One of the writers who is quoted on the cover of JA Baker's the Peregrine (2015 edition) is Robert Macfarlane: a fellow of Emmanuel College Cambridge. In 2003 with his book "Mountains of the Mind: the History of a Fascination" he won the Guardian newspaper First Book Award, the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award and various other prestigious prizes.
I was drawn to reading his book "The Wild Places", because his name is becoming synonymous with nature writing in the UK, and he is even linked to the late great WG (Max) Sebald, who taught & studied English & European Literature, (just up the road from Macfarlane's Cambridge), at the University of East Anglia.
Interestingly in Macfarlane's second chapter of The Wild Places, regarding a description of a remote island to the west of the Lleyn peninsula in North Wales, he describes the fact that this particular island, named Ynys Enlli, has served as a retreat for the Celtic Christian monks between the fifth and sixth centuries BC. Indeed, according to Macfarlane, it's possible that this island may have been inhabited for a further 500 years or so, perhaps as late as 1000 A.D.
Holy men, hermits and other spiritual individuals occupied many of the islands around Britain during that time, and these travellers, some of which had come many miles from foreign shores were known as "peregrini". Whilst this word, I had already discovered, to mean the wanderer or foreign traveller, it was nice to see this triangulated again by a contemporary author.
In a reflection of my own, I think of how I have also been peregrini, the fact that I was born in South America, living there throughout my early childhood, and then travelling some 6000 miles north east across the vast Atlantic Ocean to find a home in the UK. My travellings through my job as an adult took me all over the world, but I always returned, of course, to the area that I call home in the North.
But now, as I begin to turn the page on another chapter in my life, there are more coincidences that I find fascinating to link together. Some may see these connections as tenuous, but I believe through my deep thinking, that there is a sense of balance and appropriateness in the conjunctions that seem to validate the temporal nature of them. Yet at the same time, these links could be seen as verification against some unwritten rules of fate?
In this case, my new journey begins with the purchase and completion of a sale of a little cottage in Northumberland, a dream that has been realised after some 15 or so years of looking and yearning to find the right place in these more remote northern lands.
Our quiet little cottage lies adjacent to St Cuthbert's Way, overlooking St Cuthbert's Cave where the canonised hermit's body was hidden from the marauding invaders of the East. Our cottage is therefore named in his honour, Cuthbert Cottage. This in itself isn't much of a coincidence, but when taken to understand that St Cuthbert (634-687) was indeed a peregrini, who found shelter in the remote Farne Islands to dedicate towards contemplation for much of his final years, it seems to make my move all that much more portentous. That I, a potential peregrini, having chosen to spend the last year researching everything I can about peregrines and then trying to see and reinterpret their world from their point of view, then what better position could I be in to do this?
Through coincidence or just sheer luck, things have unfolded in the way that they have, and I am moved to reflect on my own journey, juxtaposing some of the elements of my own existence in a strange and uncanny mirroring of this magnificent bird of prey, as a kind of pilgrimage perhaps? Well, the word pilgrim comes from the Latin peregrinus.
So, having completed over the last few days, my final submission my Master's degree, the overwhelming personal, circumstantial evidence that has come forth, over this last year, gives me renewed determination, and faith, that what I'm doing, and how I am working appears to be absolutely right for me!
Oh, and by the way, The Welsh Island Ynys Enlli means the 'Island of Currents', (referring to tidal waters and lines of turbulance in the eddy's surrounding it), and would (during the height of scholastic monks living in remote parts of Britain) have been governed by the 'Ancient Church in Wales', who recognise St Cuthbert's day as 4th September. That is today... The day I read Macfarlane's explanation of peregrini...
These amazing movements and collisions, of time and circumstance, provide even more food of contemplation... Wonderful!
References:
Macfarlane, R. (2007) The Wild Things, London, Granta Books.
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Book Review. Show all posts
Monday, 4 September 2017
Tuesday, 4 July 2017
Reading John Berger's "Why Look at Animals" (1980)
Amazingly, I have only just realised that I had been missing an incredibly well-qualified contributor towards the influences of my intended essay, and view of the Peregrine. In the 1970s, John Berger produced some of the most significant articles in support of vulnerable and exploited women, virtually at the height of the early feminist movement. Women were historically and previously seen as "objects" in the arts, ostensibly by men, and Berger's famous documentary produced by the BBC entitled "Ways of Seeing" (published in 1972 as a book to accompany the series of three films, by Penguin books) was game-changing. The series was based on seven separate essays, repositioned through critical questioning of many historical and archaic notions of art, bringing a new dimension of public understanding.
