This brief introduction to dog theory was written in 2003 as Longhurst started working with purebred dogs. It was first published in German in 2005 to accompany the comprehensive exhibition The Photographed Animal — Useful, Cute and Collected at the Museum Folkwang, Essen. Between these two dates critical thinking on the animal started to shift, with the publication of Donna Haraway’s groundbreaking Companion Species Manifesto, and the advent of a growing human/animal studies movement. Since then a series of influential exhibitions on the question of the animal, the animal in art, and human/animal relations — prompted partially by the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth in 2009 — has led to a world-wide resurgence of interest in animal studies.
Critical thinking around the animal has in many ways failed to move on from the ideas of René Descartes, who viewed the animal as a biological machine with no thoughts or feelings. [1] Philosophical writing on animals almost exclusively refers to a wild, or nondomestic animal. The pet is missing. Not just absent from discussion, but actively dismissed. In much contemporary critical theory the pet is not considered to be a real animal and is viewed with some distaste. In these notes I review some key ideas about the animal, and examine the shaping of the figure of the human through the figure of the pet. Postmodern orthodoxy, by ignoring the individual animal, fails to offer a helpful way forward. But we appear to be on the verge of something new, something as yet ill defined. Could it be time to rethink our attitudes to the pet?
The Modern Animal
There is a wealth of animal imagery in the history of art. Yet despite the abundance of this imagery, used and read in many ways, as symbol, metaphor or allegory, it would seem that animals are rarely, if ever, represented as themselves. Animals always appear to stand in for something or someone else. In his classic essay Why Look At Animals? John Berger argues that in modernism the animal came to represent loss or absence. He claims that animals have become ‘soulless slaves’, ‘relics of the past without power’. [2] In The Postmodern Animal Steve Baker takes this argument one step further, claiming there was no modern animal. [3] He argues that in the gulf between nineteenth century animal symbolism with its secure meaning and anthropomorphic sentiment and the arrival of postmodern animal images whose ambiguity or irony or sheer brute presence serve to displace fixed meanings, there was no place for a transitional visual concept of the animal: “As the example of modernist art history as a whole suggests, the animal comes to be least visible in the discourses which regard themselves as the most serious. The modern animal is thus the nineteenth-century animal (symbolic, sentimental). Which has been made to disappear.” [4]
Berger also refers to the cultural marginalisation of animals. He argues that the ‘animals of the mind’ present in visual culture, have no real physical animal needs or limitations and are there merely to reflect our own narcissistic concerns. He cites Walt Disney’s animations as an example of how we have appropriated the animal image for our own: “In such works the pettiness of current social practices is universalised by being projected on to the animal kingdom.” [5] Where it exists, both Berger and Baker describe the animal image as a human artefact, created for human consumption and concerned with human issues. The marginalisation of the animal is seen as a one-way process. The animal itself remains without a voice.
The Postmodern Animal
Critical discourse surrounding the postmodern animal is an extension of these ideas. If the modern animal is said to represent absence or loss, or worse, is not represented at all, the postmodern animal becomes highly visible, but in a way that suggests further fragmentation of the idea of the animal as a whole living entity or being. Steve Baker coins the term botched taxidermy to describe the fate of the animal in postmodern art. Many examples of postmodern art sit comfortably within this definition. For example, Olly and Suzi’s shark painting made while incarcerated in a small metal cage in the ocean; macabre carcasses such as Damien Hirst’s tiger shark in formaldehyde The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living; assembled body parts and skins from a variety of miscellaneous animals such as Bruce Nauman’s Untitled (Two Wolves, Two Deer) and Mark Dion’s polar bear clothed in a goatskin, Ursus maritimus. [6] Baker challenges the validity of an aesthetically pleasing animal image in contemporary art and argues that the look of the postmodern animal is more likely and appropriately to be that of a fractured, awkward, ‘wrong’ or wronged thing, which it is hard not to read as a means of addressing what it is to be human now. [7] He suggests that the postmodern animal is often seen to be the image of the artist or the viewer at one remove; the botched taxidermy a symbol of contemporary identity politics. [8] He also suggests that the postmodern animal is used as a metaphor for human creativity in opposition to the fixity of human identity.
