observed them, beginning by
naming each and every one of them. But first,
before receiving their names, each of the penguins was placed within sexual categories: on
the basis of a couple, some were called
Andrew, Charles, Eric, and so on, while others
were christened Bertha, Ann, Caroline, etc.
As the years passed, however, and the observations accumulated, more and more troubling
facts seemed likely to sow disorder within this
beautiful story. To begin with, one had to face
the facts, as the categorizations were based on a
rather simplistic assumption: certain couples
were not formed by a male penguin and a
female “penguine,” but from among all penguins. The permutations of identity – on the
part of the human observers, not the birds –
had a Shakespearean complexity to them. In
addition to this, the penguins themselves
decided to put their own stamp on things and
make things even more complicated by changing
their couplings. After seven years of peaceful
observations, it was therefore realized that all
but one of the attributions were wrong! A complete overhaul of the names was thus carried
out: Andrew was re-christened as Ann, Bertha
animal abecedary
turned into Bertrand, Caroline became Charles,
Eric metamorphosed into Erica, and Dora
remained Dora. Eric and Dora, who spent their
days peacefully together, were now called Erica
and Dora, while Bertha and Caroline, who were
known for some time to be homosexual, were
from now on known as Bertrand and Charles.
These observations, however, were not going
to damage the image of nature. Homosexuality
remained a rare phenomenon in the animal
world and these penguins were probably just a
few pathological cases observed here and there
on farms and in zoos, and thus assumed to be
due to conditions of captivity – which fell into
perfect agreement with human psychopathological theories that equated homosexuality with
mental sickness. Homosexuality was definitely
unnatural, as nature could testify. But it seems
that, in the 1980s, nature had a change of
heart. Homosexual behaviours were now everywhere. One was probably supposed to imagine,
during these same years, disastrous consequences from the queer revolution and the
American gay movements that would contaminate innocent creatures.
But the question should no doubt be posed
differently: why hadn’t homosexuality been
seen in nature until this point? In the book Biological Exuberance, Bruce Bagemihl considers
a number of hypotheses following his long
investigation in reporting on species that had
recently come out of the closet.8 To begin
with, he says, homosexuality wasn’t seen
because nobody expected to see it. There
wasn’t a single theory available to meet the
facts. Homosexual behaviour appeared to be a
paradox of evolution since, in principle, homosexual animals did not transmit their genetic
heritage. This stems in fact from a very
narrow conception of sexuality, on the one
hand, and of homosexuality, on the other. For
the former, animals only mate due to the goal
of reproduction. The strictest god would have
succeeded in obtaining from animals a virtue
that he had not been able to with any of his faithful humans. Animals don’t do a thing except if it
is useful for their survival and reproduction. For
the latter, homosexual animals would be exclusively oriented towards partners of the same
sex and, in this respect, would be proof of a
strict orthodoxy.
Next, for those who observed behaviours
oriented towards a partner of the same sex, a
functionalist explanation could justify them perfectly well, and it had the merit of removing this
behaviour from the sphere of sexuality. When I
was a student, we learned in an ethology course
that when an ape presents his or her genitalia to
another and allows him- or herself to be
“mounted” – I also heard this said of cows – it
has nothing sexual about it; it is just a way of
affirming dominance or submission, depending
on the position adopted.
Lastly, another reason that has had considerable influence is the fact that researchers have
only observed but a few homosexual behaviours in nature because they are so rarely
seen. Not that they are rare, but that we
don’t see them. Just like we rarely observe heterosexual behaviour, because animals, who are
very vulnerable in these moments, generally
do it in hiding so as not to be seen, and
especially so from humans who are seen as
potential predators. And since we see newborns
emerge every year, nobody has ever doubted
that animals have a sexuality, even if it is
only seen on rare occasions. But rare does
not mean “not at all,” and this concerns homosexual behaviour as well. How is it that this has
remained unmentioned for so long in research
studies? The primatologist Linda Wolfe
queried her colleagues on this subject at the
end of the 1980s (Wolfe cited in Bagemihl).
On the condition of remaining anonymous,
many of them admitted that they had seen
such behaviour, with males just as much as
with females, but they were afraid of homophobic reactions and of being seen as homosexuals
themselves.
In light of these reasons, therefore, one can
legitimately think that the queer revolution
changed things. It opened the idea that forms
of conduct that were not strictly speaking heterosexual could exist, and it encouraged
researchers to look for them and speak about
them. Hundreds of species now participate in
this revolution, from dolphins to baboons, as
well as macaques, Tasmanian geese, Mexican
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jays, gulls, insects and, of course, the famous
bonobos.
At the same time, animal sexuality benefited
from what I would call their “cultural revolution.” After having been excluded, animals can
now claim to be within the order of culture.
They have artisanal traditions (for tools or
weapons); fashionable songs (with whales, for
instance); practices of hunting, eating, medications, and dialects that are specific to groups
from now on christened as “cultural”; and practices that are acquired, transmitted, abandoned,
or undergo waves of inventions and reinventions. As such, sexuality is now a candidate,
and this includes its homosexual dimensions.
It also carries the mark of cultural acquisition.
The ways that acts are performed – for
example, among female Japanese macaques –
demonstrate these differences: some practices
appear to be more popular within some troops,
and they evolve over time, with some inventions
tending to supplant other ways of doing things.
Some “traditions,” or models of sexual activity,
can be invented and transmitted across a
network of social interactions, moving between
and within groups and populations, geographies
and generations. According to Bagemihl, sexual
innovations in a non-reproductive context have
contributed to the development of other significant events from the point of view of cultural
evolution, most notably in the development of
communication and language, as well as in the
creation of taboos and social rituals. Among
bonobos, twenty-five sign-language signs have
been found to indicate an invitation, a desired
position, etc. These signs can be transparent
and their meaning immediately decipherable,
but some of them are more codified and
require that the partner already knows them in
order to understand them. The gesture of inviting a partner to return, for example, is in one
group executed by making one’s hand turn in
towards itself. Their opacity and stylization
invite one to think that there are abstract
symbols here. The order of the gestures,
which is equally important, leads to the hypothesis that animals may be able to use syntax. In
terms of the organization of relationships, they
seem to be marked by complex codes.
143
According to Bagemihl, rules guiding how to
avoid others are, with certain species, relatively
different if it consists of hetero- vs. homosexual
relations; what seems to be not permitted with
one sort of partner might be permitted with
another.
To focus on the diversity of these practices,
as Bagemihl does, is an explicitly political
issue, and one with many positions. On the
one hand, this diversity takes sexuality out of
the natural domain so as to situate it within a
cultural one. It’s an important issue, and one
that constitutes a choice. It is not just a case
of removing homosexuality from the sphere of
mental pathologies or from legal domains – in
some US states it still continues, as we will
see. Bagemihl will refuse the hand stretched
out to him, the allies who could have strategically helped to depathologize and decriminalize
homosexuality. In the outstretched hand there
is this simple proposition: if homosexuality is
natural, it is therefore neither pathological nor
criminal. The argument for its unnaturalness
has also been used during a trial by a judge
from Georgia – in the Bowers v. Hardwick
case. Caught in the act of homosexual relations,
Hardwick was sentenced, and the unnaturalness
of the act was used among the arguments justifying the accusation. Naturalizing homosexuality could take care of a lot of things. For
Bagemihl, even if homosexuality is natural, it
cannot be figured into the equation “What is
natural is right.” Nature does not tell us what
ought to be from what is. It can feed our
imaginations, but not compel our actions. It is
worth noting, in passing, the irony of this
story. Despite this refusal, Bagemihl’s book
will be invoked, in 2003, during a trial that featured the Texas court system vs. two homosexuals, Lawrence and his partner, who were
caught in bed together by the police following
a report of night-time disturbance of the
peace. On the grounds of the previously
mentioned judgment, that of the Bowers
v. Hardwick case, they were prosecuted for
homosexuality. The Texas judges, however,
refused to follow the case law set by the precedent judgment, and refuted, on the basis of
Bagemihl’s book, among other reasons, the
animal abecedary
argument of naturalness.9 At the end of the
trial, the anti-sodomy law was considered to
be anti-constitutional.10
The author of Biological Exuberance had
another, less theoretical, reason for refusing to
record homosexuality as a fact of nature. Bagemihl is not only homosexual. He is queer. To
quote him, what interests him is “the world as
‘incorrigibly plural’ … It suffers difference,
honoring the ‘anomalous’ and the ‘irregular’
without reducing them to something familiar
or ‘manageable’” (Bagemihl 262).11 The
meaning of being queer cannot be better
defined. It is a political will. And this political
will does not only concern humans. It concerns
the world around us. It concerns our ways of
entering into relations with this world and,
among these relations, of knowing and practising this knowledge. Bagemihl measures the
risks of accepting whether or not homosexuality
is natural. It seems to be the object of biologists
to try and resolve this paradox, and he knows
very well which biologists are already on the
case: it’s the sociobiologists. They have, in
effect, buckled down with an insatiable appetite
for this new problem: it’s another case that will
come to illustrate and expand their theory. It
will be even more “all-encompassing” [toutterrain]; the world will be sociobiologized.12
For the theory of kinship has a solution entirely
found in homosexuality, though it rests on a
strict conception of an orthodox homosexuality.
Of course, homosexuals do not transmit their
genes to their descendants, so normally they
ought to disappear due to a lack of descendants
carrying this gene – it goes without saying,
homosexuality is genetic. Homosexuals,
however, direct their attentions and their abundant leisure time (because they don’t have any
dependants) towards their nephews, who are
carriers of an identical part of the genetic heritage. It is therefore through these latter descendants that the gene continues to assure its
propagation. This type of biology is political,
not only in the sense for which we usually
reproach it – these theories can easily be retranslated into misogynistic, racist, eugenic, capitalistic, etc. theories – but in the sense that, to
put it simply, these theories animalize, insult,
and impoverish those for whom they pretend
to take account. In other words, sociobiological
theory – to recall the words of the psychologist
Françoise Sironi – is an abusive theory. Every
behaviour is reduced to a genetic purée; beings
become blind imbeciles determined by laws
that escape them – and that prove to be disturbingly simple. No more inventions, no more
diversity, no more imagination – and yet, if
they still persist, it’s because they have been
selected in order to allow us to spread our
genes. One cannot be both queer and a
sociobiologist.
But can we really say that animals are “truly”
homosexual, in the same sense as we can be?
Bagemihl responds: but can we say this even
of ourselves? Can we name, under the same
term, the same realities, from the amorous
youth of ancient Greece to the most diverse
modes of being today? And can we say that,
among animals, the entire range of forms of
relations that organize between the same sex
are “truly” the same?
It’s here that I find the coherence of Bagemihl’s project. Biology must respond to the
diversity and exuberance of nature and
beings; it must rise to the level of what is
required of it. This reflects the bias of what
he says about the scientific task: multiply the
facts in order to allow a chance at multiplying
interpretations. This is far from the “allencompassing” theories; the diversity of
things will fertilize the diversity of interpretations. This is what he elsewhere calls “doing
justice to the facts.”
Nature is invited to a political project. A
queer project. It teaches us nothing about who
we are or on what we ought to do. But it can
feed our imagination and open our appetites
for the plurality of usages and modes of being
and existing. It never stops recombining categories and re-creating, from the multidimensionality of each and every one of them, new
modes of identity. What is meant by being
male or female, for example, can be found
among many animals according to inventive
modes that are similar to a multiplicity of
ways of inhabiting a gender. One can find
among certain birds – and sometimes even
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despret
among members of the same species – two
characteristic situations: on the one hand, one
can find females living an entire life as a
couple, making a nest together each year, incubating eggs that one of the females has fertilized
in mating with a male, manifesting regular
courtship behaviour towards one another, and
yet never showing any mating behaviour. On
the other hand, one can find a male mating all
his life with the same female, with whom he
mates regularly and raises the young, but who,
on the occasion, mates with a male (and
never does so again). How do you categorize
this? Are these relations homosexual?
Bisexual? Are these birds consistently female
or male? Are these even good categories to
take account of what they’re doing and of who
they are?
