Relationship of Animal and Man

Relationship of Animal and Man

I saw this news story on Yahoo News about a pitbull going through great lengths to save its owner from a train. I found it fascinating because I’ve heard many stories like this before. It’s a great lens through which to analyze the relationship between man and animal, or more specifically in this instance, man and dog.

 

Dream Sounds

For my Deep Listening exercise, I chose to address the idea of sound in dreams – sparked by Oliveros’ suggestion of “Dream Sharing” on page 4.  Instead of sharing with a partner, as instructed in the book, I kept a dream journal over the past few days to examine.  I expected to notice some sort of soundscape in my dream, whether it be insect sounds, bird sounds or even just the natural weather in the background of my mind’s creation – but so far as I can remember, the only sounds I could hear were the ones that were pertinent to my dream (which as dream logic is rather strange, caused these to be quite odd) or ones I actively noticed were missing, and seem to have inserted into my dream actively if I was dreaming lucidly. In cases where I was trying to remember a completed dream, I hardly had any memory of noticing sounds. Over the past few days, I’ve encountered indoors and outdoor environments in my dreams, but all were lacking in ambient noise – I found that I experienced much more focus in my dreams on color schemes and emotion than sound.  I’m not sure if this means that I am simply not attuned to listening for sounds in my dreams, if dream sounds don’t exist for me because I don’t notice many soundscapes in my waking life and thus do not produce them subconsciously, or if I am not remembering sounds I hear in my dreams after having awoken.  I am inclined to think that I am not noticing sounds in the real world, and thus when I create a dream world do not insert these elements of reality into fiction.  Uexhull writes about how a stimulus – in this case a sound – must be noticed by the subject in order for it to exist in their umwelt.  Essentially, only sounds that are noticed are deemed relevant and analyzed by the subject for a part of their perceived world.  And since the dream world is dependent at least in part on this real world, if there is a lack of noticed sound material for the subconscious to draw on, then the dream world will be sparsely populated with sounds. Especially after taking this class, I thought I was fairly in touch with the sound aspect of our world, however my own subconscious seems to indicate that I don’t notice nearly enough of the sounds that surround me in my every day life.

Dawn Chorus, May 1st

May 1st usually is a good day for hearing from the birds, as they migrate through, so it was appropriate that insomnia had me up in time to record this dawn chorus. What species can you identify? The chorus was over in a half hour. I like to think of this wave of song, continuously sweeping the planet (24/7), as we rotate into the dawn.

Animal Renderings: The Library of Natural Sounds

My post on rendering animal sounds, for the sound studies blog, Sounding Out!

In a time of mass extinction, how are we to approach the rendering of animal sounds in our mediated environments? Do these sounds have agency? Does listening to and “capturing” animal sounds bring us closer to them, or only lure us, with an illusion of immersion and unity, away from realizing the dark nature of our ecology, and the urgent reforms needed, if we are actually to help animals (does our rendering and consumption of whale song—pace what Songs of the Humpback Whale has done for whale conservation—end up perpetuating the same extractive process that “renders” whale blubber)?

I Like Pigs and Pigs Like Me

In coincidence strangely relevant to our class two weeks ago, I just happened to stumble upon a reference to artist Miru Kim’s installation I Like Pigs and Pigs Like Me, undoubtedly related to Joseph Beuys’ I Like America and America Likes Me.  I thought I’d share, although her exhibit doesn’t seem to have received nearly as much attention as Beuys’ did.  Also, this website gives a bit of a different perspective on Kim’s intentions with the installation than the first, but the contrast between these two accounts is interesting in its own right.  Essentially, Kim seems to focus more on finding her humanity by living with these pigs than Beuys did, instead of trying to become or access the animal by living with them.  Her focus on skin and nudity, not just in this piece, also lends a different flavor to her work.  However, it seems that she is still exploring the relationship between human and animal, albeit in a light we haven’t encountered thus far.

Oh, the bells, bells, bells!

