On Human Nakedness as Seen by Animals

Giovanni Lanfranco:  

Giovane nudo sul letto con un gatto (c. 1620-22)

Oil on canvas (112 x160 cm)

 

I often ask myself who I am at that moment when I'm caught naked

by the silent gaze of an animal; for example, the eyes of a cat ... [1]

 

 

Do animals understand that we are wearing clothes? Or, to put it another way, do they know when we are naked? 

 

D. H. Lawrence suspected his favourite brown hen would, if she could, address him as Mr. Skinflappy: 

 

"Skin-flappy, of course, would refer to my blue shirt and baggy cord trousers. How would she know I don't grow them like a loose skin!" [2]

 

How indeed, being only a chicken? 

 

But what about a cat? For I'm assuming that a cat is more insightful than a chicken when it comes to this question [3] and must surely sense the difference between skin and cloth and know when its human is in the nip? 

 

Didn't Derrida discover this for himself when his cat [4], having wandered into the bathroom, exposed the philosopher's nakedness and caused him to experience a feeling of embarrassment or shame? [5]

 

As Derrida points out, at such moments we are transported back to that moment in Genesis [3:7] when, post-Fall, Adam and Eve know themselves to be naked not only in the eyes of God and each other, but the serpent and all the other animals that inhabited the garden (and so quickly cover themselves with fig leaves). 

As Nietzsche concludes, when the animals look at man - particularly as he stands naked before them on two bare legs - they do not see a creature that is separate and superior; rather, they see "a being of their own kind which has in a most dangerous manner lost its sound animal reason" [6] and is physically maladapted to the world (lacking in speed, in strength, in sharp teeth and fur). 

That's man: the mad animal, the vulnerable animal, and the naked animal ill at ease in its own skin ...

   

 

Notes

 

[1] I'm quoting from memory (so have doubtless not quite got it right) a line by Jacques Derrida in 'The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)', trans. David Wills, Critical Inquiry, Vol. 28, No. 2, (The University of Chicago Press, 2002), pp. 369-418. Click here to access on JSTOR.

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Him With His Tail in His Mouth', in Refections on the Death of a Porcupine and Other Essays, ed. Michael Herbert, (Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 316. 

 

[3] Actually, my love of cats might be causing me to be unfair to chickens. For according to a study into their intelligence by a professor at Bristol University in 2013, chickens can not only outperform cats and dogs in several tests of cognitive and behavioural ability, but even four-year-old children.

 

[4] Like Foucault and Deleuze, Derrida had a much-loved feline companion; see my post from January 2018 - 'When I Play With My Cat' - click here. In 'The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)', Derrida is at pains to stress that when he speaks of a female cat staring at his nakedness in the bathroom, he is referring to an actual creature in all its unique singularity: 

      "I must make it clear from the start, the cat I am talking about is a real cat, truly, believe me, a little cat. It isn't the figure of a cat. It doesn't silently enter the room as an allegory for all the cats on the earth, the felines that traverse myths and religions, literature and fables." [374]  

 

[5] Again, see Derrida's 'The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)', op. cit., where he confesses: 

      "I have trouble repressing a reflex dictated by immodesty. Trouble keeping silent within me a protest against the indecency. Against the impropriety that comes of finding oneself naked, one's sex exposed, stark naked before a cat that looks at you without moving, just to see. The impropriety [malséance] of a certain animal nude before the other animal [...] the single, incomparable and original experience of the impropriety that would come from appearing in truth naked, in front of the insistent gaze of the animal, a benevolent or pitiless gaze, surprised or cognizant. [...] It is as if I were ashamed, therefore, naked in front of this cat, but also ashamed for being ashamed." [372]

 

[6] Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book III, §224. This is my translation of the line. The section, entitled Kritik der Thiere ['Critique of the Animals'], reads in full and in the original German:

      "Ich fürchte, die Thiere betrachten den Menschen als ein Wesen Ihresgleichen, das in höchst gefährlicher Weise den gesunden Thierverstand verloren hat, - als das wahnwitzige Thier, als das lachende Thier, als das weinende Thier, als das unglückselige Thier." 

 

 

Always Be Kind to Cats!

Φοῖβος [Phoîbos] the Cat

 

 

When the Little Greek found a kitten trapped in the engine of an old car abandoned on the streets of Athens, she had no choice but to rescue him, take him home, clean him up, feed him, and generally provide him with care. 