I recognize here a project that I was able to
find in the writings of Sironi, based on her
work with transsexual and transgendered
people. The queer project that she supports
roots itself within questions of sexual and
gender identity, but its political aim is first of
all tied to a practice that obliges us to think
and that calls for thought. These two
approaches, however, aim to transform habits,
transform relations to norms, to oneself and
others, and to open possibilities. So if this clinician’s will is to learn, along with those who
address themselves to her, how to help them
fight against the “abusive theory” that her colleagues exercise against them, to “free gender
from its normative shackles,” and to support
“its amazing creative vitality,” she relies just
as much on them – those who are the experts
of metamorphosis – to help us to think and
imagine different “contemporary identity constructions” (Sironi 14–15). “Transidentitary
and transgender subjects have a function, currently, in the modern world … Their function
is to enable becomings, to show diverse
expressions of multiplicity in itself and in the
world” (229–30). To deterritorialize, to open up to new agencements of desire, to cultivate an
appetite for metamorphoses,
and
to
forge
multiple
affiliations.
145
the author.
notes
Translated from Vinciane Despret, Que diraient
les animaux, si … on leur posait les bonnes questions? (Paris: La Découverte 2012) 160–68,
180–90. An English translation of this book is
forthcoming with University of Minnesota Press,
and we gratefully acknowledge their permission
to publish these pages in this issue of Angelaki.
Copyright by the Regents of the University of
Minnesota.
1 The word “œuvre” is sufficiently well known
in English to remain untranslated in this
chapter heading, but throughout this chapter I
have translated it as “work” (e.g., a work of
art), but it also carries the slightly different connotation of “accomplishment” (e.g., accomplishing a task). In some contexts, then, I have
translated œuvre in the latter sense. [Translator’s note.]
2 Latour, Reassembling the Social 58. Latour’s
notion of “faire faire” is part of a longer expression,
“making someone do something” (“faire faire
quelque chose à quelqu’un”). Like the French word
“faire,” “make” has a number of connotations
that include creating and producing as well as
forcing and causing. “Fait-faire,” as Despret
employs it, shares in all of these subtleties. [Translator’s note.]
3 The notion of “theoretical mistreatment” is
drawn from Françoise Sironi’s work on transgender clinics. Drawing an analogy between what
happens to humans and what happens to beasts is
always perilous, however, in so far as what she
describes deals with situations and shrinks who
“theorize” those who come to them (and must
also aid the individuals looking to undergo their
transformation), and discredit them with their suspicious and insulting theories, and thus contribute
to their suffering, the analogy can still hold
without being insulting. These bewildering theories
(théories abêtissantes) have concrete effects on
animals, whether they are direct (e.g., in laboratories) or indirect, by legitimating thoughtless
treatment (e.g., that they are, after all, only
beasts, and not geniuses). The adventure of this
animal abecedary
political clinic that “makes one think” is a highly
interesting read. Sironi, Psychologie(s) des transsexuels et des transgenres.
virulent homophobes, Luiz Solimeo, refers to it,
which leaves me with little doubt of its existence.
See <www.tfp.org>.
4 The various usages of “fait-faire” in this sentence
all play upon the notion of the shield’s “agency,” as
in making something happen, making others do
something, putting something into action. [Translator’s note.]
10 The arguments that led to the decriminalization
of homosexuality following the Lawrence affair can
be found at <www.bulk.resourece.org>.
5 The 1956 presentation that I refer to, as well as
the introductory theories, can be found in the
recently republished Souriau, Les Différents Modes
d’existence. The co-authored preface by Bruno
Latour and Isabelle Stengers is important – even
essential. Their preface guides the reading, which
is at times difficult, and it raises the speculative
air that accompanies the adventure of its discovery;
it is what first drew me to the issues raised by
Souriau.
6 This little marvel of a book remains perfectly
current, and it is from this book that the
different examples of animals are drawn. It has
been a profound inspiration in the writing of this
chapter.
11 The idea of the world as “incorrigibly plural” is
cited by Bagemihl from Louis MacNeice’s poem
“Snow.” [Translator’s note.]
12 “Tout-terrain” is a term that Despret
borrows from the writings of Isabelle Stengers
to mean an idea (or concept, theory, dispositif,
etc.) that attempts to conquer and handle
every field. It is translated here as either “allpurpose” or “all-encompassing,” though it might
be better thought of as the “philosophical equivalent of a military all-terrain Jeep,” as Bruno
Latour puts it in his essay “What is Given in
Experience?”
(http://www.bruno-latour.fr/sites/
default/files/93-STENGERS-GB.pdf). [Translator’s
note.]
7 In the encyclopedic reference Aesthetic Vocabulary, edited by Étienne Souriau with Anne
Souriau, “instauration” is defined in part as “Establishment, foundation (of an institution, a temple). A
formal definition, which underlies the notions of
duration and stability. However, the Latin sense
of instaurare and instauratio implies the idea of a
new beginning, in order to bring to reality what
had not been able to previously. Indeed, the idea
of instauration implies a dynamic, active experience that finds its completion in an existence.
Instauration tends toward a work” (Souriau with
Souriau, Vocabulaire d’esthétique). [Translator’s
note.]
bibliography
8 The example of the Edinburgh Zoo penguins is
drawn from this book.
Latour, Bruno. “What is Given in Experience?
A Review of Isabelle Stengers’ Penser avec
Whitehead.” Boundary 2 32.1 (2005): 222–37. Print.
9 This notwithstanding, there is no mention of any
reference to Bagemihl’s book; it is, however, confirmed by other sources: at the request of the
court, the American Psychiatric Association
(APA) was called upon during the trial to act as
an amici curiae (“friend of the court”), a form of
general council of experts for a given problem.
Reference to Bagemihl’s book is included in the
legal notice as potentially putting into doubt the
unnaturalness of homosexuality. I have not had
access to this amici curiae, but one of the most
Bagemihl, Bruce. Biological Exuberance: Animal
Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. London:
Profile, 1999. Print.
Gell, Alfred. Art and Agency: An Anthropological
Theory. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1989. Print.
Latour, Bruno. Reassembling the Social: An
Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. Oxford:
MacNeice, Louis. “Snow.” Collected Poems. Oxford:
Oxford UP, 1966. 30. Print.
McKean, Erin, ed. New Oxford American Dictionary.
2nd ed. New York: Oxford UP, 2005. Print.
Sironi, Françoise. Psychologie(s) des transsexuels et
des transgenres. Paris: Jacob, 2011. Print.
Souriau, Étienne. Le Sens artistique des animaux.
Paris: Hachette, 1965. Print.
146
despret
Souriau, Étienne. Les Différents Modes d’existence.
Paris: PUF, 2009. Print.
Souriau, Étienne, with Anne Souriau, eds.
Vocabulaire d’esthétique. Paris: PUF, 1990. Print.
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Brett Buchanan
Sudbury
Ontario P3E 2C6
Canada
ANGELAKI
Vinciane Despret is a psychologist and philosopher at the University of Liège, but, as she
herself might insist, “let us not go too fast”
(“The Body We Care For” 128). Always circling back, swift to question and complicate,
Despret can be counted on to meticulously sift
through whatever is deemed true, neutral, or
objective, particularly in the field of ethology.
Products of habit and power are not safe in
her hands. Her terrain is how we create, cocreate, and re-create our lives, identities, and
bodies, as seen through the wide viewfinder of
our tales and texts about nature, culture,
animals, and science. In this, she seems to
don a third hat, that of a literary critic – and
here she credits the profound influence of novelist Michel Tournier (on whom she wrote her
thesis).1
Despret is fascinated by how we report on
relationships – on the different narratives
that are told and might be told about the seemingly same event. This burden infuses all of
her work: “to judge among all the versions
not which is the most true (that is indeterminable) but, in line with James’ pragmatism,
which is the most interesting, the most fecund
– the one that adds to the world, opens more
deliberations, and makes us think and
imagine.”2 She often refuses to take sides,
claiming of her disparate sources: “They need
one another.”3
No respecter of disciplinary limits, species
borders, nodes of prestige, impact factor, preexisting truths and facts, or Western science’s
exclusive authority, she instead seeks out unanticipated communicatory modes and dialogic
mixes – highlow, inout, natureculture.
Despret’s reach and popularity as a Belgian
vinciane despret
translated by hollis taylor
WE ARE NOT SO
STUPID … ANIMALS
NEITHER
and French intellectual thus extend well
beyond her formal citation index. For instance,
Saturday and Sunday mornings, we can tune in
to her radio show on Bon week-end, which is
aired on Radio Télévision Belge Francophone.4
Her five-minute segment is entitled “We are not
so stupid … Animals neither,” which is
appended with: “One finds plenty of evidence
of it and sometimes even contradictory
evidence.”5
The Saturday programme finds Despret presenting half-page vignettes sent to her by listeners – true stories involving a pet or perhaps
an animal someone randomly encountered.
She reads these to us as she might a bedtime
story, vocalizing animal sounds as required
and presenting them without comment. They
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039855
153
we are not so stupid …
are memorable readings of memorable
accounts.
On Sundays, she shifts to a more scientific
perspective, although without leaving behind
her penchant for narrativity and wonder. Focusing both on ethologists who study animal behaviour in natural environments and
cognitive psychologists who question animals
in laboratories, Despret mulls over their discoveries and probes their methodologies. Do
animals have a face – or better still, do
animals give us a face? Could mice be having
fun during experiments? Who is the star of
Darwin’s selection theory? These and many
other questions intrigue her and, through her
skill as a presenter, captivate us. She excels in
delivering quick, rapid summaries of complicated issues, which she describes as “an exercise in style that I like.”6
The compilation below of recent Sunday programmes finds her sleuthing theory construction, legal status, taxonomic classification,
research conditions, and capacities vis-à-vis
dogs, horses, humans, cassowary, dinosaurs,
sheep, and tortoises. Does this culminate in
radio listeners who are progressing in their
understanding
of
animals
(including
humans)? “Maybe yes, a little,” she responded,
“but it’s hard to say things are changing. We
cannot know whether we are ‘with’ change or
‘in’ change … All that can be said is that we
accompany transformations.”7
chronicle of sunday, december 22,
2013
L
ast October, the Sunday Times headlined
an article: “Dogs Are People, Too.”8 By
the way, I thank my student at ULB, Thibault
De Meyer, who regularly sends me references
to fascinating articles, sometimes accompanied
with a comment that pinpoints exactly where
it is “good to think.”
Let’s go back to our dogs, who supposedly are
people like any other. The article was written by
American neuroscientist Gregory Berns. He
reports how for two years he and his colleagues
trained dogs to agree to go in an MRI scanner
without the need to anaesthetize or restrain
them. “Our goal has been to determine how
dogs’ brains work, and even more important,”
he writes, “what they think of us humans.”
Now, he concludes, after training and scanning
a dozen dogs, he has arrived at an inescapable
conclusion: dogs are people. However, it is the
manner in which dogs have become people
that interests me most. You’ll see.
“Because dogs can’t speak,” says Gregory
Berns, “scientists have relied on behavioural
observations to infer what dogs are thinking.
It is a tricky business. You can’t ask a dog
why he does something. And you certainly
can’t ask him how he feels.” Besides, speaking
of emotions in animals frightens many scientists, and most have preferred to put this question aside as scientifically unanswerable.
“Until now,” says Gregory Berns.
“By looking directly at their brains and
bypassing the constraints of behaviourism,
MRIs can tell us about dogs’ internal states.”
However, magnetic resonance image-taking procedures are cumbersome: they make noise, it’s a
bit frightening, and you must remain absolutely
still. Animals had to be anaesthetized so they
could get through it. But you can’t study the
feelings of an anaesthetized animal. And so,
from the beginning, these scientists treated
dogs as people.
First, they did as is done when people are
asked to participate in an experiment: they are
asked to sign a consent form (sometimes called
an Informed Consent Form). They thus
adopted a consent form typically used for children, not because dogs are children but
because, as with children, the form must be
signed by the person responsible – in this
case, the dog’s owner. The form stipulates that
participation is entirely voluntary and that a
dog has the right to leave the experiment whenever their owner wishes. Then, scientists used
“only positive training methods. No sedation.