I wonder what role our awareness and subconscious plays in our listening to and hearing of specific sounds? I don’t mean listening actively for a sound, but rather bringing it to the forefront of your consciousness and considering it, and then letting it recede back into memory – only to notice it more so than ever before when next exposed to it.  I wonder this, because early yesterday afternoon I had a brief conversation with a friend about the ubiquitous Cornell chimes and their purpose (or frivolity, as she thought).  I mentioned that I do in fact use them to tell the time; for example, I know that if I hear them from our apartment I can be positive that I am running late for class. However this only happens rarely, and not due to my punctuality but rather the difficulty in hearing the chimes from a substantial distance away.  I often simply do not hear the chimes.  But that evening, I heard them strike every quarter-hour interval for several hours, although I had returned home and normally do not notice the chimes so regularly.  Each time, it occurred to me that I was hearing the bell tower, and I noted to myself how odd it was that I had just discussed how infrequently I hear it.  Even more bizarre, the chimes actually woke me up this morning – something that has never happened before.  They are not loud at all, but I have no doubt that they were what brought me out of sleep today. My first thought upon waking up was that I was noticing them yet again.  I have come to the conclusion that since I had been thinking about the sound of the bells prior to hearing them so many times, I was more attuned to them when I first was exposed to them again. This awakened my recent focus on the sound, and I consciously noticed it again.  Then, I allowed it to return to the back of my mind, but 15 minutes later the same cycle repeated, each time impressing upon my subconscious the prevalence of this sound.  Finally, when my sleeping mind heard the chimes this morning, it took notice of what had been a very common sound the day before and I awoke to become conscious of it yet again.   However, of course this is simply anecdotal evidence and my own musings – I would like to learn more about how we consciously and subconsciously filter through the many sounds we may hear at any given moment and select the most relevant or common ones to examine consciously.

Music and Nature

Just discovered this terrific website dedicated to music and nature.

Creativity in Birdsong

I’m glad I read the most recent blog posts before adding mine, because it was going to be nearly identical to Justin’s.  The songbirds are certainly out in force, and they’ve been waking me as well. However, I didn’t focus so much on the hi-fi vs. lo-fi soundscapes when listening to them; I did return to the interesting opposition birds have to hearing their songs repeated.  As I heard so many birds singing, I first wondered if sometimes there is a conflict if two “write” the same melody and feel antagonized when hearing the other’s song.  This type of event is common in human culture – people are known to argue over who invented something first, or said something originally.  But do birds feel the same way? Are they so creative that they never repeat themselves unintentionally?  Similarly, I wonder if I had begun to play some recordings of birdsong out of my open window how the birds would react.  It is unlikely that the birds would hear or notice, but the same hypothetical issue of ownership of song arises for me.  I suppose I am essentially wondering if birds are as opposed to “copy-cats” as we humans are, showing a type of jealousy, or at least allowing us to project that emotion upon them.  The limits of birds’ creativity and inventiveness has not yet been discovered, but I wonder where (if at all) it lies, and how the avian populations would respond to the necessary repetition of old songs.

Early Morning Bird Song

Today I was awakened by bird song around 5:00am.  At first I tried to block it out, but it proved unsuccessful.  So, for about two hours, in my “twilight state” of groggy awakening, I tried to listen and pick out some different birds.  Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult because there were many different bird songs in many different directions.  My only saving grace was that when I finally decided to move about, I looked out my window and could actually see the birds.  The most prominent bird that I saw (around 7:00am) was the American Robin.  There were about four.  But there was certainly other birds making other noises.  All of the noise directed me back to schafer and thinking about a hi-fi soundscape.  It was actually quite pleasing to note that in the two hours that had passed, I hadn’t noticed any mechanical noises (cars, tvs, refrigerator, and so on), and it made me wonder if this was a rare experience that used to be common in the hi-fi soundscape, but is seldom any more.  So, at first I was not so happy to be woke at 5:00, but as I stumbled about and listened to the song, I felt very pleased to awake to something like bird song, as compared to a sharp, low-fi, mechanical buzzer of an alarm.

“Net Noise”

My professor from another class recently brought this site to my attention www.cTheorymultimedia.cornell.edu . It’s an on-line journal of sorts with the main focus being “Net Noise” right in the middle of the page. When you click on it the screen expands and you are shown different icons you can click on. There are different noises for each one and there are multiple links that will take you to other pages. 

I personally found this website fascinating especially since it made me think outside of the normal natural sounscape that we discuss and into that of the internet. The internet itself, I’m sure, makes thousands and thousands of tiny sounds inaudible for the human ear. I wonder what it sounds like in cyberspace when we click on a link and that information goes buzzing throughout the World Wide Web in order to bring us to our desired multimedia destination. The computer itself is always making sounds whether it be a constant humming of electronics working internally to satisfy the user or the sounds it makes as we enter a disc or take one out. The internet, however, is what fascinates me. Billions of people use it every day. It has almost become a necessity in every day life for many people. We can use it on an airplane or in a library in the confines of our own personal bubble, without making any audible sounds. But, does the internet make noises that we may just not hear? If so, would we ever be able to hear them?