I say she had no choice, but, of course, she could have just walked on by, ignored his cries, and left him to perish. But that wouldn't have been very kind. Nor would it have been the Christian thing to do - one is reminded of this teaching from St. Francis:

 

All things of creation are children of the Father and thus brothers of man. God wants us to help animals if they need help. Every creature in distress has the same right to be protected. 

 

Not that the patron saint of animals is much cared for in the Orthodox tradition in which the Little Greek was raised as a child [1]; in fact, some within this tradition view Francesco as a rather suspect character, given to a model of spirituality that veers towards a form of humanistic paganism. 

 

And even an animal-loving Quaker friend of mine found something objectionable in the above quotation, suggesting that this, from the American writer and naturalist Henry Beston, is preferable, as it recognises and respects the otherness of the animal:

"For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours, they move finished and complete, gifted with the extension of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not bretheren, they are not underlings: they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth." [2]

Ultimately, with or without scripture or other textual support, we need to rethink our relation to animals - and always be kind to cats! 

 

 

Notes

 

[1] As far as I know, the only Orthodox church which venerates St. Francis of Assisi is the monastery at New Skete (Cambridge, NY).   

[2] Henry Beston, The Outermost House, (Doubleday/Doran, 1928).  

Crawling on All Fours in Shaggy Inhumanity ...

William Blake: Nebuchadnezzar (c. 1795-1805)

tate.org.uk

 

 

I. The Case of King Nebuchadnezzar

 

Most people are probably vaguely familiar with the figure of King Nebuchadnezzar who, if the Bible is to be believed, was deprived of his mind by God and forced to live like an animal as punishment for excessive pride or hubris. The fact that he destroyed Solomon's Temple and held God's chosen people captive probably didn't go down well either [1]. 

 

William Blake famously produced a large colour print depicting this Babylonian monarch reduced to the status of a mad beast. As can be seen, he looked pretty rough during this seven year period; almost like some sort of werewolf. Alexander Gilchrist writes that the picture shows Nebuchadnezzar: 

 

"crawling like a hunted beast into a den among the rocks; his tangled golden beard sweeping the ground, his nails like vultures' talons, and his wild eyes full of sullen terror. The powerful frame is losing semblance of humanity, and is bestial in its rough growth of hair, reptile in the toad-like markings and spottings of the skin, which takes on unnatural hues of green, blue, and russet." [2]

 

Happily for Nebuchadnezzar, at the end of the septennium he is restored to sanity and full human status - indeed, he even gets his kingdom back, having learned his lesson, so all's well that ends well in his case ...     

 

 

II. The Case of Robinson Crusoe

 

Despite what naturists may choose to believe, I'm not convinced there's anything positive to be gained from the experience of nudity; I certainly don't think that running about with your kit off in the woods or on the beach, makes you essentially healthier, happier, or more vital. 

 

Having stripped off his clothes in a heavy shower of rain, Robinson Crusoe later muses on this question of nakedness and the importance of garments: 

 

"It was true that neither the temperature nor any consideration of modesty required him to go about dressed in a civilized manner. Sheer habit had caused him to do so, but now in his despair he began to appreciate the value of that armour of wool and linen with which human society had hitherto protected him. Nakedness is a luxury in which a man may indulge himself without danger only when he is warmly surrounded by his fellow man. For Robinson [...] it was a trial of desperate temerity. Stripped of its threadbare garments - worn, tattered, and sullied, but the fruit of civilized millennia, and impreganted with human associations - his vulnerable body was at the mercy of every hostile element. The wind, the thorned shrubs, the rocks, and the pitiless light assailed and tormented their defenceless prey." [3] 

 

Clothes serve many important functions. But offering a degree of physical protection in a hard, sharp and dangerous world is by no means the least of these. However, as time passes on the island, Crusoe succumbs to the devastating effects of isolation and eventually finds himself as naked - and as bestial - as Nebuchadnezzar in Blake's famous print: 

 