This concept is explored more fully by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari in their theory of becoming, which stems from their idea of becoming animal. Unlike conventional philosophers they avoid dividing the world into human and animal. Instead they liken the world to a rhizome: “a collection of interlocking and interacting systems (animal, mechanical, textual, or psychical) or “plateaus”. The rhizome cannot be reduced to a singular identity or an autonomous function, since it always exists in conjunction with and in excess of other plateaus and rhizomes.” [9] This philosophical perspective allows for a dynamic movement between worlds that Deleuze and Guattari call becoming animal; their answer to the blocked communication between the human and animal worlds: “To become animal is to participate in movement . . . to cross a threshold, to reach a continuum of intensities that are valuable only in themselves, to find a world of pure intensities where all forms come undone, as do all significations, signifiers, and signifieds, to the benefit of an unformed matter of deterritorialized flux, of nonsignifying signs . . .” [10]
The Animal as a Multiplicity
While reviewing these perspectives on the animal, what becomes apparent to me is that, from Descartes onwards, they all rely on the idea of the animal as a multiplicity, a concept in itself. Animal becomes a general category, a society, the ‘animal body’, but never refers to an individual animal. Not only do animals not think and feel, but they also do not die. As one animal fades away, it is always replaced by another of its kind. Animals are considered to be part of Nature. There is a refusal in philosophical and theoretical thinking to even consider the possibility that animals can be individuals in the same way that individuals make up our broader human societies. For example, Akira Mizuta Lippit writes: “Deleuze and Guattari insist on the idea of multiplicity as an essential feature of their theory of becoming. To this end, animals are the perfect embodiment of multiplicity, since they, unlike human beings, can never be reduced to individual beings.” [11]
Individual animals, most specifically pets, just don’t seem to count. I can only assume that Deleuze and Guattari believe that the concept of becoming animal only applies to the non-domesticated animal. Although one might become rat, insect or wolf, for example, one can’t become whippet. Or at least not unless a whole pack of whippets were to appear running freely across the countryside in a kind of soft-focus nature fantasy. I am surprised at the pet’s exclusion from postmodern debate. Surely the relationship between humans and their pets are symptomatic of the disrupted or fluid borders that have been seen to typify postmodernism? In the home, contact between human and animal has never been so intimate. Berger’s concept of ‘parallel lives’ no longer holds. Extreme examples of animals moulded to human tastes, such as the Pekinese that won the British dog show Crufts in 2003, could easily be labelled as abject; another postmodern concern. [12] However, for Berger the pet is not a proper animal, [13] and Deleuze and Guattari claim that anyone who likes cats and dogs is a fool, [14] despite Deleuze’s surprising revelation shortly before his death that he had kept cats throughout his life. [15]
The Advent of the Pet
The domestic pet is a relatively new phenomenon. In spite of the abundance of pet ‘muses’ amongst writers and philosophers, the pet has no position in modern or postmodern theory, other than as a thing to denounce or abhor. Somehow pets are seen as not right. There is a catalogue of negative criticism: Berger views the pet as a narcissistic reflection of our own petty neuroses… Deleuze, believes that dogs and cats are especially pitiful in their dependency on their human owners … With the odd exception - Jeff Koon’s Puppy, with its ironic notions of ideal form? or perhaps William Wegman’s Weimaraners where anthropomorphism is used playfully to distract us from the animal’s pet status? - it seems the pet really can’t be taken seriously in contemporary art. I wonder why there is such discomfort around the idea of pets? Why do we refuse to take them seriously as animals? It is implied that they have simply become too close to us; that the lack of critical distance between human and pet heralds a return to anthropomorphism and sentimentality. I recognise a little of this in some of Wegman’s dog portraits. The addition of human eyelashes to the dog Fay in the double portrait Fay and Andrea creates an incontrovertible feeling of unease. In other images the sexualisation of the dog’s body in the human sense of the term, by dressing it in a bikini or a pair of high heels, also leaves me feeling unsettled, although Wegman’s perverse disguises do serve to reveal the gap between dog and human. However, these specific criticisms do not begin to address the core of widespread intellectual discomfort about pets.