Brixton soundwalk: Electric Avenue

Market, late morning, 26 March 2012: a walk down Electric Avenue.

Horses and Pit Bulls

Throughout my life I have had many unique experiences with a variety of different animals.  From dogs and cats to horses to cattle to hawks to snakes to turtles to fox to deer, I have been involved with many different rescue and rehabilitation efforts.  This is partly due to my mother’s passion for animals with special needs (which also drives my father crazy–funny how things work).  Her, sometimes outspoken, passion for animals certainly allowed for me to actively play a role in the lives of many animals, and it was also a way for me (who was had chronic illnesses growing up) to have an opportunity to grow and heal with these animals.  And it is also helped me to develop my “spiritual” philosophies of Connectedness in regards to human and animal relationships–covering everything from food to companionship.  One might be able to label my mother as an “activist of animal rights” of sorts, however I would term her as a “practical activist” because most of what she does is thoroughly thought out and always has a practical explanation for her decisions.  unfortunately there certainly are a number of people who are overly radical and just not practical when it comes to animals and “rescuing” and often make a bad rap for “animal lovers.”  Where I stand on this issue is more of a blending of animal rights and animal welfare (both of which have choppy definitions and I won’t waste time explaining–at least now you understand a bit of my background and a general idea of my view, which is that I believe animals need to be treated in a fair way, but I realize that humans have practical uses (such as food and clothing and work) which are essential to our own survival and I will not overlook this fact).

So, a special experience that I share with an animal…. I could talk about the numerous shelter animals that I have helped my mother rehabilitate.  I could talk about my own work as an assistant vet tech at a non-kill shelter.  I could talk about the orphaned hawk that I helped rehabilitate (although it was illegal being that I do not have a license to rehabilitate wild animals–yet).  I could talk about any of my three dogs that came into the shelter through horrifying cases.  I could go in a completely opposite direction and talk about showing dairy cows and working on farms.  The list goes on and on and on.

However, there are only two instances where I felt connected to an animal beyond that of normal human-animal relationships (mostly because my mother has this gift where most of our animals trust her much more than anyone else in the house hold).  These two animals were: (1) Flyer, our 40-year-old thoroughbred horse who had an extensive career at Saratoga and hailed from “royal” blood, but his career also led to his injury and his ultimate fate as a pasture rat, and (2) Gypsy, a pit bull that I found in a chicken coop with nine puppies.

Flyer was certainly a thoroughbred.  High strung and pissy until the day he died.  However, the tactics that were noted by Patton as being damaging (ie. the cowboy way of hitting the horse to desensitize it), were clearly used on Flyer during his training.  My mother did not take Flyer in until he was long removed from the racing industry and had some years on his life.  And in the years between racing and my mother’s discovery of him, his behaviors worsened.  And until the day he died he expressed signs of nervousness, and in many cases sheer hatred of male humans (even my father and grandfather who worked with him extensively).  The only male human that he was completely comfortable around was me.  My mother jokes and says that this is because she was thrown off of Flyer while trail riding while she was pregnant with me–so we were bound to have a connection.  Nevertheless, I often, throughout my childhood, would spend a lot of my times in the barn just studying this majestic creature.  He was huge, 18 hands, jet black and powerful looking.  Even in his old age (I knew him from the time he was 25 until he was 40–my mother had him for about twelve years prior to my birth) he was a presence.  There was just a natural connection between the way we interacted, a connection that I have yet to regain with any of our other horses.  And also, his death was of significance to me because it truly was like watching an immortal die, and it made it worse that I was the only one around when it happened, and he died, still fighting with his head in my arms.  I have written numerous poems about this occasion and it is something that will stick with me for a long time.

Gypsy, is still with us today, but her story is also interesting.  Emaciated, mange riddled, full of fleas, injured, and extremely frightened was the condition that I found her in.  My best friend Marc and I were both working at the shelter and had a call about a dog in the chicken coop.  When we got there we didn’t know what to expect.  The neighbors that lived on the particular hill were scared of the dog because she was a pit bull, which is a stereotypical fear that is ridiculous.  My only fear was moving her and her puppies because the puppies were newborn and covered in mud and feces from the chicken coop, and Gypsy (we named her because that is the name of the hill in which the chicken coop was) was so frail and injured.  Eventually we were able to get them into my car (which was a small Subaru legacy at the time–the shelter van was broken down and we had to use my car).  Gypsy was so extremely shy that she often didn’t move or even look at you.  She would sit with her head buried in her paws.  After about half a year, her and her puppies were adopted out to different families.  unfortunately, her adoption was a bad adoption and she came back to the shelter.  She was even more shy and reluctant of humans than before and we soon learned that the owners had beat her after she chewed some shoes (we issued the owners a ticket to appear in court for animal cruelty).  So, it became my mom’s mission to rehabilitate this dog.  She came home to us on a “fostering” trial.  I knew that this meant she was really being adopted.  And now, three years later, there is a significant difference in the dog’s personality.  She trusts me the most out all humans she comes in contact with, and I am the only one to be able to rough house with her and our other two dogs.  But to me, she really is a case of human qualities in an animal.