"Robinson could not have said how long it was since he had left his last shred of clothing on some thornbush. In any case, the thought of sunburn no longer troubled him, since his back, flanks, and thighs were now protected by a thick coating of dried mud. His hair and beard had grown so long that his face was almost invisible beneathy their tangled mass. His hands had become mere forepaws used for walking, since it made him giddy to stand upright. His state of physical weakness [...] but above all the breaking of some little spring in his soul, had led him to move only on his hands and knees. He knew now that man [...] can only stay upright while the crowd packed densely around him continues to prop him up. Exiled from the mass of his fellows, who had sustained him as part of humanity without his realizing it, he felt he no longer had the strength to stand on his own feet. He lived on unmentionable foods, gnawing them with his face to the ground. He relieved himself where he lay, and rarely failed to roll in the damp warmth of his own excrement. He moved less and less, and his brief excursions always ended in his return to the mire. Here, in its warm coverlet of slime, his body lost all weight, while the toxic emanations from the stagnant water drugged his mind. Only his eyes, nose, and mouth were active, alert for edible weed and toad spawn drifting on the surface." [4] 

 

III. Lou Carrington's Contrasting Vision of the Pure Animal Man

 

Crusoe's experience of becoming-animal doesn't sound so great a life - and certainly puts being in a Covid lockdown into perspective. It obliges one also to reconsider D. H. Lawrence's fetishisation of the animal man, articulated, for example, in St. Mawr by Lou Carrington who informs her (somewhat sceptical) mother that she is tired of nice, clean men with minds and wants instead men full of their own animal mystery, burning with life:

 

"'A pure animal man would be as lovely as a deer or a leopard, burning like a flame fed straight from underneath. And he'd be part of the unseen, like a mouse is, even. And he'd never cease to wonder, he'd breathe silence and unseen wonder, as the partridges do, running in the stubble. He'd be all the animals in turn, instead of one, fixed, automatic thing, which he is now, grinding on the nerves.'" [5]   

 

It's a lovely vision - in stark opposition to the image of Crusoe -  but one worries that just as the latter is the product of a fear of animality and the loss of humanity defined in moral-rational terms and related to the covering of one's nakedness, so Lawrence's fantasy is the product of his own romanticism and a longing for a natural paradise of some kind, in which man can dispense with clothing and his animal nature will no longer be corrupted and domesticated by civilisation.    

 

 

Notes

 

[1] Readers interested in the story of Nebuchadnezzar will find it in the Old Testament Book of Daniel, a collection of legendary tales and apocalyptic visions dating from the 2nd century BC. The consensus among scholars is that the work should obviously be read as historical fiction, rather than historical fact.   

 

[2] Alexander Gilchrist, The Life of William Blake, (Dover Publications, 1998), p. 408-09. 

 

[3] Michel Tournier, Friday, trans. Norman Denny, (John Hopkins University Press, 1997), p. 33.  

 

[4] Ibid., p. 40.

 

[5] D. H. Lawrence, 'St. Mawr', in St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Brian Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 62.       

Dog Bites: On the Question of Man and Animal (and the Becoming-Animal of Man)

Photo by Eija-Liisa Ahtila from the eight part series 

of images entitled Dog Bites (1992-97)

Like Lou Carrington, I’ve always believed there must be something else to marvel at in humanity besides a clever mind and a nice, clean face and that we might term this something else animality.

And like Lou, I’ve always hoped that were we to conduct what Nietzsche terms a reverse experiment and resurrect the wild beast within us, then we might produce a type of man who would be “as lovely as a deer or a leopard, burning like a flame fed straight from underneath”.

But now I’m not so sure about the desirability of this: for clearly there are dangers involved in the process of man’s becoming-animal and no one really wants to see werewolves prowling the streets.

Nor, for that matter, do I think it an attractive prospect to live like a dog, as Diogenes liked to live and as was central to the ancient philosophical practice of Cynicism. I don’t want to shit in the street or copulate in full view of others; don’t want to drink rainwater, growl at strangers, or eat raw meat. Like incest, these provocative acts might be perfectly natural and constitute secret pleasures, but they should only be indulged in with extreme caution.

In other words, unlike the ancient Cynics - and unlike some of the more militant of the animal rights activists and environmentalists campaigning in our own time - I don’t wish to tie the principle of the true life exclusively to the domain of Nature and thus reject all social convention and civilized restraint.

Our humanity may well be something that needs to be reformulated and eventually overcome, but it remains nevertheless a magnificent accomplishment; one that was achieved only after a huge amount of suffering over an immense period of time.

Thus, to adopt a model of behaviour based upon that of our own animality (or, rather, what we imagine the latter to be) simply so we might lick our own balls in public and thereby scandalise those who pride themselves on all that distinguishes them as human beings, seems to me profoundly mistaken.