I am very conscious of the changing role of the dog in society and the impact of this change on both human and dog. In Wegman’s Evolutionary, a dog rolls on a sofa, its body echoing the curved form of the plastic toys arranged behind it; an elephant’s trunk, a deer and a dinosaur. The dog’s gaze is directed unequivocally at the viewer. This image of domesticity eloquently emphasises the dog’s pivotal link between human and animal worlds, and reminds us of the evolutionary process. In the passage from wild animal, through domestication to companion species, animals and humans have developed an intimate relationship in which power, control, love and desire are intertwined. Our relationship to our pets is very different to our relationship to a working animal. In the past dogs were bred for specific functions, the breeder focussing on a particular attribute such as a dog’s acute vision or highly evolved sense of smell in order to improve its performance at work. This in turn would have an impact on the visual development of the breed. Some dogs have won our affections sufficiently to make the transition from working dog to pet. The role of the whippet, for example, has changed from that of a hunting or poaching hound, to one bred predominantly for showing. The show whippet is a highly posed, highly constructed domestic animal, bred by a selective process to an ideal standard. It lives as a pet in its owner’s home. However, as the skills required of the working dog are no longer so significant in a pet, the importance of the visual impact of the dog has increased. A whippet’s temperament remains important, but in pedigree programmes the breeding is based almost exclusively on the look of the dog. In fact, as a show dog, the whippet is already predominantly conceived of as an image. This suggests a passive role for the dog, transforming it from active sighthound, prized for its ability to spot and hunt game, to a dog that is looked at. As a visual object, the pet can be seen in a similar light to historical representations of women, with all that ‘being looked at' implies. [16] This role also supports Berger’s notions of the pet as a compromised animal and may even go some way to explain its absence from serious critical thinking. The dumb blonde has much in common with the dumb animal… In fact, an animal’s lack of language only compounds this argument.
The Animetaphor, Language and Image
In philosophical terms, one of the most discussed differences between human and animal is our capacity for language, and through language our capacity for symbolic thought. Lippit argues that due to this lack the animal becomes a negation of language: “The animal brings to language something that is not a part of language and remains within language as a foreign presence. That is because the animal is said to lack the capacity for language, its function in language can only appear as an other expression, as a metaphor that originates elsewhere, is transferred elsewhere.” [17] Nicolas Abraham and Maria Torok adopt the term antimetaphor, which Lippit develops further. He explores the animal as metaphor, the living animal, the living metaphor that is both metaphor and not metaphor; the antimetaphor, the animetaphor. [18] Animetaphor is a visual concept. The animal’s lack of language marks the animal in art, despite the fact that the image, by its very nature, is silent.
This suggests an interesting relationship to the photograph, another semiotic system which also has an inverse relationship to language. Lippit argues that both the photograph and the animal are linked by a relationship to the unconscious: “One finds by the latter half of the nineteenth century, a set of terms – animal, photography, unconscious – coalescing to form a distinct topology. Each term defines or portrays a distinct focus of being that cannot be inhabited by the subject. It is, nonetheless, a place of being or becoming. Animals and photographs can be seen as resembling versions of the unconscious. One can interpret the animal as a version of the unconscious in nature and the photograph as a technological unconscious.” [19]
Lippit unquestioningly links the animal and nature. The pet on the other hand is clearly a human construct. It can be argued convincingly that nature is also a human construct, but I suspect Lippit intends the connection between animal and nature to suggest something primal, untouched by human intervention. With this in mind I am particularly interested in Lippit’s writing on the relationship between the animal and the photograph, especially in the context of portraiture. A portrait is a social document. Its function varies from basic documentation to high art. A portrait of a pet dog can never be viewed as a representation of nature. The dog is a human construct and the portrait, a human artefact, only serves to reinforce this idea. However, dogs retain a distinct animality. Both dogs and photographs offer us an alternative way to consider human identity. It is possible to make a connection between the function of the pet – a symbol of the latent animality in us, a reminder of our ancestry – and the function of the photograph. The photograph is a representation of a moment in time. This slice of time is not only a specific present that is already past, but also an image that exists now. By looking at a photograph we engage our minds in our own present, reflect on, or tune into, those indefinable aspects of an image that words are inadequate to describe. Each image has its own history and connotations, which constantly change depending on who is looking at the photograph, where they are, and at what point in time this takes place. The present is not only an imminent past, but also the precursor to the future. It is an active changing space. Could it be that both animal and photograph offer us a particular opportunity for proactive reflection? No two people will read them in the same way, but in the process of looking, we may spark a different approach to our future.
In this light, emphasis on an animal’s lack of language is distracting. Dogs are effective visual communicators precisely because they can’t talk. People communicate with dogs by looking closely at their visual expression. When looking at a photo of a dog, I may identify with it instantly, without necessarily knowing why. A dog portrait is somehow more pared down than a similar human portrait. It has a direct impact. A human portrait, however stripped down in style and expression, such as the portraits of Thomas Ruff, still gives me an idea of the sitter’s identity as I look for clues in dress, hairstyle, make up. The image is silent but the viewer can give the subject an imaginary voice. A portrait of a dog is altogether different. The dog’s eyes meet mine. The look is intense, yet it is immediately clear to me that the dog’s thoughts are beyond my reach. Despite the invitation in his eyes, it is impossible to know what he is thinking or feeling. But there is an undeniable connection. I somehow recognise enough in the animal gaze for it to have meaning for me. Its lack of specificity holds an attraction. It is abstract, non-specific, ambivalent, and as such opens up possibilities for other ways of viewing myself.