Berger went on to write about and support other repressed, oppressed and displaced beings in addition to humans, and turned his attention to animals imprisoned in zoo environments. In 1977, he wrote an essay called "Why Look at Animals" which would later appear on a collection of further essays entitled "About Looking" published in 1980, by Pantheons books, London, part of Random House publishing. It is this essay, "Why look at Animals" that is of interest to me here.
The essay opens with a historical re-cap on our [human] relationship with animals, the interdependence that we had with many creatures. For example, in western and eastern cultures with horses, as working colleagues to pull the plough, provided fast transport, milk and meat, together with clothing at times and our respect built over millennia.
Cattle too for instance initially were not considered as food sources, but instead, as still displayed in certain religions such as Hinduism, cows were found to be holy, or magical. There many cults and religions that believe that individual cattle have capabilities of transcendental knowledge and awareness far beyond their human hosts. Most world religions have a 'bull worship' element of practice at some stage of their development: in the Christian, the story of the Golden Calf being just another example.
Our relationship with animals has however completely changed over the past 150 to 200 years, and the notions we once had, of creatures sharing our world, with a type of mutual respect, has virtually dissolved.
Berger remarks upon how animals look at humans, and he considers how they might view other creatures too. In this sense, he refers to how people also look at animals and in an almost uncanny way, they returned they gaze. It is as though there is a mutual "non-comprehension" and the massive gap lies between us. He goes on to explain that language, that human characteristic, helps to join men together, even though they may not speak the same dialect or language. (Berger, in Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A. (2007) pp253). Whereas, he assumes that this language, (which I have begun to call a vehicle for mutual rapport), is unbridgeable between human and animal?
Interestingly, Berger also identifies how companionship with animals and humans has shaped our human development. He calls this an intercession, which I think is an accurate description, and he points out the notion that it is people who have failed to continue to make efforts to communicate with animals in their own language. He cites mythical characters such as Orpheus who were able to communicate and develop a rapport with other creatures for mutual benefit.
The influence of animal deities from prehistoric times continued through ancient Egyptian and Greek history, some of which I've already discussed in previous blogs, and the anthropocentric habit of adopting individual animals to exhibit human traits and vice versa through anthropomorphism is also scrutinised. This is particularly interesting in regards to the parallels of my own research findings.
Berger goes on to talk about how it seems that domesticated animals and man were running parallel through time. Death brings them together. Does that mean that generally the killer and the killed join at some point? He touches on this in the common global beliefs "of the transmigration of souls" (Ibid. pp253).
Dualism and parallelism with our relationship with animals have however been lost is already discussed. Animals and their significance as metaphors in human language are also explored through the writings of Rousseau. Commonalities between creatures and humans have long been a source of wonder and explanation. We humans saw in animals similarities and desired attributes, as well as unfavourable and distasteful connections, amongst all our differences. Berger's intercession and observations of our own human origins are also made through metaphors and analogies of earlier writers and commentators. Way before Aristotle, before close scrutiny in the methodical, stringent and analytical ways of the Greek Academy, texts such as those of Homer, such as the Iliad, remark upon symbolic metaphors and semiological signifiers through the use of unemotional recounts of the death of both animals and humans on the battlefield. There is little distinction between the two as death is treated in just the same way for both. In a way, animals and humans are treated entirely equally (Ibid. 254).
Berger goes on to identify "anthropomorphism was the residue of the continuous use of the animal metaphor. In the last two centuries, animals have gradually disappeared. Today we live without them. And in this new solitude, anthropomorphism makes us doubly uneasy." (p255).
This observation is of particular importance because of its timing, in the mid-1970s. During that time there was much intellectual debate about the conditions that animals, both domesticated and those kept in the Zoological Gardens were being confined in. Moreover, creatures that were wild and free were also being recognised as subjects of persecution. Berger points out that Descartes and his division through dualism of the mind and the body, the division between the soul and the physical human body, led the way forward that as animals could not, therefore, have a soul, then they were nothing more than physical automatons like machines. The parallelism, the perceived mutual interconnected respect between animals and humans, and more importantly the actual connectedness understood by humans to animals, dissolve at this point.