Notes

Lou Carrington is a character in D. H. Lawrence’s short novel St. Mawr. See St. Mawr and Other Stories, ed. Brian Finney, (Cambridge University Press, 2003). The line quoted is on p. 61.

For an interesting interpretation of the bios kunikos and why the Cynics prided themselves on living such see Michel Foucault, The Courage of Truth, ed. Frédéric Gros, trans. Graham Burchell, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), pp. 242-43.

Sun - Lizard - Rock

Sun, lizard, rock: between the three flows life. And I can't help wondering who it is that is deprived in world - him or me?

For whilst it may be true that our reptilian friends are unable to encounter other beings as such, or understand themselves within the wide and sophisticated context of meaning that we as human beings have developed, it strikes me nevertheless as a form of anthropocentric conceit to talk about Dasein's richness of world in comparison to the animals' poverty and the inanimate objects' complete absence of such.

When challenged on his thinking in this area and the Nietzschean attempt to revalue our relationship to the non-human world, Heidegger sarcastically responded by asking 'are we then supposed to revert to being animals?'
     
The remark shows little understanding of Nietzsche's philosophy of becoming, which is non-linear and so neither progressive nor retrogressive. It also displays ignorance of the fact that the idea of reversibility in evolution is not as outlandish as was once believed. In fact, Dollo's Law, first proposed in 1893, is increasingly recognised as non-binding as more and more examples of atavism come to light and new genetic discoveries are made.

However, I don't wish to develop this line of argument. Rather, I simply wish to echo in closing something that Lawrence writes:

If men were as much lizards as lizards are lizards, they'd be worth looking at.
 

Nietzsche's Animal Philosophy

The Company of Wolves, (dir. Neil Jordan, 1984)

One of Nietzsche's most daring strategies is to call into question the traditional privileging of the human over other animals and thus to place man back amongst their number. For Nietzsche, man is certainly not the high-point of evolution; rather, he is the most depraved of all beasts. Which is to say, man is the animal that has strayed furthest from its sound instincts.

It is only when the ideal of man as a divine creation made in the image of God is shown to be not only conceited but damaging, that individual men and women will be able to achieve a level of enhancement via a becoming-animal. There is thus what one critic terms a reverse anthropocentrism in Nietzsche's texts via which he naturalizes the human species and grounds not just his own thinking but all human culture in zoology.

Now, admittedly, there are times when Nietzsche risks simply allegorizing animals on the basis of a single characteristic or trait that he determines as either noble or base. However, what remains radical in his animal philosophy is the clear implication that socio-ethical behaviour - often held up as something uniquely human - can ultimately be located (if in a rather cruder form) amongst animals. He writes:

"The beginnings of justice, as of prudence, moderation, bravery - in short, all we designate as the Socratic virtues - are animal: a consequence of that drive which teaches us to seek food and elude enemies. Now if we consider that even the highest human being has only become more elevated and subtle in the nature of their food and in their conception of what is inimical to them, it is not improper to describe the entire phenomenon of morality as animal." [Daybreak, I. 26]

Later, in the Genealogy, Nietzsche will examine how man’s evolution from the semi-animal, happily adapted to the wilderness, was a difficult and painful process involving either the suspension of natural instincts or their internalization. Proto-humans were reduced to their consciousness; "that most impoverished and error-prone organ" [II. 16] and forced to think and feel shame for the first time. And other creatures looked upon man with fear and pity as "the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal" [The Gay Science, III. 224].

Of course, what has happened has happened: our fall into consciousness and moral subjectivity, as well as our ever-greater reliance upon technology, is doubtless a fate that we will have to see through to the end. In other words, we will have to perfect our decadence and idealism before we can move towards a transhuman and noble future; i.e. the kind of future in which people pride themselves on their animal skills and attributes and understand that the sharing of traits with other species belongs to a primordial ethics.

But note: it’s not that this interaction and exchange hasn’t continued in the modern era of the farm animal and household pet - it has, and this has significantly contributed to modern man’s taming. What we need to do, then, is dynamically interact with animals other than those reared purely for slaughter and profit, or oedipalized cats and dogs.

In other words, as Angela Carter knew all too well: we should seek out the company of wolves and consent to becoming the tiger's bride; not just herd sheep and marry the boy-next-door!