No restraints. If the dogs didn’t want to be in
the MRI scanner, they could leave. Same as
any human volunteer.”
“My dog Callie,” says Gregory Berns again,
“was the first. Rescued from a shelter, Callie
was a skinny black terrier mix, what is called a
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despret
feist in the southern Appalachians, from where
she came.” I looked feist up in the dictionary;
it has no translation, but feisty means spirited,
so I think we can work out the character of
this little dog. And in fact, true to her roots,
this little dog “preferred hunting squirrels and
rabbits in the backyard to curling up in my
lap. She had a natural inquisitiveness, which
probably landed her in the shelter in the first
place, but also made training a breeze.”
With the help of a dog trainer, Mark Spivak,
“we started teaching Callie to go into an MRI
simulator that I built in my living room.” She
learned to go in, place her head on a pillow,
and stay still for periods of up to thirty
seconds. She also learned to wear earmuffs to
protect her sensitive hearing from the frightening noise the scanner makes. “After months of
training … we were rewarded with the first
maps of brain activity: [her] brain response to
two hand signals [as well as] which parts of
her brain distinguished the scents of familiar
and unfamiliar dogs and humans.”
Once they published their results, Berns
explains, “the local dog community learned of
our quest to determine what dogs are thinking.
Within a year, we had assembled a team of a
dozen dogs who were all ‘MRI-certified.’”
For now, Berns says, “[a]lthough we are just
beginning to answer basic questions about the
canine brain, we cannot ignore the striking similarity between dogs and humans in both the
structure and function of a key brain region:
the caudate nucleus.” In humans, the caudate,
rich in dopamine, “plays a key role in the anticipation of things we enjoy, like food, love and
money.” Of course, in light of the incredible
complexity of relations among interconnected
brain regions, cognitive or emotional function
cannot be assigned to a single region.
However, the caudate nucleus is quite consistent: one sees it noticeably activated each time
we are involved in an activity that we enjoy,
indicating quite clearly “our preferences for
food, music and even beauty.”
When will we have dogs review our shows and
exhibitions? And why not? I like the idea of
stretching the limits of how we define beauty
and broadening our wealth of diverse opinions
155
by adding to them those of our non-human
companions!
We will return next week.
chronicle of sunday, december 29,
2013
We saw last week that scientists have succeeded
in teaching dogs to surrender voluntarily to an
MRI scan so that the electrical activity of their
brain may be measured, and these scientists
have begun to contemplate reading “what they
think” with the assistance of magnetic resonance imaging.
I highlighted an important finding: that of
the similar role and function of the central
caudate nucleus, which seems to play the same
role in humans and dogs. With us, one sees
this centre activated when we are confronted
with pleasurable situations: a piece of music
that we appreciate, a painting, food, and love.
In dogs, we noted that this centre is activated
when we make a hand signal to indicate food. It
is also activated when the dog smells the scent of
a familiar human. In the first tests, we saw it
activated when their master, who was out of
the room, reappeared. Do these results prove
that dogs love us? We cannot confirm that in
this way. However, we can nonetheless say
that many things that activate the caudate
nucleus in humans, which indicate positive
emotions, also do so in dogs. This is what is
called in neuroscience a “functional homology,”
which says something about dogs’ emotions.
The ability to experience positive emotions
like love and attachment shows that dogs
possess a level of sensitivity similar to that of
human children. And, says Gregory Berns, the
author of this research, this should lead us to
rethink the way we treat dogs. They have long
been considered as property, as things. I will
note in passing that some European states
have changed their laws and now consider
animals as non-things, which is already
progress.
“But now,” says Berns, “by using the MRI to
push away the limitations of behaviourism, we
can no longer hide from the evidence. Dogs,
and probably many other animals (especially
our closest primate relatives), seem to have
emotions just like us. And this means we must
reconsider their treatment as property. One
alternative is a sort of limited personhood for
animals that show neurobiological evidence of
positive emotions. Many rescue groups already
use the label of ‘guardian’ to describe human
caregivers, binding the human to his ward
with an implicit responsibility to care for her.
Failure to act as a good guardian runs the risk
of having the dog placed elsewhere.”
Given that the law provides no legal basis for
this guardianship, it is difficult to intervene
based on this concept in order to protect an
animal. For Berns, we must go a step further
and give dogs the rights of personhood. But,
he says, “I suspect that society is many years
away from considering dogs as persons.” Dogs
are not people.
However, he suggests, even if they have
nothing to do with dogs, two recent rulings by
the United States Supreme Court “have
included neuroscientific findings that open the
door to such a possibility.” In both cases, “the
court ruled that juvenile offenders could not
be sentenced to life imprisonment without the
possibility of parole. As part of the rulings,
the court cited brain-imaging evidence that the
human brain was not mature in adolescence.”
And so, says Berns, “[a]lthough this case has
nothing to do with dog sentience, the justices
opened the door for neuroscience in the courtroom.” And we can therefore hope that one
day someone will defend a dog’s right based
on its brain images!
chronicle of sunday, january 12,
2014
Two weeks ago, therefore last year, I presented a
chronicle about dogs and thanked my student at
ULB, Thibault De Meyer, who regularly sends
me references to fascinating articles, sometimes
accompanied with a comment that pinpoints
exactly where it is “good to think.” Not only
does this mention allow me to publicly express
my gratitude but it enables me to underline
what we have already discussed in a previous
chronicle about bees, the fact that science is a
collaborative practice (in the case of bees,
there were children in a primary school who
had led an experiment to understand how bees
locate flowers from which to gather nectar)
and that this collaboration can extend far
beyond the laboratory proper. The work I am
going to talk about today is again brought to
my attention by him, but more importantly it
is accompanied by a reflection that I will read
at the end: his remarks are fascinating and
expand our perspective.
Today, we will talk about horses and riders,
from a recent article by three researchers –
three ethnographers – Anita Maurstad, Dona
Davis, and Sarah Cowles, who interviewed
sixty riders in Norway and the US Midwest. In
the abstract preceding the article, the three
researchers write that the stories the riders
told them described how the horses, like the
riders, were changed in the course of their
relationship. To account for these changes, the
authors employ the term proposed by American
physicist Karen Barad: that of “intra-action”
(323).
Intra-acting refers to the fact that in a
relationship each partner is changed in the
encounter, or even comes to exist in a different
mode than before the meeting: in this perspective, partners – those that are and those that
could be – do not pre-date the relationship.
They become what they are in an encounter.
One becomes a rider in a tangible engagement
with a horse, in a tangible commitment to this
meeting, and one becomes a horse with a rider
during the same encounter. We sense this
from the first lines of the article: not only do
the riders talk about their horses as subjects –
as beings with their own will – and not as
objects with which they would engage in activities, but, more importantly, they show that
training together constitutes part of a practice
where beings “become comprehensible to each
other” (325).
Thus, “horse–human communication crosses
the species divide” (326). When a rider tells the
researchers that she must reassure the horse
about the fact that birds and moose do not eat
156
despret
horses, she is in the process of perceiving the
world as a horse perceives it, and things and
beings no longer have the same meaning.
Similarly, many riders explain how it is essential to modify their body movements because
they know that certain movements are difficult
for a horse to interpret, and that they must constantly pay attention not only to what each
gesture may mean to the horse but also to
what a gesture may signify that could prompt
the horse to consider, “hey, there, my rider is
talking to me and telling me something”:
“sitting straight, head resting on the body,
being balanced” (326), ensuring that every
movement will be received by the horse, etc.
“Every muscle twitch of the rider will be like
a loud symphony to the horse” (326, citing
Hearne 108). Humans learn to play softer and
softer symphonies as they progress in developing their riding talent, learning to make sense
via their own body movements, and to attune
to and understand the feel of a horse’s body
(326). And the horse does the same, adjusting
and coordinating what it transmits and what it
perceives. The horse speaks differently with
humans than it does with its conspecific companions. And the riders say their body acquires a
different language, which they say is evident
even in their relationship with other humans,
with whom they become more attentive to
body language on account of what they have
learned with their horse. In other words, these
riders are, with their horse, constantly trying
to develop a shared language, a bodily
language. They call this a “third language,”
one that is co-created by horse and human
(326).
It is around this third language that Thibault
De Meyer made a most interesting remark to
me,
which
accompanied
the
article:
“Implicitly,” he writes, “one can read here at
what point to anthropomorphize a horse is to
zoomorphize a rider (as in isopraxism). One
finds this feature, in particular, in the concept
that the riders themselves mobilize: the ‘third
language,’ the invention of a new language
which is neither the rider’s nor the horse’s,
but an undefined meeting point. The language
is the result of a relationship; it is only with
157
the construction of modern national languages
that language became a prerequisite to
relationships. What if animals were simply
teaching us to resist nationalism and other
empires?”
2014
I would suggest that today we do a bit of anthropology and talk about an amazing animal, the
cassowary. In fact, listeners who regularly
follow this programme must be aware that I
have become increasingly interested in nonscientific knowledge, or even the fact that nonscientific aspects are increasingly invoked in
science: primary school children publish their
scientific experiments; a researcher conducts
fascinating research on his own dog; to know
about horses, we question their riders, etc.
This means that the sacrosanct separation
between scientific knowledge, academic knowledge, and that of amateur experts is less and
less clear-cut – and the fact that we invite our listeners to tell stories is part of this movement:
what can we learn about animals from those
who live with them?
However, this separation between scientific
knowledge and pre-scientific knowledge has
long (since the nineteenth century) been the
rule. This separation between objective knowledge (conducted under very specific rules) and
a more empirical knowledge (said to be stained
by subjectivity) falls under the rubric of what
sociologist Bruno Latour calls the “Great
Divide.” Latour borrowed that term from
anthropologist Jack Goody, who was referring
to “anthropologists’ persistent (if not congenital) tendency to divide up human societies,
types of knowledge, and, more importantly,
systems of thought into two classes, each separate and distinct one from the other. He [Goody]
lists as an example some of the classifications
drawn since the nineteenth century: primitive/
civilized, traditional/modern, pre-logical/
logical, scientific/pre-scientific” (Journet 40).
This approach resulted in our considering
other cultures’ knowledge in an entirely different way from how we view our own.
Latour takes up the work of the anthropologist Bulmer, who notes and wonders why for
the Karam the cassowary is not a bird. First of
all, this question is based on an unexamined
conviction, since it supposes that to think that
the cassowary, a large feathered biped that
does not fly, is not a bird would be a deviation
from the normal and natural trajectory that
would make the cassowary a bird. And one
notes that this position is so unambiguous to
Bulmer that he only inquires about the contingency of Karam classifications when they
differ from ours: those that are the same as
ours require no explanation.
Taxa are only subject to investigation when,
and it is Bulmer who stresses this, “objective
biological facts no longer dominate the scene”
(“Why is the Cassowary Not a Bird?” 6). Since
the reasons behind the confusion of the cassowary must be unravelled, Bulmer analyses how
the Karam invoke a complicated story of
cross-cousins that justifies how the cassowary,
“a bird by nature,” finds itself in the taxon of
“kobtiy,” of which it is the sole representative
(5). “Happy Englishmen!” exclaims Latour.
“No one ever arrived on their shores to investigate by what quirk they placed cassowaries in
the taxon of birds” (“Comment redistribuer”
211).
No cultural explanation is necessary to
account for “objective facts.” But the cassowary
– is it a bird? Well, it all depends on how the
classifications are constructed. And if one
follows closely how such taxa are formulated,
one comes to realize that even the category
“birds” could be problematic. I propose, given
the complexity of the problem, to take this up
again next week.
2014
Last week, we saw on the question of animal
classifications in the example of the cassowary
(a large feathered biped that does not fly) that
these classifications could depend, even in our
world run by scientific knowledge, on the
culture and selections of those who categorize.
Reality does not impose itself by waving a
magic wand, but instead each of these classifications is the subject of discussions, debates,
hesitations, and stories. Adrian Desmond, in
his book on warm-blooded dinosaurs, provides
exemplary material for understanding how
classifications can be constructed in such a way.