Animal Agency
The animal gaze suggests an agency that is missing from most theoretical interpretations of the animal. In our high-tech society animals are very visible. But they mainly fall into the category of Berger’s culturally marginalised ‘animals of the mind’. We are bombarded by amazing wildlife documentaries and historical reconstructions such as the BBC’s Walking with Beasts. These are creatures in remote parts or past eras that we would never otherwise encounter. They are frequently romanticised representations, which play on the heroic or dangerous nature of the animals. With a pet, things are very different. We have an unmediated relationship. We don’t just look at them, they look back at us. It is a two-way exchange. Berger suggests that the pet offers its owner a mirror to a part that is otherwise never reflected, [20] but then pronounces that this look functions as a kind of narcissistic completion of an otherwise unfulfilled or unconfirmed identity. Deleuze and Guattari also suggest a potent animal agency in their concept of becoming, but then negate this by excluding the individual or domestic animal. I find this obsession with the wild animal unhelpful. Works of art inspired by wild animals usually owe more to fantasy than knowledge. There is nothing wrong with this. My argument is with the moral superiority given to these works, which are often seen to represent an eternal truth in comparison to the contingent pettiness of the household pet. There is no such thing as eternal truth. But the pet, in its unique position, acts as a gateway between the domestic and natural worlds. Ours is a relationship fuelled by intimate knowledge. Our proximity to the pet allows us to explore intuition and emotion in a way that would not otherwise be possible; the pet does offer us a mirror to otherwise unknowable parts, and is not just an emotional prop for the sad or inadequate. In his book Animals in Film Jonathan Burt proposes that appreciation of the asymmetry between the human and the animal look may be necessary to some form of mutual recognition. He argues that the possibility that this is merely a fantasy or idealisation of human-animal relations is mitigated by the fact that on film the image constantly exploits the limitations of seeing and plays on the difference between what we see and what we know. Burt proposes that it is the otherness of the animal gaze that marks the boundary between animal and human, but also that this boundary is fluid, constantly subject both to the ambiguities of the status of the animal and the ways in which the exchange of looks keeps that boundary shifting. [21] For Burt, we are defined by how we are seen by the animal. This approach proposes a different relationship between human and animal to that suggested by Berger and the rest. Can we reject the idea that pets are simply about ourselves, that dogs, for example, can somehow substitute for children or lovers? Can we start to view them as the separate, seductively different species that they are?
Jo Longhurst, 2003
First published: ‘Anmerkungen zum fehlenden haustier’ in Nützlich, süß und museal - das fotografierte Tier / ESSAYS, Museum Folkwang / Steidl, Göttingen, 2005. ISBN 3-86521- 237-9
[1] Descartes suggested that animals differ from man in one highly significant way. Primarily due to their lack of language, and in contrast to his defining notion of man, I think therefore I am, he pronounced animals incapable of thought and feeling, creatures without a soul. By creating a clear divide between body and soul, and by defining the body by the laws of physics and mechanics, he reduced the animal to the model of a machine.
[2] John Berger, 'Why Look at Animals?' 1977, In About Looking. (Vintage Books, New York, 1992) p12
[3] Steve Baker, The Postmodern Animal. (Reaktion Books Ltd, London, 2000) p20
[4] Baker p21-22
[5] Berger p15
[6] For a detailed discussion of these works and botched taxidermy see Baker p55-61
[7] Baker p54
[8] Baker p8
[9] see Akira Mizuta Lippit. Electric Animal: toward a rhetoric of wildlife. (University of Minnesota Press, 2000) p234
[10] Deleuze, G and Guattari, F, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1986) p13
[11] Lippit p131
[12] This argument becomes more potent as it transpires that Danny, the Pekinese in question was subject to an investigation following accusations that he underwent a secret face lift prior to the competition. See The Sun, March 31 2003, p15
[13] Baker p168
[14] Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus; Capitalism and Schizophrenia. (University of Minnesota, 1987) p240
[15] Baker p184
[16] I refer here to the controlling aspect of the male gaze as exemplified by Foucault’s writing on the Panoptican. Representations of women in art often ensured that they were seen, but did not see; the object of information, but never a subject in communication.
[17] Lippit p166
[18] See Lippit p165-6 and 169-70 for a comprehensive discussion of this concept
[19] Lippit p177
[20] Berger p15
[21] Jonathan Burt. Animals in Film. (Reaktion Books, London, 2002) p72