The Question of Zoos

“From the dawn of consciousness, we’ve been trying to frame, in everything from creation mythology to zoological parks, the simultaneous sense of kinship with and irreparable separateness from animals that our consciousness calls to mind. . . .

Modern science, for its part, now repeatedly confirms our long intuited commonality with the creatures we continue to keep. Indeed, a number of major zoos have already closed down their elephant and chimpanzee exhibits because of the psychological trauma those animals have been shown to suffer in captivity. Major lawsuits are also being pursued against places like Sea World for ‘enslaving’ orcas and dolphins.

‘In 2013, we’re going to prosecute the first cases,’ Steven M. Wise, a lawyer and president of the Nonhuman Rights Project, recently told me. ‘Their goal will be to use the latest science to help persuade state court judges that such creatures as whales and chimpanzees should be accorded common law personhood and rights.'”

Farewell to the Monkey House

Sound in space

This past Monday I accompanied other members of my Video Art and New Media class to watch William Forsythe’s choreography in Rand Hall. Broc, the dancer who was performing the choreography, had what seemed to be about 50 pendulums hanging from the ceiling surrounding him. He flitted in between them utilizing the apparatuses at times and avoiding them at others. At first, I really wasn’t sure what I was watching. His movements were extremely unique. The piece itself was titled “Everywhere and Nowhere at the Same Time.” I found myself paying extra attention to how the entire piece sounded. At first, the dominate sounds were the cars passing by outside the building, people moving in their seats, the sound of the door opening and closing as people were coming and going. It was difficult to tune these out. However, I started to notice the sound of the dancer’s feet as he was moving about. With some of this movements, the noise his feet made reminded me of a basketball court and how players’ shoes squeak with every short stride. He twisted the strings suspending each pendulum together at times and when they spiraled close enough to touch each other, there were clinking sounds throughout the room at random intervals. The most interesting sounds were the ones the dancer made himself. Whenever his arms would cut through the air in short, quick movements, he would emit a swooshing sound using his vocal chords. Randomly, he would also make short high pitched sounds almost like something you would hear from a machine that beeped. I wasn’t sure why he made these noises and what they meant in relation to the piece as a whole. Did they somehow relate to the pendulums? Were the sounds part of him making the most of the space? How do they relate to the title “Everywhere and Nowhere at the Same Time”? I was extremely confused by the entire piece, though I did thoroughly enjoy it from a artistic standpoint.

On another note. A friend of mine does a radio station for Cornell. He focuses on music with a vast array of sounds that tend to be a bit more “obscure.” I wanted to share his website with you all that has links to some sound bytes that I found interesting. Some I had heard before but a lot of it I had not. It’s called SonicLandscapes. Hope you all enjoy it!

Pronunciation and Listening

I find it very interesting how some listeners can distinguish between similar sounds, while to others the sounds are identical – and how this can also be seen in speakers, the producers of the sounds in question. Typically, this can occur when one learns a new language, and has to master the subtle differences between tones or syllables, but it can appear in one’s native language as well. I recently noticed that a friend of mine pronounces the words “pen” exactly like “pin”, and “Jenn” the same as “gin”. She believes that she is differentiating the “e” and “i” in each of these words, but anyone listening to her cannot ascertain which word she is actually saying (barring contextual clues, of course). Even more curiously, she pronounces the name “Jennifer” using the “e” sound that should be heard in “Jenn”, but thinks she does say “Jenn” using the same sound. Within her umwelt, there is a differentiation between these sounds, although she rarely pays attention to it. When she speaks these words, however, the sounds that we find entering our spheres of existence are foreign and seem to be pronounced incorrectly. But this is all based on the filtration of these words out of her mind, into her umwelt, and then into ours. What if we as listeners are simply incapable of noticing the distinction she makes? Is she “wrong” – or are we? How can she hear the difference in pronunciation by others but not notice the nuances of her own speech? Can any of us truly know how we sound to our listeners?