In one of the book’s chapters Desmond asks
why, for some palaeontologists, Archaeopteryx
is a bird and not a dinosaur. Obviously, for
Desmond Archaeopteryx is not a bird. In fact,
while Archaeopteryx indeed has feathers, it is
quite incapable of flying (and so the cassowary
would not have, after all, much reason to be a
bird either) – all the more so since Archaeopteryx closely resembles a dinosaur and would
probably be considered one beyond doubt if
we had not found fossil feathers. However, for
those palaeontologists who hold to the idea
that dinosaurs are cold-blooded, the presence
of feathers excludes Archaeopteryx from the
class of dinosaurs. There are nonetheless proponents of the idea that there have been warmblooded dinosaurs. And if that is the case,
Archaeopteryx can very well be one of those.
It does not fly; its feathers do not make it a
bird. But what purpose do they serve, then? In
fact, Archaeopteryx solved the problem of
warm-blooded dinosaurs, that is to say, the
problem of maintaining a constant body temperature – of how to ensure thermoregulation.
Either one becomes very large, increasing in
volume and thus reducing heat loss, or natural
selection favours another means, allowing the
dinosaur to stay small and occupy a distinctive
ecological niche: it lies in growing feathers on
the forelimbs. With these feathered forelimbs,
Archaeopteryx could not only ensure its thermoregulation by having a protective layer but also
by waving its limbs; this enabled it to snare
flying insects, its feathered arms serving as a
net. And in the long run, by dint of beating its
wings, Archaeopteryx (therefore no longer
Archaeopteryx) became a flying animal. The
problem of pre-adaptation is solved: we wondered how birds got wings if they could not
help them fly when they first emerged; this
158
despret
issue is resolved: the wings are a response to the
problem of thermoregulation; wings only
became a flying device later.
However, if Archaeopteryx is a warm-blooded
dinosaur, then it means that the divisions no
longer hold between mammals and birds but
between mammals and dinosaurs, of which
birds would be the living representatives. Isn’t
this in the end an interesting perspective? Not
only did dinosaurs not go extinct (they merely
underwent a crisis at the end of the Cretaceous
65 million years ago), but, what is more, some
have become very good musicians. So, let’s
take good care of them, and if you would, put
small balls of fat and seeds in your gardens so
that dinosaurs remain a while longer among
us. But if you go to your seed merchant, and
you order food or shelters and tell them that it
is for the preservation of dinosaurs, do not be
surprised if he looks at you strangely and asks
if you listen to a radio show called Bon weekend on Radio Cro-Magnon.
chronicle of sunday, february 2,
2014
We spoke last week about dinosaurs and the
change of status that was imposed on certain
animals. Today, we are again going to speak
about change of status and descendants of dinosaurs.9 So, let’s talk about reptiles. For listeners
who have followed us since the beginning of this
chronicle, one could say that reptiles are undergoing a revolution similar to that of sheep when
primatologist Thelma Rowell observed them.
Once we thought to ask questions that allowed
them to show of what they are capable, sheep
demonstrated much more complex and
intelligent behaviours than scientists had previously believed. Note in passing that this revolution continues with the work of Michel
Meuret, who had the good idea to query shepherds, who show us the extent to which sheep
are inventive and socially sophisticated creatures. But let’s go back to our sheep of today,
reptiles.
For a long time, reptiles have been, in comparative intelligence studies, ranked last. Few
159
scientists were keen to see what was going on
in their heads, and those who tried came back
with results confirming that there was nothing
to expect from them; they were relatively
stupid, primitive, some kind of instinctive
machines without hearts, and, above all –
more scientifically – without a hippocampus:
in short, cold-blooded animals are rough drafts
of what was to come after them in the triumphal
march of evolution. We diverged from them 280
million years ago, with good reason. But in
recent years, other researchers have decided to
give reptiles a chance.
It was discovered that lizards are capable of
solving complex puzzles, that they adapt to
novel situations, and that they can teach us
about the evolution of cognitive abilities, including the fact that some skills are much older than
previously thought, or – an alternative hypothesis – that these emerged on several occasions
during the course of evolution. I’m going to
focus on the research of an English researcher
in cognitive psychology, Anna Wilkinson, and
her red-footed tortoise, named Moses (MuellerPaul et al.). She asked her tortoise to navigate
in an eight-armed radial maze around a central
area, which formed a kind of cartwheel. At the
end of each arm was a strawberry. The tortoise
only got one chance in each arm to retrieve the
strawberry; the tortoise couldn’t return to
where it had previously been. He had to memorize each of the arms that he had already passed.
In the first experiment, the walls of each arm
were lined with a curtain with different cut-out
shapes pinned to it.
One notes that the tortoise relied on these
cues (which he memorized) to remember
where he had already passed. If the curtains
were removed, he would find himself in difficulty. Indeed. Except that the tortoise came
up with another strategy: in this case, he understood that he had to follow, in order, the arm
adjacent to the one he had just visited. And he
succeeded. The tortoise thus demonstrated
what is called behavioural flexibility, reflecting
the fact that he was capable of adapting to new
environments and inventing new strategies to
deal with different events. Hence, reptiles are
capable of innovation.
Why had this not been seen before? For the
simple reason that researchers had hitherto
used the equipment employed for mammals
and birds, which is not at all suited to reptiles.
And furthermore, to shorten the learning
curve, they had used a method also employed
with rodents: bright lights or strident sounds
associated with events to mark the memory of
experimental subjects. But with reptiles these
sounds and lights are totally counter-productive; they paralyse them and put them in a
kind of cataleptic state. Moreover, they were
asked to accomplish impossible tasks: reptiles
never use their paws to manipulate objects,
unlike rodents and other mammals that can be
asked to open boxes or unpack things. So, reptiles were constantly confronted with impossible
tasks. And finally, being cold-blooded animals,
reptiles are very sensitive to temperature; they
need warmth. If rats can feel comfortable with
a laboratory’s twenty degrees, reptiles need
higher temperatures; they learn considerably
less well in lower temperatures. Either researchers imposed their norms on reptiles and
obtained poor results, or they had to adapt to
the norms of their subjects, which was very
uncomfortable and discouraged many.
With these new studies, one can conclude
(along with one of the researchers) that intelligence is probably much better distributed
than we imagined. By taking some of the tests
devised for animals known to
be intelligent, and adapting
them to other species, we discover that so-called “intelligent”
animals are ultimately not that
unique!
the author.
notes
1 E-mail to author, 16 Jan. 2015.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 “On n’est pas si bêtes … Les Animaux non plus”
is a feature La Première on RTBF, the public broadcasting organization of French-speaking Belgium.
See
<http://www.rtbf.be/lapremiere/emissions_
bon-week-end?programId=312> (accessed 5 Jan.
2015). This translation fails to take into account
the title’s double entendre, since bêtes can refer
not just to stupidity but also to beasts. “Not as
beastly as you may think” and “Far from stupid”
are just two alternative translations of something
best read in the original French, where we are
left to confront the supposed synonyms animal
and stupid.
5 “Ethology is a fabulous story,” begins the programme’s Facebook page, acting as a sort of
mission statement (https://www.facebook.com/pa
ges/On-nest-pas-si-bêtes/858670957485128). The
most recent programmes are available for
podcast, and the website is replete with compelling
images of animals.
6 E-mail to author, 9 Jan. 2015.
7 Ibid.
8 All quotes from Berns below are from this unpaginated article.
9 And I wish to again thank the tireless and generous researcher Thibault De Meyer, who sent me
the article I’m going to talk about today and who
fully understands its significance.
bibliography
Berns, Gregory. “Dogs Are People, Too.” The
New York Times 5 Oct. 2013. Web. 6 Jan. 2015.
<http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/06/opinion/sun
day/dogs-are-people-too.html>.
Bulmer, Ralph. “Why is the Cassowary Not a Bird?
A Problem of Zoological Taxonomy among the
Karam of the New Guinea Highlands.” Man 2.1
(1967): 5–25. Print.
Desmond, Adrian J. The Hot-Blooded Dinosaurs: A
Revolution in Palaeontology. New York: Dial/James
Wade, 1976. Print.
Society 10.2–3 (2004): 111–34. Print.
Hearne, Vicki. Adam’s Task: Calling Animals by
Name. New York: Skyhorse, 1986. Print.
160
despret
Journet, Nicolas. “De l’oral à l’écrit: Rencontre
avec Jack Goody.” Sciences humaines 83 (1998):
38–41. Print.
Latour, Bruno. “Comment redistribuer le grand
partage?” Revue de Synthèse 3.110 (1983): 203–
36. Print.
Maurstad, Anita, Dona Davis, and Sarah Cowles.
“Co-being and Intra-Action in Horse–Human
Relationships: A Multi-Species Ethnography of
Be(com)ing Human and Be(com)ing Horse.”
Social Anthropology 21.3 (2013): 322–35. Print.
Mueller-Paul, Julia, Anna Wilkinson, Geoffrey Hall,
and Ludwig Huber. “Radial-Arm-Maze Behavior of
the Red-Footed Tortoise (Geochelone carbonaria).”
Journal of Comparative Psychology 126.3 (2012):
305–17. Print.
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Hollis Taylor
University of Technology, Sydney
CB10.05.113
PO Box 123
Broadway, NSW 2007
Australia
E-mail: hollis.taylor@uts.edu.au
ANGELAKI
Brett Buchanan: As a philosopher, what drew
you to ethology and the study of animal
behaviour?
Vinciane Despret: I was trained in philosophy,
but I studied psychology because I wanted to
be a clinician; with a philosophical diploma it
was very hard to find a job in Belgium, as they
don’t teach philosophy in high school. And so
I began to study psychology and the most interesting courses I had were not the clinical courses
but the courses in ethology and animal psychology. Back at that time, the reason I really liked
ethology was that it was always surprising. I
wouldn’t say that ethologists tried to surprise
us but they shared their own surprise. They
were always surprised by the animals they
were discovering, which is maybe an important
word because “discovering” was exactly what
was happening. Psychology was just keeping
on the same track with the same ideas, but in
ethology everything was new, even if it was
not a new science. It was a new science compared to others and ethologists were discovering
so many things; they were always surprised by
these things because they did not expect the
animals to do what they did. Or we didn’t understand why they seemed so strange. Why we
expected one thing but they were doing something else. And they might look idiotic but if
you understand correctly they’re not idiotic at
all. They have good reasons for what they do,
and they see the world differently. That’s the
first thing: you know, remember the beginning
of philosophy, “thaumazein,” to be surprised,
to be curious. And I think that being a philosopher maybe influenced me so that I could be so
sensitive to that question. The question of surprise. The question of risk. The question of
translation. The question of not being in a
brett buchanan
matthew chrulew
jeffrey bussolini
ON ASKING THE RIGHT
QUESTIONS
an interview with vinciane
despret 1
routine. Because that’s exactly the game philosophers should – or do – play when they are
good. Not playing the game. What does
Deleuze say about philosophy? He says it’s “a
throw of the dice.” So maybe I was prepared
for that because I was a philosopher.
The second reason is more anecdotal. Ethologists tell wonderful stories. Ethology is a story
of stories. Even a history of stories. Because
you have living animals, who have lives, who
do things. They risk their life, they reproduce,
they have babies. They take care of their
babies. They meet someone, they have friends
(and another being becomes “someone”), sometimes they enjoy living … And these are all
stories – beautiful stories. The best drama is
written by animals, I think, and I think that it
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0969725X.2015.1039821
165
on asking the right questions
was a good choice for ethology to choose stories,
not only because it’s pedagogical but because it
always obliges and requests from us to remember that we are dealing with a living being, a
subject with their own experience.
And the third reason was a question of translation. I loved the problem translation raised.
Ethologists were, I think, really keen, intelligent and imaginative translators because they
were confronting not just another language but
totally, radically, different types of languages.
So there was an opening up of worlds and discovering that scientists can be surprised and that
surprise constitutes, maybe … their mode of
being. I am thinking here about the ethology
of ethologists, in the sense Deleuze gives to
the word ethology, as that of a practical study
of modes of being, that is to say, the practical
study of what humans or animals can do; not
of what they are, of their essence, but of what
they’re capable, of what they’re doing, of the
powers that are theirs, of the tests that they
undergo. That is what makes an ethologist a
good ethologist. I would say that if an ethologist
is not able to be surprised, he’s not a real ethologist. There are multiple talents: to be a good
observer, to be imaginative, but I think that
first one is not only to be able to be surprised
but even to seek to be surprised.
