Three Most Important Consequences of Human-Animal Distinctions - Essay Example

Three Most Important Consequences of Human – Animal Distinctions In today’s world of post-modern, post-colonial globalization, pressures of time and space have reached their peaks in the spheres of all living beings. Even as man has destroyed much of the green cover on earth and plants are fighting a losing battle with man for their existence in this world, man - animal conflicts have increased globally, bringing animal rights issues into sharp focus. Distinctions between human beings and animal have existed even in pre-colonial ages; racial politics and economic dimensions of colonialism and globalization have only helped sharpen the differences between man and man based on human – animal models of distinctions. The fallout of such differentiations is enormous in terms of social values, and has retrograded human beings in their positions the saviours of the world. The three most unmistakable consequences of human-animal distinctions may be understood as 1) the loss of equality within the human beings as a species with distinct hierarchies on the basis or skin colour and tensions that arise thereof; 2) the gendered subjugation of female bodies (both physical and cultural) 3) unconscious conversion of human-beings into animals by constant dehumanizing activities practised by human beings. The same shall be discussed in the following pages drawing appropriate references from the works of Stephen Thierman (2010), Val Plumwood (1999), Glenn Elder, Jennifer Wolch and Jody Emel (1998), and Tom Herron (2005) among other works. White Human Animals - First among Equals Long years of colonization around the world has spread the western concepts of human beings occupying the most supreme position in the natural world and the notion of a human-animal divide that marks the process of evolution. These ideas have now transcended their boundaries and the human-animal distinctions have been applied to erect structures of powering the production and continuation of racial and ethnical differences, within human communities. In simple terms, animals are far inferior to human beings. And within the human species, there is again an evolutionary process, with those most resembling animals being ranked the closest to them and those most unlike animals, the highest. As explained by Elder, Wolch and Emel (1998), “Turning to race, historically, people of colour (especially Africans) have been situated by Westerners as lower on the "chain of being" and thus in closer evolutionary and behavioural proximity to nonhuman animals (especially the great apes)” (p.195). The hierarchy places the people of white skin colour, at the top with red, brown and yellow skinned (Latinos and East Asians) in between, and the blacks (Africans) the bottom. The practical implications of such power-hierarchy are visible in the globalized economics of today with preferential treatment based on skin-colour for higher-end jobs. Applying race the application of human – animal distinctions have become a sort of “Foucauldian axe” or “technologies” as defined by Thierman (2010, p. 94) to “determine the conduct of individuals and submit them to certain ends or domination”. LeDuff (2000) has given the most powerful illustration of above hierarchical power-plays their impact on the demographics of the small suburb, Robeson County in North Carolina, as witnessed in an abattoir. While whites, blacks, American Indians and Mexicans, all had their own “separate stations,” it is the blacks and Mexicans who are left with all the “dirty jobs at the factory” (LeDuff 2000, p. 184). The animal slaughterhouse, where “people” and “not pigs” are killed and where human beings are treated like “animals” (LeDuff 2000, pp. 184-7), is a typical example of human- animal divide, with dominant whites are human beings while ‘others’ are lower human beings. Agrees Thierman (2010) that “a lack of inclusivity contributes to the problematic racial relationships in this slaughterhouse; the institution fails to foster, or support, the idea of a basic equality existing between human beings regardless of their race” (p.105). Uncontrolled Passions, Transgressive Bodies, Gendered Subjugation The second most important consequence of the human-animal distinctions can be seen in abysmally low position accorded to the female gender of human species and the parallels drawn between animal behaviour and female bodies. As pertinently pointed out by Elder, Wolch and Emel (1998) according to “Western thought, women's bodies have been deemed like animals due to their biological role, seemingly uncontrolled passions, and perceived irrationality” (pp. 194-5) and therefore, female bodies were transgressive by nature, and need to be disciplined and subjugated. The parallels to above idea are found in a number of instances in the works of various authors. The example of Mercedes Fernandez (LeDuff 2000), the Mexican woman being blamed for the faults of Billy Harwood (the white male convict with the equity of a nigger) shows the subjugated gender roles accorded to women. The most abhorring parallel drawn to animals and women, as also parallels of racist inequalities can be seen in Coetzee’s work Disgrace, through the character of David Lurie. David equates the gang rape of his daughter Lucy by three black men as “not raping, they were mating” and that their “seed driven into the woman not in love but in hatred, mixed chaotically, meant to soil her, to mark her, like a dog's urine” (Coetzee 1999, p. 199 cited in Herron 2005, p. 489). Val Plumwood (1999) also narrates an interesting example of the conventional gendered lines in which the human-crocodile encounters in the Kakadu backwaters of Australia have been illustrated in the media, wherein “appropriating the active struggle and escape parts for the male hero and representing the passive "victim" parts in the character of an irrational and helpless woman who has to be rescued from the crocodile-sadist (the rival male) by the