Silence and Noise

After our encounter with Japanese noise music last class, I struggled a bit with the idea of music – and why such an apparent lack of melody and typical musical structure appeals to some listeners.  Similarly, I wondered why something explicitly called “noise”, composed of such aesthetically troubling sounds, can be considered music. But then, much music that I consider astounding has been deemed horrific by other listeners.  As I’ve been pondering this relationship and examining my own listening habits and preferences, today, in another class, a professor proclaimed that “if there were no silence in music, it would just be noise – a long scream!” I think she really hit the nail on the head (although she wasn’t talking about noise music in particular).  Her statement was similar to what was said a few classes ago, noting the relationship between sound and silence, and how the lack of one makes the other extremely disconcerting, to say the least.  I think what my professor said epitomizes the conventional view of the relationship between sound and silence, and the result if one is diminished to the point of vanishing.  In order to find the most appealing balance of sound and silence, boundaries must be pushed and combinations of the two conditions must be experimentally toyed with.  From concerts that lack deliberately produced sounds, to performances that contain screaming guitars but little to no silence, we can only locate the borders of what is we consider “musical” after having crossed them into the realm of excessive silence or chaotically noise.

On an entirely unrelated note, everybody who lives in my house is currently complaining about a faint car alarm going off on Dryden Road.  Again, once a strange and repetitive noise was drawn to our attention, we couldn’t remove it from our consciousness and relegate it to to something we hear but don’t actively listen to.  I’m a bit dismayed at how much attention this meaningless noise demands from us, and how we are unable to adapt and begin to ignore it.

Another Soundwalk

Alexis Rodriguez

How we listen Animals vs. Humans

I just read Justin’s post and his observation of how animals are denoted as being deep listeners brought back my own encounters with various animals. I feel as though it’s common sense that dogs, cats, possums, etc. have a much more sensitive ear than humans. I’ve never truly sat down to think about it, though. It’s always been a knowledge I considered as “just there” such as “grass is green” or “the sky is blue.” We never stop and ask why? I know there have been many occasions where I’m walking home from the library or from work and out of the corner of my eye, I spot a possum or skunk up the road. Every time, as soon as I see the animal, it is already frozen in place looking in my direction. I know this is because it hears me approaching even though I’m two blocks away. If I were unable to see, I wonder if I would even here the animal at all, let alone from that distance.

Why is this? Is it because their ears are more fully developed and have a far greater capacity than human ears? I agree with Justin’s thought that all animals (including humans) are naturally deep listeners in order to survive. Maybe we could hear just as well as animals do but we choose not to. For animals, though, it’s more than just having an exceptional sense of hearing, they can pin point sounds (such as me walking down the street) out of all the other noises surrounding them. Perhaps this is an evolutionary trait in order for them to sustain life in the wild.

The thought of ear adaptation fascinates me. Loud sounds that are frightening to animals (e.g a vacuum or thunder and lightning) are more of an annoyance or even a comfort for humans. We are reared into a world where these sounds are normal and we associate them with non threatening apparatuses. However, our animal-like characteristics come out when we’re walking down the street at night and we hear footsteps in our general vicinity. Much like animals freeze and search for the origin of the sound, we too feel a surge of paranoia until we have identified the creator of the noise as “non-threatening.” Our hearing has become severely desensitized over the billions of years we have existed as a species and I believe it has a lot to do with evolution. Were we as perceptive as animals in the cave man era? Can we train ourselves to get back to that point?

Listening Response

Last Saturday night I attempted some field recordings of just whatever I could find.  However, it proved to be a harsh night with brutal temperatures and an unforgiving wind.  So, needless to say, most of what I picked up in my two hours of recording seemed to be just wind.  However, personally I heard a lot more than what I could record.  And I think that the most interesting thing about it is that I think that my style of listening changed because of my environment and the particular conditions of the night.  I think that normally I would say that my world revolves around a “low-def” soundscape, particularly during my school days.  But when put in an element that the mind senses as alarming, I think that my listening becomes more in tune with the “hi-def” and I certainly become more of a deep listener.

I now see why in Deep Listening animals are believed to be deep listeners.  I think that all animals, including humans must be deep listeners in nature to survive.  But since humans are not necessarily participating in the natural, animal world, we have slowly drifted away from deep listening.  However, I think that we have the tool of deep listening if we are caught in an alarming situation.  Take for instance my field recording experience: near zero degrees, wind and snow drifts, and pitch black.  Being excessively cold and damp and not being able to see well made me more attune to my other senses.  And any sound put me on alarm, even though I knew exactly where I was and was recording where I was by choice.