BB: Was it the element of real surprise, then,
and a love of good stories, that drew you into
fieldwork in the beginning?
VD: I am happy I did fieldwork because you
learn that – you know, it’s very easy to dream
about what fieldwork is. A lot of people dream
about fieldwork. “Ah, it’s observing animals!”
But most of the time they don’t do anything.
Thelma Rowell says that with baboons there’s
always something happening, but with sheep,
for example, you can stay there and wait for
hours before they decide to begin a conversation. It was important for me to learn that fieldwork is spending a long time doing nothing
except observing, taking notes, and hoping
that something happens and, after a few hours,
hoping that they just go back home and that
you can yourself go back home because it’s
winter and you’re freezing to death. I think
my ethology professor was right to make me
do fieldwork, even if it might have nothing to
do with what I was doing, because he also
wanted me to learn how to observe and to
learn to be modest. Otherwise, you have big
dreams about what fieldwork is and you don’t
understand what people really do. I think it’s
important to see what they really do. Like
Bruno Latour, whom I will discover later,
says, you don’t learn something by just
reading the papers, you learn by seeing what
they do and doing it with them.
Matthew Chrulew: What was it that you
learned from Zahavi and the babblers?
VD: I began with a theme of research for my
Master’s degree by reading all this literature
about altruistic birds. Mostly, if not almost
totally, subtropical birds. I don’t know about
now but at that time most thought that only subtropical birds were altruistic. Maybe there’s
some ecological condition that favours the
altruistic behaviour. But I also think that
some ecological conditions favour why ethologists want to study some birds as opposed to
others. I mean, my fieldwork would never be
in the Arctic or something like that! [Laughter.]
So I read all this literature and it’s then, the fact
of knowing profoundly one little field of ethology, that I can say I became an amateur in
Latour’s sense of the word, which means somebody who knows, who likes, but can have good
taste about things. An amateur is the one who
says – when you present him or her something
or you read a text – says, [sniffs] “No, it’s not
a good taste here. There’s no style here.” And
studying these birds that were behaving altruistically really gave me an amateur taste for the
practice of ethology. Because after the thesis I
could discriminate more finely the criteria that
make an ethologist interesting compared to
another one who goes about business as usual,
for example those for whom this bird could
have been another bird and it wouldn’t change
anything. I finally noticed that helpers of the
nest were the most studied. Mobbing was also
well documented. And I thought: why are
these behaviours so privileged for researchers
in altruism? I think that if we make this
166
hypothesis it’s because they are the most easily
observed, because the nest is easy to observe.
Mobbing is also easy to see because it’s spectacular. Thelma Rowell says something very interesting: if we have seen so much competition
it’s because we were observing things that
were easily observable, which means the way
animals eat and act together, or where the
food is concentrated or rare. But she says that
most primatologists, for example, didn’t see
cooperation in cases of predator attack because
predators don’t attack where the observer is
observing, if he practises habituation for
example. So I think that altruism was mostly
helping at the nest because that’s the way
that’s easy to observe. I think the second
reason it was so well studied was because of
the dominance of sociobiology, which for all
these reasons, if you observe certain comportement, it’s easier for this kind of theory to find
proof. Anyway, in reading all this literature on
altruism I noticed that after the surprise of the
first five or six birds – Blue Jay, Florida Scrub
Jay, Mexican Jay, and so on – they all were the
same. They were all doing the same thing, for
the same reason, in the same ways, with the
same motive. And I noticed that finally after
ten birds I was getting bored. And I was
getting bored because it was always the same
big story – there were no individuals, you
know? It’s what we call in French the quiconque,
anyone. But there were only two exceptions that
I found: one was the dunnock in Great Britain,
which were observed by two British sociobiologists, and the other was the Arabian babblers,
studied by a certain Zahavi. The babblers were
really different birds, and Zahavi was really contesting the main sociobiological theory. First,
they have stories. They were all identified, and
he gave a story of some of the birds in order
to explain them. Zahavi never stopped saying
“in principle,” but it was interesting because
the “in principles” became, you know, “they
are more flexible than that.” “Okay, we can
say that in general, but they won’t follow you
everywhere,” which means that he was attentive
to the details and to the individuality of these
birds, and I thought this was surprising for
birds, because back to that time this was only
167
the story for primates. Having a name, having
a biography, having a personal story, having
experiences, building society, as Latour and
Strum would say. So I was really interested in
understanding why these babblers were so
different from other birds, and I came up with
two hypotheses. The first one would be that
these birds are very different because they live
in some ecological condition that is different –
this is a surprise of nature. But the second
hypothesis that I believed at that time was the
hypothesis that was inspired by philosophies
of science – mostly French – that were dealing
with natural history in trying to find what was
natural and what was political in each theory.
And they were, for example, dealing with
Spencer, Darwin, Kropotkin, and others. I was
inspired by what I was reading in philosophy
of science and I thought that maybe these babblers are so original because they’re observed
by an ethologist who does not respect the
rules. As a matter of fact, Zahavi was heavily
anthropomorphic with the babblers, giving
them motives, intentions, projects, strategic
plans, and so on. So I thought we might have
babblers that ultimately are the subject of
over-interpretation. And that’s exactly why I
wanted to go to the field, to see if babblers
really were so different from other birds.
MC: So you weren’t just observing the babblers,
you were observing the scientists observing the
babblers and Zahavi observing the babblers.
VD: That’s what I wanted to do. But after five
minutes you can’t do that anymore … It was
nonsense to think that I was going to look at
Zahavi while he’s observing babblers. [Laughter.] Remember what Latour said, with the
proverb “when the sage points at the moon,
the idiot looks at the fingers.” Observing
Zahavi, I would have been exactly this kind of
idiot. And it would not be polite because you
don’t look at people like that all day long
because it’s profoundly disturbing. [Laughter.]
Zahavi thought that the only thing that was
interesting in the field was the behaviour of
the babblers, not him. And, of course, he was
not interesting because he stays still. There’s
nothing to observe. He wouldn’t have
understood why I took so much of his time and
asked for his help, only to observe him and not
what was interesting to observe, the babblers.
The babblers really were interesting, but they
were all the more interesting because I was
observing them with Zahavi. I don’t think that
I would have been interested to stay hours and
hours. I don’t have the patience of an ethologist.
Nor the knowledge or expertise. You don’t see
much while observing animals because you
need stories to see things, you need stories
that help you to collect things. I am not a real
ethologist because I wouldn’t have the patience
and I could not understand most of the things
that happen. A little, sometimes, but not
much. But it’s so interesting to hear somebody
telling you: “I see this, and this will happen
next, I can tell you already because did you
notice that this happened, just before he did
that?” These details all connect together and
make a story. And this story helps you to
predict what will happen and to be attentive to
what will happen. Otherwise, you’ll miss it.
Finally, I had the good fortune that other
people were also in the field and were not
seeing the same thing as Zahavi. They also
asked lots of questions, and you begin to understand how, upon observation, a theory can be
built – what counts as observation, what
counts as details, what counts as a good
interpretation.
BB: How did this book come to be written?
VD: I will tell you the truth about the babblers
book. I came back from the field in Israel and
decided to write an article. I had so much to
say, I thought, I can’t write this article. So I
wrote fifteen pages and sent it to a friend, and
he says: “This is too boring. Nobody would
read that.” I said, “Oh, good grief, what
should I do?” And then I heard Isabelle Stengers on the radio. And when I heard her …
good grief. This woman is really something. I
didn’t know her personally, you know, just her
name because she was already famous due to
the Nobel Prize of Prigogine. So I bought her
book, The Invention of Modern Science, and
read it and thought: I’ve got it. The babblers.
She is writing for the babblers – that’s exactly
what I felt. Everything she says may apply to
the babblers, so I have my stuff, my material.
I know what I should do with all the data I collected. And now Robert Rosenthal makes sense.
I had already read Rosenthal but I didn’t know
what to do with it, but all of a sudden, after
reading Stengers, I understood that of course
Rosenthal is wrong and the babblers are right.
They have the right to dance and to rightly do
it. Then I read Bruno Latour’s Laboratory Life.
So that’s the part of the babblers. And Hans
was written in 2003. It was written very, very
fast. But the main idea was about my surprise
in discovering that all these stories that were
trying to explain the “Hans” case were so different, as though several investigators had conducted an inquiry on this subject, but arrived
at unbelievably different stories. That is what
gave me the idea to deal with this book like a
roman policiers, like a detective novel. At that
time I had just read a very interesting book by
Pierre Bayard, Qui a tué Roger Ackroyd? It’s
such a funny story. He read Agatha Christie’s
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, and he claims
she didn’t find the murderer at the end. That’s
not him, that’s not possible. And he says:
“No, no, no, no, no. She has been the dupe of
Hercule Poirot. He was completely wrong and
she believed him. I’m going to do a new
inquiry. [Laughter.] Yes, I am going to do it
all over again so that we read Christie’s book
thinking this doesn’t work, this doesn’t work,
this doesn’t work, and he found another murderer in that book. [Laughter.] I found the one
who did it.” And it’s such an amusing and
funny book. It’s really great because his analysis
is premised on the idea that Christie breaks very
important rules in that book. And so the idea
behind my Hans book is exactly what Bayard
was doing with Christie. I don’t accept
Pfungst’s results. He’s wrong. I’m going to do
it again. That was the idea, and everybody has
noticed – I mean, good readers – noticed that
the architecture of the book was the same architecture as the police novel.
BB: A significant part of your writings is about
asking the right kinds of questions about the
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multispecies world around us. To me you don’t
seem bound by existing theories or paradigms,
you rather allow your curiosity and wonder to
lead you.
of events, signs to read, connections to make,
and so on. Connectivity.
VD: Maybe I had something that helped me a
lot. I’ll refer back to my love of stories. I’ve
always loved to read stories, to read novels,
and to tell stories and to be told stories, and
my mother told me stories, and my father
loved to tell real stories that happened to him
or to his friends. What I like in stories is how
they make links between events that are not
normally linked. If you tell a story, but you
know how it ends from the very beginning, it
might be a good story but you have to hope it
takes an unpredictable path to arrive at the
end if you already know the end. Otherwise
there is no interest at all. So, I like to make
links. One is always trying to reconnect all the
elements of the world because they are totally
disconnected. Like what Philippe Descola
calls analogism. If you read Gombrowicz’s
Cosmos, that’s exactly what he is doing. He’s
trying to find connections between all the
elements. Because for the narrator of Cosmos
the world is in such chaos that he has to
make all the connections and create links that
make a little bit of order in that world. What
is the relationship with a bird that has been
hanged by someone? And a little piece of
wood they discovered three days after that?
Maybe there’s a connection between them.
And what does it mean? And who did that?
And so on. And it’s a completely different
world. I loved this work of the imagination.
Creating links is a thing that I can do. I don’t
say that my links are good but I love to create
stories and to create links between things.
That’s why Leibniz interests me so much now,
because it’s totally weird – a totally different
way of creating links between events that he
proposed with his “Monadology.” You can
accept cause and effect, but it’s too simple for
Leibniz because effects are only one part of
the explanation. It’s the clearest part of the
explanation. That’s also why I like Michel Tournier’s novel The Erl-King; that’s exactly the
way he functions in it. Conspiracy, complicity
VD: I don’t remember. I know that he came
during my thesis because I read philosophers
about emotion and I was really dissatisfied by
what they were doing with emotion. This
thesis was complicated because I was searching
for different theories of emotion and new
frames of analysis. The exception to the traditional psychological theories was anthropology – that was my discovery during my thesis
because anthropology, and ethno-psychology
of emotions, was a really flourishing, interesting, and new field. That was a great moment.
And it was James that I focused on, because
James was really critical about the way the
sciences dealt with psychology and because his
theory of emotions was really fascinating.
