Where
is the Animal
after
Post-Humanism?
Sue
Coe and the Art of Quivering Life
By A l i c e K u
z n i a r
Kuzniar,
Alice. 2011. "Where is the Animal after Post-Humanism?." CR: The New
Centennial Review 11, no. 2: 17-40. Humanities International Complete, EBSCOhost
(accessed November 27, 2012).
Bibliography
Kuzniar,
Alice. "Where is the Animal after Post-Humanism?." CR: The New
Centennial Review 11, no. 2 (Fall2011 2011): 17-40. Humanities International
Complete, EBSCOhost (accessed November 27, 2012).
Article
begins by addressing Adorno and his take on the gaze of Homo sapiens. Kuzniar finds the quote from Adorno to
contradict each other.
Quote
from Adorno:
Nichts so ausdrucksvoll wie die Augen von
Tieren—Menschenaff en—,
die
objektiv darüber zu trauern scheinen, dass sie keine Menschen sind.
There
is nothing so expressive as the eyes of animals—especially apes—which
seem
objectively to mourn that they are not human. (Adorno 1970, 172/113)1
Die
Philosophie ist eigentlich dazu da, das einzulösen, was im Blick eines
Tieres
liegt.
Philosophy
actually exists in order to redeem what is to be found in the gaze
of an
animal. (Adorno in conversation with Horkheimer, cited in Claussen
2003,
305/255)
Adorno uses the term Menschenaff en to apply
to the expressivity of the humanlike animal gaze. The term is used to show the
slippage of the boundary between man and animal.
The
second part deals with another idea: “gaze is so incomprehensible, perhaps so
unhuman-like,
that it calls upon philosophy as its paramount task to think
through
and put into words all that is contained in it—to keep the promise,
as it
were, of what lies in the gaze of the animal. Philosophy thus becomes a
field
of inquiry less into the human being
than into sentient animal being” {page 18}
Kuzniar
goes on to further explore this relationship in the following paragraphs.
“In
sum, the mutual gaze is the contact point where human and animal meet,
where
the concrete interaction disrupts the “animal in theory,” where the
visual
disrupts the dominance of the logos,
where Lévinas stops short of
attributing
a face to animals, and where an attack is mounted against the
so-called
humanistic preoccupation with what the gaze could mean.” {page 19}
She
goes into further exploration of Sue Coe’s work as a graphic artist and animal
activist who has been mistrusted. She quotes Steve Baker on Coe’s work:
“Steve
Baker, forinstance, observes that her drawings “constantly risk being drawn
close toa stylistic sentimentality in order to express the artist’s moral and
political
outrage”
{page 19}
It
seems then Kuzniar disagrees with what Steve Baker has to say about Sue Coe’s
work.
Kuzniar
wants to look at Coe’s work differently than looked at by Steve Baker and other
critics. She describes Coe’s work by questioning, “to ask how she redefines the
parameters in which one can address compassion and respond to the face of the
animal without falling into sentimentality. In what ways can it be said that
her art indeed shatters the viewer’s sovereign gaze?” {Page 21}
In
order to examine Coe’s work, Kuzniar has to reassess her work in order to be
able to retrace the meaning.
{Pagee
22} provides some background information on Coe as an artist. There is some
really good descriptions and facts to look back on.
I
really appreciated how this article took a different look into the topic.
The
notes page provides a lot of good resources that I need to further explore.