I just thought that it was interesting that my listening deepened due to environmental conditions.

The Muzak Box

Coyote

I unfortunately did not get the opportunity to record something myself this week.  However, I did search the internet for some of my favorite sounds.  Among those sounds is the yipping and howling of coyotes, which I’m sure most of us are familiar with.  I live in a very rural part of New York State, so hearing coyotes is a frequent occurence.  SUNY-ESF at Syracuse University has field studies basically in my backyard where they have been researching coyotes through tracking and monitoring, capturing and releasing, video and audio.  unfortunately I could not find any of their videos or recordings.  I did find a fact sheet with audio on National Geographic’s website.  http://animals.nationalgeographic.com/animals/mammals/coyote/

The sounds are pretty awesome, I think.

Male Digger Bees

Gregory Whitehead, “Male Digger Bees.” At 2:21:45 in Dan Bodah’s Airborne Event (WFMU).

Arthropod Soundscapes

Alan Alda reports on research being done at Hoylab (Cornell U) on arachnid and cricket sounds and fly ears.

Ear for the Sea-Surge

“[Water] is the fundamental of the original soundscape and the sound which above all others gives us the most delight in its myriad transformations.” — R. Murray Schafer

Basil Bunting reads a bit of Ezra Pound’s Canto II.

Listening Map: Crossing A Bridge

Listening Map-Crossing A Bridge

Justin Recktenwald

A Soundwalk

A Soundwalk

Maria Napolitano

Lake Beebe Soundwalk

Beebe Soundwalk

Tyran Grillo

Kazoo Choirs

Wedge-tailed Shearwaters: birds that sound like kazoos.

Paranoia

After our slow walk in class last week, I decided to pay more attention to footsteps I hear when I can’t see the person. During our discussion after the slow walk, I mentioned how it made me feel paranoid because it sounded like the footsteps were coming toward me. Many late nights I walk home from the library alone. Every so often I’ll see someone on my street that late walking home too. Usually I’m listening to my music but the other night I decided to listen to the sounds surrounding me on my journey. I noticed that whenever I heard footsteps, I instantly felt a surge of fear because it sounded like they were coming right toward me. I whipped my head around and as soon as I located the origin of the steps, the sound became a lot less menacing. I also noticed that as soon as I could see the person, the sound seemed a lot further away. This made me think about the correlation between sight and hearing. It reminded me of how when people become blind (or are born blind) one or more of their senses become heightened, for example hearing. Many sight-challenged people have exceptional hearing. Does the same concept apply to a lesser degree when we hear something but the origin is not in our eyesight? What is it that makes sound seem augmented when we cannot see what is making it?

Physiology of the Blessed

Agamben’s notion of the paradiscal body and in what form will humans be resurrected in is fascinating. He brings up the Edenic body, “the archetype of uncorrupted human nature,” and how the physiological makeup of the “blessed” could take on this pre-Fall form. He goes on to talk about how once resurrected, human life will have no need for bodily functions because the primary perfection of nature does not exist in the resurrection. Furthermore, animal life will not be allowed into Paradise because they are not blessed.

However, I was not sure as to what the argument was behind the animal life forms inability to be “blessed.” Do we not share those principal functions of nutrition and generation with the animals? Do not they too “eat, drink, sleep, and beget”?

The most intriguing quote that stuck out to me in chapter 6 was “If animal life and human life could be superimposed perfectly, then neither man nor animal — and, perhaps, not even  the divine — would any longer be thinkable.” In my own realm of the imagination, it’s difficult to perceive how man and animal could be superimposed. I feel as though within the human eye, it’s almost impossible to reach so far as to imagine a point where man, animal, and even divine become unthinkable.

Agamben addresses the relation between man and animal from a vantage point I had not completely considered previously. He draws on a passage from Thomas that says, “Yet they (men) needed them (animals) in order to draw from their nature an experimental knowledge.” Man was given the authority to bestow a name upon these animals despite the Biblical fact that animals were created first. The line separating the two seems to be created by man but as Agamben writes, “when the difference vanishes…something appears for which we seem to lack even a name.” Is he foreshadowing his previous statement that if animal and man become superimposed, they both will become unthinkable? Is this inevitable? And what exactly is the experimental knowledge that man draws from animal? Does animal not receive some sort of experimental knowledge from man?