James was, I think, the first one to give me
the tools to begin to think the notion of
“version,” and the notion, which is so important to me, of indetermination. The double
fact. Don’t try to separate subjective experience
and objective world. Don’t try to think that
maybe dancing Arabian babblers are a subjective projection. If you say that, it’s because
you made a choice and nothing can guarantee
that your choice is right. So, it is just a choice
to separate subjective experience and objective
world. And James helps – he gives us tools to
think this through. Not to bifurcate nature,
like with, say, Whitehead. James gives us
tools to help cultivate a site where different versions can coexist. This is the very definition of
what I call a version, instead of vision. A
version is when multiple stories can coexist;
where they are compossible, Leibniz would
say. With vision, if you say “Oh, this is your
vision of the world,” it means that it’s a subjective experience and it cannot coexist really with
mine, because this is your vision of the world,
and I can say that you don’t have the truth.
You just have an opinion. So, vision, for me,
means the exclusion of other possible stories,
whereas version, for me, is the word that
defines the possibility of multiple hypotheses
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MC: At what point did you begin reading
William James?
that can coexist. In Women Who Make a Fuss,
my book co-written with Stengers, you will find
a definition of “version” in English; it’s also in
the Abécédaire under “Version.”2 Perhaps you
saw on YouTube the crow that slips on an icy
roof with a little disk of some sort, like a
Frisbee? She takes it in her beak, puts it on
the top of the roof, and slides on the snowy
roof with the Frisbee, then takes it back and
goes back on the top of the roof and does it
again and again. It’s really funny to see. If
you see that, you can think she’s playing. But
an anthropologist who studies animals might
reproach the animalist and say: “these fantasists, connectivists, they say that this crow is
playing, but no, she’s just trying to know if
it’s eatable.” I was thinking about that and I
think that we have a good story for the
version. If it’s the case that the sceptic is
right, you exclude the hypothesis that she’s
playing. Okay? So, eating is the only hypothesis
that can be kept, and you can’t say anything
else. Animals are animals. They are only a
stomach with fur. You know, they just think
about eating, that’s the only important thing
animals do in their lives. Reproducing and
eating. But if you say that she’s playing, you
don’t exclude the fact that maybe at first she
believed that it was food, she tries to eat it,
she slips, and discovers that you can do something else with food or non-food than eating,
and she just enjoys it – a beautiful article by
Nathan Emery and Nicola Clayton has recently
commented on this video and claimed that birds
like to have fun (“Do Birds Have the Capacity
for Fun?”). This is the same with conditioning.
If you say that you learn by association and you
say association is enough and it’s not higher
competencies, you exclude everything. If you
say higher competencies, you don’t exclude
association because association may take part
in the learning of higher competencies. You
see what I mean? And for me James gives
really good tools not only to help make versions
coexist but to prevent us from excluding too
prematurely a hypothesis that could get its
chance to discover something else. And that
asks for further questions.
BB: It seems that all of your writings have an
underlying notion of metamorphosis, and even
hope. The playfulness and openness you have
towards different versions of stories show not
only what animals are capable of but how
they and their stories can transform our understandings and relationships with them.
VD: I’m an optimistic person, but this is only a
personal characteristic. I prefer to walk on the
bright side of the street. I could refer to my
parents and so on – there are a lot of things,
you know? Because I’m the daughter of a
history. I’m the daughter of a history – people
having lost their parent during the war, having
known the war, and having tried to teach their
children that their life was beautiful as well as
they could. I wasn’t born just after the war, it
was fifteen years later, but I hear it and inherit
a history and my parents were two marvellous
people. They lost their fathers during the war.
I think that really they probably believed that
the world would be better if we trust the
world. I’m probably not the only one of my generation having benefited because of this sort of
joyful optimism. The second reason is that I
went against this philosophical tradition that
was my first path, which is critical philosophy.
For example, trier les bonnes graines de
l’ivraie, if you wanted an Evangelical sentence,
which means separate the good seeds from the
bad, the wheat from the chaff. And that’s
what normally I was supposed to do. Ideology
or Science? Kropotkin – ideology. Darwin –
science. Malthus? Ideology but one that is
science, at least when it becomes Darwin and
if it doesn’t end up as Spencer, for example.
So you just make a constant operation of separating and separating and separating, which is
kind of philosophical. “I’m critical.” Critical
philosophy. And denounce. Oh, that’s so
much fun to denounce. [Laughter.] Because
you are so intelligent when you denounce.
[Laughter.] Yes, because not only are you
more intelligent than the one you denunciate
because you caught them, but you are more
intelligent than all these people who still
believe them. And so you build your own
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intelligence on the stupidity of others. And I
think that this feeling, to be ironic, sarcastic,
is a sort of bad joy, joie mauvaise in the Spinozist sense, passion triste, sad passion. You know?
To be so intelligent at the expense of others and
convert them to your truth and cure the blind.
[Laughter.] In French we say dessiller les
yeux. Open the eyes – that were closed. I
didn’t feel at ease with that because I felt that
there was something profoundly dishonest in
it. Because you always write against someone
else and you always create a kind of easy intelligence that is only built upon the stupidity of
others. That was why I could not go along
with this for very long. Thankfully, my own
eye opening happened in the field because otherwise it probably would have taken me years
before transforming an uneasiness, inquietude
or malaise into something that can be
thought, that can be used to make things, to
make thought, to make stories … I think that
the best fortune I had was that it happened in
the field. I cannot separate. My uneasiness
with doing that might have lasted a long time
before I would finally have revolted against
this kind of ethos – this ethos as a feeling, as a
way of habit. That’s why I like James. He has
humour but he never built on stupidity in
order to be intelligent. The only thing I could
do, then – instead of denouncing stupidity, malpractice, bad sciences, especially uninteresting
sciences, I could do something that was comfortable for the way I like to work, for what I can
do, because I’m not very good at denouncing
[laughter] – was to celebrate achievements and
just keep silent about the rest, which is not an
easy position in the sense that it sometimes
asks you to say nothing, just to keep silent.
With Quand le loup habitera avec l’agneau I
made a concession to that position and I criticized Harlow. I did it because I didn’t want
everyone to believe that everything is a romantic
and wonderful world where all the scientists are
wonderful people. Everybody still thought that
Harlow was such a great scientist because he
taught us love … [Laughter.]
BB: In some ways your approach highlights a
difference between yourself and particular
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streams of contemporary French philosophy
that work through deconstruction, genealogical
analyses, critical readings, and so on. How do
you see your animal projects in relation to the
various other “questions of the animal” in
Derrida, Deleuze, or even in relation to the
rise of “animal studies” in general?
VD: I came late to these discussions – first
because I wanted to study with scientists, and
they are rare, I mean in this literature, rare are
the people who really take this seriously, who
study scientists doing things with animals. We
have some people now but they were very rare
before – I didn’t know anyone who was really
studying scientists in their real relationship
with the animals. They were talking about
what they were writing and the political
context of the writing, and the political ideas
that were in the writing. But in the French tradition I could not find anyone who could help
me, except Latour and Stengers, who are not
dealing with animals but with practices; that’s
why I have been reading them and follow
them, because they are interested in practices
and they are very helpful to think about practice. Not only do they think and write about
practice, but they write about their love of the
practices – of the good practices, of course,
especially for Stengers (Latour is less normative). This is the first point.
I didn’t read Derrida for a long time, and if I
did read Derrida it’s because of Donna
Haraway, which is funny because I had to read
Haraway the American to come back to a
French philosopher. I didn’t want to read him
because I was so suspicious, suspicious of philosophers because they were talking about animals
but without knowing, and believing in the
human exception has been for me so disturbing
since the beginning. Derrida, you know, I saw
him in Liège, and he said something that was
very important for me. He gave a talk – not
about animals – it was a sort of roundtable,
and one of the participants asked him what he
thought – since he had been writing a bit
about animals – about Bergson who says this
and that, quotes a lot of philosophers, and
Derrida was really mad and said, “why are you
philosophers always quoting old philosophers
who didn’t know what we know today and why
don’t you read scientists?” To say that, given
the reproach Haraway made later on … Well, I
thought maybe this man is not all that bad.
[Laughter.] Because it is exactly what I was
thinking, that when my colleagues in philosophy say to me, “If you read about animals
you will find that … and so on,” I thought, I
don’t want to read these people, because they
were right to think what they thought, probably
not all of them but Bergson, for instance, was
right to write what he thought because scientists
were thinking the same at the same time and he
was interested in sciences. If Bergson helps you
to speculate, then yes, great, for the gesture of
speculation, for what he did with fake or faux
problems. This is important. But not necessarily the content. So take the gesture, take the
problems, but don’t take the content with it.
So I didn’t really want to read philosophy.
Then I read Derrida but with Haraway’s
reproach in mind – I think that she’s right.
She’s quite right because the cat appeared on
the scene, complicated it, but very soon, you
know … The animal is again just a pretext.
What Derrida is right about – but I didn’t
need Derrida to point this out – is that
“animal” is a concept, a really badly founded
one. That’s what bothers me in animal studies;
that it rests on that really ill-founded concept.
Because it seems that it’s again animal on one
side and human on the other. And I would
rather prefer different frameworks – maybe
the field is too young for that, but that it contains a future possible splitting. We know, for
example, that with anthropology today, if you
know a little bit, and you ask someone “What
are you doing?,” they’ll respond, “I am an
anthropologist.” The next question will be
“which cultures are you studying?” If you
don’t raise this question, you don’t know anything about anthropology; because anthropology doesn’t exist, as Dominique Lestel says
that ethology doesn’t exist. It exists in peerreviewed journals, but it’s a big word for very
different realities. Are we able to consider that
animal science or studies is a big word for
very different realities? I’m not sure. That’s
the first point. The second point is that I
didn’t read until lately all the writing of
people like Deborah Rose, Thom van Dooren,
Cary Wolfe, all these people. You know that
there is a profound difference between the way
the French tradition and the English-language
tradition deal with the problem of animality.
It’s very, very different. In France you generally
have a very apolitical way of dealing with it; the
question of biopower, and so on, has only begun
to emerge. The French tradition has been more
of an érudite tradition, dealing with old phenomenology, or like É lisabeth de Fontenay’s
history and so on. I didn’t like this tradition –
this kind of erudition that doesn’t pay attention
to what’s happening here and now, even if all
these people are very sensitive to animals.
The third important point is that people like
Thom, Deborah, Donna, all these people
writing about animals have been not only very
politically engaged and involved but morally
and ethically they were saying we have to
protect and denounce what’s happened, the iniquity of treatments and so on. I could not take
this risk. Had I done this I would have been
completely stigmatized as a militant and not as
a philosopher. What was possible in the
United States, for example, to write about the
injustice, the way we treat animals and so on,
here would have looked like a militant discourse. Scientists would have suspected me to
be a type of liberationist, and philosophers
wouldn’t have accepted it all the more because
I am a woman and I would have been, I think,
designated as “the sensitive woman” who takes
care of protecting animals and denounces their
suffering. So I strategically tried not to be
involved; I didn’t read this literature because
it could not help me. And it’s only lately that
I decided that not only have they a lot of
things to teach me but in some of their work
there is a way of thinking that is really interesting. Like when I was talking about the gesture of
Bergson, I’m talking about the gesture of Thom,
the gesture of Deborah, and they each have their
own philosophical gesture. This gesture, their
way of apprehending animals, of talking about
animals, of creating a new sensitivity because
they are really creating sensitivity, they are
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good technicians of narrative, especially Donna,
she’s an expert in creating narratives that
modify your sensitivity. Thom, I would say,
has a particular skill to make you hesitate with
the “but.” You say okay, well, Lorenz did that
– but, and he has even criticized me for this in
his book Flight Ways, and he’s right to do it.
“Despret says that what Lorenz did was – but
she forgets that … ” and he’s right because
after that you have to hesitate. You cannot be
innocent any more. So, I would say that
Thom’s skill is to make you hesitate. Donna’s
skill is to transform your sensitivity and to
transform culpability into responsibility, indifference on the one side and culpability on the
other, which are counter-productive. She transforms people with narratives that have poetic
metamorphoses. Nobody’s indifferent to
Donna Haraway, because when people are transformed they cannot be indifferent, they can
resist metamorphosis but they cannot be
indifferent.