bushman hero.” (p.6) Plumwood accurately observes the gender play in the human-animal divide and its outcome of the submissive role expected of the female sex, and that “that the bush was no place for a woman” (1999 p. 6). Dehumanization – The Silent Revenge of Non-Human Animals The third most unmistakable corollary of the human-animal divide is the dehumanization of human beings, or what Herron (2005) refers to as “transmutation” (pp.480-2). Explained in simple terms, ‘transmutation’ is the absorption of animalistic characters into human beings through the constant human-animal interaction, which then transforms human beings into animals completely devoid of human characters or qualities, in other words they become dehumanized. Like, for example, the dramatic transmutation of Gregor Samsa into an insect, a flea in Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis (1915). The process of dehumanization need not always be as dramatized and sudden as in above example. Dehumanization can be a gradual process, as Herron (2005) argues, taking place in small “episodes” like in the case of David Lurie in Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), the “reciprocity and exchange with animals; In being close to animals, in looking after them (even when they are dead), in learning from them, and in dwelling amongst them” (p. 480). Elucidating his argument further, Herron (2005) cites Deleuze and Guattari (1986) to give show what transmutation of human beings is all about, “To become animal is to participate in movement, to stake out the path of escape in all its positivity, to cross a threshold, to reach a continuum of intensities that are valuable only in themselves…” (p. 481). This appears to be the case in quite a few instances not only in Coetzee’s works, but also in the real factory settings of Robeson County in North Carolina. Interestingly, in LeDuff’s (2000) description of the happenings in the pork production unit, one gets another dimension of the transmutation of human beings. Applying Michal Foucault’s theories on the discipline, surveillance, punishment and subjugation, Thierman (2010) points out that, “both human and nonhuman bodies are deeply shaped by this (carceral) environment which they inhabit.” (p.106). While the pigs are completely disfigured and lose both their animal forms and lives in the abattoir, the human workers within the factory settings too become much like the pigs they handle. Right from becoming blunt and desensitized to killing, to becoming drained of all energy and thinking process that is so vital to human beings, the human workers in there reflect the “image of a kind of death in life, a zombie-hood grounded in the tasks performed at the plant”; they ironically become, the very “bacon” they bring home from the slaughterhouse (Thierman 2010, p. 106). The process of becoming dehumanized, as seen in all above examples are in relation to mental, intellectual, behavioural aspects human nature. Dehumanization in all above examples implicitly refers to a sort of reduction in mental and behavioural capacities of human beings, from the perspective of human beings. An alternate perspective - crocodile perspective, to be more specific, to the concept of dehumanization, is given in Val Plumwood’s (1999) encounter in the natural world, where man is just another animal. Human-animal distinctions inherently point to the supremacy of human beings in the food chain. This means, from human perspective, the bodies of all other animals can be considered ‘meat’ whereas human beings themselves can never be considered ‘meat’ for fellow human beings or other animals. However, ‘meat’ is precisely how human beings are viewed as, from the perspective of crocodiles in the natural environment. Human beings are as much pieces of ‘meat’ as any other prey in animal perspective, points out Plumwood (2000). “It was a shocking reduction, from a complex human being to a mere piece of meat. Reflection has persuaded me that not just humans but any creature can make the same claim to be more than just food” notes Plumwood (2000, p.7), of her battle for survival with a crocodile. Thus, it appears that in their own mute way the ‘non-human’ animals are taking silent revenge on human beings through their constant interactions with the latter, by transmuting, dehumanizing, and reducing human beings to become more akin to ‘non-human’ animals. In sum, post-colonization has left behind some indelible marks in the way human beings view their relationship with other fellow living beings on earth. The demands of shrinking space, advancements of time, and effects of globalization have only increased the impact of human-animal divide. Three important consequences of the divide discussed here are a) parallels of human-animal distinctions drawn to reduce ‘other’ races to an inferior status as compared to white people, b) reduction and subjugation of female human bodies as being similar to animals, and c) reverse transfer of animal traits into human beings. The discussed consequences have helped in the process of rethinking man-animal relationship and understanding different perspective on the subject. References Elder, Glenn., Wolch, Jennifer., and Emel, Jody (1998). Race, Place and Bounds of Humanity. Society and Animals. 6(2), 1998, pp. 183-202(20). Herron, Tom (2005). The Dog Man: Becoming Animal in Coetzee's ‘Disgrace’. Twentieth-Century Literature 51.4 Winter (2005), pp. 467-90. LeDuff, Charlie (2000). “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die” reprinted in Cary Wolfe (ed.), Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 183-197. Plumwood, Val (1999). Being Prey. The Ultimate Journey (Adapted from Travelers' Tales 1999). pp. 1-8. Thierman, Stephen (2010). Apparatuses of Animality: Foucault Goes to a Slaughterhouse. Foucault Studies, 9, September 2010, pp. 89-110. LeDuff, Charlie (2000). “At a Slaughterhouse, Some Things Never Die” reprinted in Cary Wolfe (ed.), Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003), 183-197. Read More