I think that what prevents me from reading
some authors, either in France or in the
United States, is they are not talking about
real animals. They are still talking about rules,
principles, discourse and so on. And I have
had enough of that. Philosophy should take
… well, Michel Tournier explains it well.
What is it to write a philosophical novel? It is
to give a philosophical architecture to reality.
To go back to reality and be the most concrete
you can be. And that’s what I reproach, the
lack of concreteness.
Jeffrey Bussolini: As a science, ethology has
largely focused on animal behaviour that is
restricted to a particular species, population,
family, or individual. But what is the role of
the human here? How do you see ethology
asking the right questions about humans?
VD: An ethology of human beings has never
been something that excites me or interests
me because I think that, since we have
language, language should be a part of the
picture. Language is important for every being
that communicates, but to deprive humans of
what is so important for them seems to me
rather uninteresting. Secondly, I don’t like the
173
idea because I’m sure this will lead to human
exceptionalism again. If an ethology of
humans makes sense, it will be an ethology of
humans and animals together. That makes
sense. This would be a form of sociology –
not as generally practised – but a new kind of
sociology, as one can see with some sociologists
who are beginning to open anthropology to the
relationship between all animals – human and
non-human. But ethology, I think, does not
have the right tools to look only at humans
because it cannot consider language and a lot
of other things. And because it separates; it
always raises the question of whether something
is cultural or natural, and for me this is not the
right question. If ethology opens up to humans
and animals, I think the question of culture/
nature can’t be raised because not only is it
very hard to see if a cultural behaviour is
from nature or from culture, but because
culture doesn’t mean a human product
anymore. Dominique Lestel says, I think, that
ethology doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t know
if he still thinks that but he used to think
that. Perhaps a kind of anthropozoology is
needed, but even this isn’t a good term
because if you say anthropozoology you still
consider that man is unique and it’s probably
too big a category as well. So, I rather prefer
what Jeffrey does; a kind of sociology of
relationships. Doing yoga with cats for
example – it’s a sociological act of observation
participante. But I don’t think that the observer is the human one. [Laughter.] In these situations, the question is raised: who is the
observer? The question may be raised but you
don’t have any answer. That’s the interesting
question; you can see, and you can observe
how your cat observes you observing him, and
it’s very interesting. I think that, for example,
the ethology of dogs or cats is really helpful
too because the question of nature and culture
cannot really be raised, because even if all
dogs behave in a certain way, it might be
culture, but … it’s not a culture of the dogs.
It’s rather a culture of the history of dogs
with humans that transformed both dogs and
humans, and created an artefact. A dog is an
artefact. A wonderful artefact. A non-Cartesian
one. Which means also some things you don’t
expect. “Artefacts” has multiple meanings here.
MC: You’ve worked a fair bit with other
people; you’ve co-written with Jocelyne
Porcher and with Isabelle Stengers, worked
with artists through art galleries, on documentary films, with farmers, scientists, and so on.
How do these collaborations come about, and
how would you characterize their importance
for your own practices?
VD: This is a definition of my own subjectivity
that I am giving here. A part of my subjectivity
may be at rest because somebody I trust is
taking charge of this part of my subjectivity,
which means we arrive at a project of collaboration, which means that they are part of my subjectivity that I don’t cultivate, because some
other people will do it better than I can and
allow me to do exactly the stuff I’m at ease
with. So we arrive at the collaborative aspect
of the work. I would have loved to be an
artist. I have a lot of friends who are artists
and I like to discuss things with them. But I
cannot be an artist in the strict sense of the
term. It’s funny – making a movie is a
medium and it asks you to think like a filmmaker, but I don’t think like a filmmaker. I
tried to write a theatre play with a friend of
mine, with a real playwright. I began the dialogue, and he says, “you cannot make her say
that.” I said, “Why? We have to say that to
the audience.” “You don’t have to say that,
you have to show it.” I’m not a playwright
because I’m not able to translate something
from one language to another kind of language,
that is, into silence where you show or evoke
things. But I tried to learn because I think it’s
important to change, to push the border as far
as you can, and still be a philosopher while
intruding in another field, and considering not
that I am annexing the other field because the
border is still there but rather re-creating the
border. Working with artists, for me, has been
really great because it makes me explore all
these borders and sometimes jump to the
other side, and it means that the border of philosophy is not at the same place anymore because
you cannot forget you are a philosopher. For
example, the exhibition at la Villette was, of
course, a great experience, but it was not a
true collaborative experience with artists
because the artistic creator was the one really
in charge (Despret, Bêtes et hommes). I could
say a word here and there, I could give advice,
but I never worked with the artists, you know?
I didn’t choose the placement of the works …
I was still at ease in narrative, and in this exhibition I created narratively. Any time we were
working on the exhibition I was telling a story.
The last movie, the film I made with Didier
Demorcy, is “Non Sheepish Sheep.” I have
been more involved in the scenario because I
had the scenario in my mind already when we
began. As I had read a lot of Thelma Rowell
before, I knew what I wanted and when I
asked the question the scenario took place.
Didier let me be really free about that. But it’s
not really an artistic film. It is made by an
artist and me, but it’s more an exploring,
sharing movie. I’m also working with Luc
Petton, a dancer who dances with birds, and
he has been working lately with starlings, blackbirds, jays, and it’s fantastic to see. You see the
dancer dancing and the birds coming and flying
around the body, responding to each other. It’s
really beautiful. After that he made another
show, a more classical one, with a black and
white swan, called “Swan,” and it takes all the
conventions of classical ballet but puts a real
swan in it. Now he’s preparing a ballet with
the Manchurian Crane. They are beautiful
birds. Very big, tall, black and white, and they
dance. In nature they dance and, you know,
one of Luc’s dancers says that they probably
invented the entrechat, a typical figure of
dance with the legs. Luc asked me to come
and work with him, so I went to see the rehearsal
with the crane and I didn’t know what to contribute; I think that it’s perfect that way.
Because we will figure it out together
somehow. Yes it’s an expérience de pensée, a
thought experiment, but it’s an experiment
that calls for change, not in the relationship
because I don’t like the word, but to change la
mise à rapport. The way to relate to the world,
the way to connect to the world … I can try
this with Luc because what I noticed right
174
away when I saw the dancers dancing with the
crane, I thought, “Oh this is interesting
because we don’t know who the choreographer
is here.” We don’t know who the choreographer
is because the cranes are so strong, they have
their own will, and strongly mark it. They
know how to dance – sometimes they will take
the initiative and sometimes respond to the
initiative of the dancer. With this idea of how
the crane perceives the world in that particular
situation, I think that we will learn with them
because each time they answer to a gesture
and come or follow or begin to fly … they are
saying something. You don’t improvise your
own gestures, you just hope that making a
gesture will provoke one of the responses you
expect, and if not, it will be a response that
will make the dancer respond. For example,
when I saw this particular dancer proposing a
lot of gestures to the crane, I thought this was
fantastic because Whitehead wrote about a
lure for feelings, a lure for thoughts (Process
and Reality). What philosophy makes – what
a good proposition makes – is a lure for feelings
and a lure for thoughts. Lure is appât in French;
something that attracts. But in French we have
also the word appeau and an appeau, for
example, is a fake whistle that you use to trick
birds, a fake whistle that ethologists and
hunters use to call birds. In French it’s
appeau, which has the same roots as appât,
like lure, but this is a specific name to designate
the object that can lure animals. Anyway, I proposed that we think of dancing as creating
appeaux. Which means that I’m considering
that the dancing, for example, is creating for
the dancers, either for the humans or for the
cranes, a new way of perceiving the world. Interspecific ways of perceiving the world, which are
neither the same nor symmetrical because both
are transformed, and we can see the
transformation.
What I’m expecting of collaborations, then, is
to change. That I change. And this is very egotistical. Because this is a concern of mine, that
I think that I might work better if I change
because I think that I’m stuck in a routine. If
something has been working pretty well and I
have no reason to abandon it because it works
175
well, then that’s just a good reason to abandon
it. It works too well.
BB: It’s a really interesting notion of egotistical though. You’re saying that you’re doing it
for yourself but the self that you’re doing it for
is the self that you want to change, to transform, to test.
VD: Collaborations force me against my, I
wouldn’t say “laziness,” but my tendency to
inertia. If something works, why change? Yes,
change. If you think that, change. It’s risky,
but I don’t have anything to risk any more
except that I still have ten years of work at the
university in front of me, and I hope more
after that. But yes, I hope to feel differently.
To have new percepts. That’s it exactly.
Working with artists gives one new ways of perceiving, new ways of thinking, and maybe more
courage to go a little too far sometimes. Yes, to
go too far. I have gone too far sometimes but I
didn’t do it on purpose. I only noticed it
because some reactions were bizarre. [Laughter.] But I would like to go too far on purpose
– a little too far. Not to offend anyone, but
just to cross a border and see whether maybe
I’m home. Or maybe not. Maybe somebody
will say to me: “What are you doing here?!”
[laughter] and it will be nice. Just a visit.
JB: Can you give an example of when or where
you’ve gone too far?
VD: One way of going too far is what I’m trying
to figure out now, and it will probably be a direction I take with Luc Petton, is how I take into
account the problem of extinction and equality,
there being enough room for everyone, conservation problems, and so on. I don’t want to
deal with these kinds of problems – extinction,
for example – ethically. I don’t want to say
this is an ethical problem – even the term
“ethical problem” for me, I get bored as soon
as I say that. [Laughter.] The way I’ve been
thinking about extinction, for example with passenger pigeons, is to consider that if one species
disappears, what disappears is an ontological
part of reality. Following Gustav Fechner, and
James, the matter of the world is the way the
world is enduring into its existence. And one
of its modes of enduring into existence is to
think itself. The world is thinking itself. And
this makes it also exist. Leibniz has helped me
to clarify this as well. If I say, for example,
that if we lose little penguins, this is a part of
reality that disappears; not only the reality
made by the body of the existence of penguins
but the way the world is perceiving itself, by
the way, or through the way, penguins perceive
the world. What is lost is the particular noise of
the waves that only penguins can hear, and the
light that only these penguins can see. I’m not
holistic, in a Gaia hypothesis sense, but I am
trying to speculate about the fact that each
species that disappears impoverishes the way
the world is perceived. So I am not talking
only about the way the world is inhabited but
the way the world is thinking itself. And
saying that, if I say that to a scientist, I know
I am going too far. So, how can I go too far
without being completely misunderstood? It
doesn’t help if everybody believes you are a
fool. So you have to learn how to go too far,
which makes things change – I mean ways of
thinking change – but not too, too far. You
know? In this case, for example, I can say to a
scientist, and in a way they will understand
when I say it, “I am a methodological
animist.” So I am not an animist – maybe I
am, but that’s my concern – but I am a methodological animist, which means that if I speculate that way, how does it help us to change the
way we perceive the world, the way we perceive
animals, and the way we enter into relations
with them? And this is to go too far, which
means that I have to go outside of my normal
field, which was describing scientists, understanding a dispositive, and so on.
When I speculate that when a species disappears the world is losing a way of perceiving
itself – if it’s true, what does it change? But if
you ask the question “if it’s true what does it
change?” you also have to raise the question
“but which kind of truthfulness are you
talking about?” And I’m referring here to
Bruno Latour’s modes of existence. In which
mode of existence does this truthfulness
belong? It’s not a scientific truth. I am not
describing a word chain of references of
translation that comes from a piece of Earth to
the laboratory in Los Angeles, all these little
chains of translation that make the science
work and the truth become truth. The real
becoming – or the becoming real – of a true
statement. The truthfulness of my statement is
not a scientific one; that is why I specify that I
am a methodological animist, which means I
don’t say that I believe that each being has a
soul and that the world is the soul of every
being like Fechner did. It’s only methodological. Let’s try to imagine the world: we don’t
know how the world is composed. Yes, we
know scientifically how the world is composed,
but we don’t know for other modes of existence
how the world is composed. We don’t know
outside causality how things connect together,
and yet at the same time we do know, but the
term “to know” has changed meaning. I mean,
yes we know a little bit, but we have a lot to
learn and we are not well equipped for that.
So, if I say it’s a methodological animism it’s
to specify that it is just a gesture, a position I
take, and an experimental trial. If we think
that seriously, what does it change and what
should we change?
BB: Are there any particular moments or events
that stand out to you in your own
metamorphoses?
VD: Two personal experiences. One of the
greatest experiences I have had in my life is
one morning hearing a blackbird – I’ve written
about this – and all of a sudden I had the
feeling that this blackbird knew what importance means. On that morning I really thought
that the blackbird invented the concept of
importance. I really did think this … this is
going too far, I know, but I’m crossing a
border here, that if we know what importance
means, it’s because a blackbird taught us.
Because if you hear a blackbird singing in the
morning you will know what importance
means. And plus the blackbird has this characteristic – I don’t know if it has been studied
but when they sing – I don’t know if you have
the same feeling as me but, with the tympani
of the ears, sometimes you feel that it’s not
the same place where the music arrives and
176
where the words arrive – like if it was geographically distributed in your ears. I feel it that way –
I’m not sure that it’s not scientific – but I feel
that words don’t arrive at the same place in
my ears as music. When the blackbirds sing it
arrives where the words arrive in the form of
music. It was the most fantastic experience of
hybridization. And a second experience that is
funny – well, it was a fun experience – I went
to visit a friend in Normandy. She raises
horses. In the afternoon they proposed that we
travel on a carriage, an open one, you know, a
very old, open one. And I was with the driver
in the front seat. There are a lot of horses
there, you know, it’s a part of Normandy
where it’s only prairies with horses, sheep,
goats, dogs, a lot of animals, I couldn’t believe
it. I’d never seen so many before; these horses,
all of these animals, it was sort of like heaven.
We were crossing a little path and all the
animals came running to the fence to see the
two horses pulling our carriage, and they were
talking together. I’ve never noticed that
before, because they don’t do that for us. But
they did that for the horse. And I was like a
poor person, welcomed in a chateau with all
these animals. And all these animals were welcoming these horses because they knew each
other – I asked, and this man rides very often
so the horses know every animal where they go
– and the animals know the horse and all these
animals were running, just saying hello. It was
so fantastic. I was in another world.
BB: Like a fairy tale.
VD: Yes, it was. We always live under the sort
of obvious thought that the world belongs to
us. We act like that, we feel like that, we have
been living like that, we have been raised like
that. And when you see all these animals
ignore you, or they pretend they do, and have
so much conversation together, and they live
two metres from us and we ignore them, then
all of a sudden the world
doesn’t belong to us. I know
that this was not for me, but I
was involved in it, and it was
like a gift, you know? All these
animals were making me a gift.
177
the authors.
notes
1 The majority of this interview was conducted in
person (in English) outside of Nîmes, France, in
May 2014. It has since been edited, expanded,
and revised via e-mail. Responses in French have
been translated by the interviewers.
2 Despret and Stengers, Les Faiseuses d’histoires
and Women Who Make a Fuss; Despret, Que diraient
les animaux and What Would Animals Say?
bibliography
Despret, Vinciane. What Would Animals Say? Trans.
Brett Buchanan. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P,
forthcoming. Print.
Despret, Vinciane, and Isabelle Stengers. Les
Faiseuses d’histoires: Que font les femmes à la
pensée. Paris: La Découverte, 2011. Print.
Despret, Vinciane, and Isabelle Stengers. Women
Who Make a Fuss. Trans. April Knutson.
Minneapolis: Univocal, 2014. Print.
Emery, Nathan J., and Nicola S. Clayton. “Do Birds
Have the Capacity for Fun?” Current Biology 25.1
(2015): R16–R20. Print.
Gombrowicz, Witold. Cosmos. Trans. Danuta
Borchardt. New York: Grove, 2005. Print.
Leibniz, G.W. “Monadology.” Discourse on
Metaphysics and Other Essays. Trans. Daniel
Garber and Roger Ariew. New York: Hackett,
1991. Print.
Tournier, Michel. The Erl-King. Trans. Barbara Bray.
London: Atlantic, 2013. Print.
Whitehead, Alfred North. Process and Reality.
New York: Free, 1978. Print.
Vinciane Despret
4000 Liège
Belgium
Brett Buchanan
Sudbury
Ontario P3E 2C6
Canada
Matthew Chrulew
Curtin University
GPO Box U1987
Perth, WA 6845
Australia
Jeffrey Bussolini
USA
notes on the contributors
brett buchanan
is Director of the School of the Environment
and Associate Professor and Chair of the
Department of Philosophy at Laurentian University (Canada). His work is situated at the
intersections of contemporary Continental philosophy, environmental thought, and animal
studies, and in addition to a number of articles
and book chapters he is the author of OntoEthologies: The Animal Environments of
Uexküll, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and
Deleuze (State U of New York P, 2008). He
sits on a number of scholarly boards and committees, including Wilfrid Laurier University
Press’s “Environmental Humanities” book
series, Environmental Humanities journal,
and is currently translating Vinciane Despret’s
book Que diraient les animaux, si … on leur
posait les bonnes questions? for the University
of Minnesota Press’s “Posthumanities” series.
Together with Matthew Chrulew and Jeffrey
Bussolini, he edited issue 19.3 of Angelaki on
the philosophical ethology of Dominique Lestel.
183
jeffrey bussolini
is Associate Professor of Sociology-Anthropology at City University of New York; and CoDirector, with Ananya Mukherjea, of the
Center for Feline Studies, which has conducted
etho-ethnographic study of feline–human interactions since 1995. He is affiliated with the
Scuola di Interazione Uomo–Animale (School
of Human–Animal Interactions) in Bologna,
Italy. He translated Dominique Lestel’s book
on animal friendship, The Friends of My
Friends, forthcoming from Columbia University Press. Jeffrey wrote the articles “Toward
Cat Phenomenology” in Found Object 8
(Spring 2000) and “Recent French, Belgian,
and Italian Approaches to the Cognitive
Science of Animals: Dominique Lestel, Vinciane Despret, Roberto Marchesini, and
Giorgio Celli” in Social Science Information
52.2 (2013), and appeared as “Feline Sociologist” in the VICE Media film Lil Bub and
Friendz (2013). He has been Visiting Scholar
at Macquarie University (CRSI), UNSW
(Environmental Humanities), and the University of Copenhagen (CMSTS).
matthew chrulew
is a Research Fellow in the Centre for Culture
and Technology at Curtin University in Perth,
Western Australia. He was previously a
Research Fellow at the Centre for Research
on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University in
Sydney, under the supervision of Deborah
Bird Rose, where he convened two international
collaborative workshops on “The History, Philosophy and Future of Ethology.” His essays
have appeared in Angelaki, SubStance, New
Formations, Foucault Studies, Australian
Humanities Review, Humanimalia, Antennae, The Bible and Critical Theory, and the
collections Animal Death and Metamorphoses
of the Zoo. With Chris Danta he edited issue
43.2 of SubStance on Jacques Derrida’s The
Beast & the Sovereign lectures, and with
Jeffrey Bussolini and Brett Buchanan he
edited issue 19.3 of Angelaki on the philosophical ethology of Dominique Lestel. He is an
associate editor of the journal Environmental
Humanities.
vinciane despret
is maître de conférences at the University of
Liège and at the Free University of Brussels.
She is philosopher of sciences. Her first fieldwork was in the Negev desert, in Israel,
where she explored the possibility of making
an “ethology of the ethologists.” Since then
she has worked with animals and with the
humans who observe them, live with them, or
simply know them. She has been scientific
curator of the “Bêtes et hommes” exhibition
held at the Grande halle de la Villette, Parc
de la Villette, Paris, 11 September 2007 to 20
January 2008. She is the sole or co-author of
eight books, and her latest book, Que diraient
les animaux, si … on leur posait les bonnes
questions?, will be translated into English in
2015. For more information see <http://
reflexions.ulg.ac.be/cms/c_12740/en/despretvinciane> and <http://www.vincianedespret.
be/papers/>.
donna haraway
is Distinguished Professor Emerita in the
History of Consciousness Department at the
University of California at Santa Cruz. She
earned her Ph.D. in Biology at Yale University
in 1972 and has taught the history of science,
science and technology studies, feminist
theory, and multispecies studies at the University of Hawaii, Johns Hopkins University, and
since 1980 the University of California at
Santa Cruz. She has been the principal adviser
for over sixty doctoral students and served as
committee member for many more in North
America, Europe, and Australia. In 2000, she
was awarded the JD Bernal Prize, the Society
for Social Studies of Science’s highest honour,
for distinguished lifetime contributions to the
field. With particular attention to the intersection of biological sciences with culture and politics, Haraway’s work explores the string figures
composed by science fact, science fiction, speculative feminism, speculative fabulation, science
and technology studies, and multispecies worlding. Her books include When Species Meet (U
of Minnesota P, 2008); The Companion
Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Prickly Paradigm, 2003); The
Haraway Reader (Routledge, 2004); Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium.FemaleMan©
Meets OncoMouse™ (Routledge, 1997);
Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Routledge, 1991); Primate
Visions: Gender, Race and Nature in the
World of Modern Science (Routledge, 1989);
and Crystals, Fabrics, and Fields: Metaphors
that Shape Embryos (Yale UP, 1976; North
Atlantic, 2004). She is completing a new book
titled Staying with the Trouble: Anthropocene,
Capitalocene, Chthulucene, as well as a collection of short pieces titled Elderberries, focusing
on surprising tangles for human and non-human
critters accompanying each other growing older
together. Manifestly Haraway, a reissue of the
“A Cyborg Manifesto” and “The Companion
Species Manifesto,” with an extended conversation with Cary Wolfe, is forthcoming with the
University of Minnesota Press in autumn 2015.
184
stephen muecke
is Professor of Ethnography in the Environmental Humanities Program at the University
of New South Wales, Sydney. He works with
Indigenous groups in Broome (a recent book
is Butcher Joe, for Documenta 13 (Hatje
Cantz, 2011)) and on the Indian Ocean; Contingency in Madagascar, with photographer Max
Pam, appeared in 2012 in Intellect Books’ Critical Photography Series.
jocelyne porcher
is Director of Research in Sociology at INRA
(National Institute for Agronomic Research),
France. Her main field is the human–animal
relationship at work. She has worked on different topics related to human and animal intersubjectivity at work: attachment, love,
suffering, communication, and sharing of
skills, especially in animal farming and in
factory animal production. Her aim, in the
framework of French and EU collective programmes, is to conceptualize animal work (in
situated forms of production: animal farming,
zoo, circus, cinema, care, army, etc.) and to
propose a third path between “animal exploitation” and “animal liberation” (e.g., in taking
into account animal labour). She is the author
of numerous book chapters in English, including, most recently, “Are Organic Animal
Farmers Able to do Animal Husbandry?” in
Organic Farming, Prototype for Agriculture?
(Springer, 2014) and “Animal work” in The
Oxford Handbook of Animal Studies (Oxford
UP, 2015). She is also the author of eight
books (three co-authored) that highlight the
relationships between humans and animals
today and those that may exist – or not – tomorrow. Her book Living with Animals: A Utopia
for the 21st Century will be published in
English by Brill in 2015.
185
hollis taylor
is a Research Fellow at Macquarie University,
Sydney, in the Department of Media, Music,
Communication and Cultural Studies. Previously, she was a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral
Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney, a Postdoctoral Research Fellow
at the Laboratoire d’Eco-anthropologie et Ethnobiologie in the Muséum National d’Histoire
Naturelle, Paris, and a Fellow at the Institute
for Advanced Study in Berlin. Her research
focuses on three Australian avian species –
pied butcherbirds, lyrebirds, and bowerbirds –
as she reflects on animal aesthetics, human
exceptionalism in the arts, and the nature–
culture continuum. She performs her awardwinning (re)compositions of pied butcherbird
songs on violin and is the author of Post
Impressions: A Travel Book for Tragic Intellectuals, which documents (in text, audio, and
video) Jon Rose and her bowing fences throughout Australia. Her monograph Is Birdsong
Music? Outback Encounters with an Australian Songbird is forthcoming. She is webmaster
for <www.zoömusicology.com>.

angelaki

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