Our assumed human elevation and dominance over animals, by "conquering" their individual powers, has been the general story for the last 250 or so years. References to animal behaviour and observations of their existence have become, what Berger terms "nostalgia", manifested as a development since the period of enlightenment. (Ibid. p255). It is only since the mid 20th-century that things have begun to change. This concurs with Baker's observations and other early alarm sounders such as Rachel Carson, together with very many contemporary writers of the 1980s onwards.
In the next section, Berger starts to discuss the more modern phenomenon of the keeping of domestic pets. Originally, as already described, domestic animals invariably had some kind of particular product, whether it was meat, milk, eggs, fur or wool, or another useful by-product. Domestic pets, however, serve merely as companionship for the most part. They perform little more than to establish the owner with a sense of control over another being (especially, I believe with dogs and their owners).
Rounding up the concept that humans have lost touch with animals as kinds of equals within the world, phenomena with which I also concur with Berger, that he says has only occurred over the last 150 or so years. He demonstrates the disconnection between humans and animals by exploring the way that humans look at zoo animals. Those imprisoned creatures that have been marginalised by humans to such an extent that when we look at them, they are unable to look back at us in any way approaching how they might look at us if they were truly wild and free. Instead, they have been so conditioned to be looked at that their stereotypical behaviours of pacing at the edge of their domains become so repetitive (through acute boredom no doubt) that they have lost the capacity to either view us as potential prey or potential threat. The whole experience for us humans, therefore, has become one of theatre or 'museum'. He likens the zoo to an art gallery in this respect too, in that viewers pass along a conveyor of gaze in each animal enclosure, similar to the somewhat blank gaze of many visitors observing art objects and paintings.
Berger finishes off with a declaration that I interpret as 'the human to animal - animal to human' connection that we once had, is now irretrievably lost.
Berger J. (1972). "Ways of Seeing" (Originally published in 1972, London, Penguin Books, 2008, Penguin Design Series edition).
Berger went on to write about and support other repressed, oppressed and displaced beings in addition to humans, and turned his attention to animals imprisoned in zoo environments. In 1977, he wrote an essay called "Why Look at Animals" which would later appear on a collection of further essays entitled "About Looking" published in 1980, by Pantheons books, London, part of Random House publishing. It is this essay, "Why look at Animals" that is of interest to me here.
The essay opens with a historical re-cap on our [human] relationship with animals, the interdependence that we had with many creatures. For example, in western and eastern cultures with horses, as working colleagues to pull the plough, provided fast transport, milk and meat, together with clothing at times and our respect built over millennia.
Cattle too for instance initially were not considered as food sources, but instead, as still displayed in certain religions such as Hinduism, cows were found to be holy, or magical. There many cults and religions that believe that individual cattle have capabilities of transcendental knowledge and awareness far beyond their human hosts. Most world religions have a 'bull worship' element of practice at some stage of their development: in the Christian, the story of the Golden Calf being just another example.
Our relationship with animals has however completely changed over the past 150 to 200 years, and the notions we once had, of creatures sharing our world, with a type of mutual respect, has virtually dissolved.
Berger remarks upon how animals look at humans, and he considers how they might view other creatures too. In this sense, he refers to how people also look at animals and in an almost uncanny way, they returned they gaze. It is as though there is a mutual "non-comprehension" and the massive gap lies between us. He goes on to explain that language, that human characteristic, helps to join men together, even though they may not speak the same dialect or language. (Berger, in Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A. (2007) pp253). Whereas, he assumes that this language, (which I have begun to call a vehicle for mutual rapport), is unbridgeable between human and animal?
Interestingly, Berger also identifies how companionship with animals and humans has shaped our human development. He calls this an intercession, which I think is an accurate description, and he points out the notion that it is people who have failed to continue to make efforts to communicate with animals in their own language. He cites mythical characters such as Orpheus who were able to communicate and develop a rapport with other creatures for mutual benefit.
The influence of animal deities from prehistoric times continued through ancient Egyptian and Greek history, some of which I've already discussed in previous blogs, and the anthropocentric habit of adopting individual animals to exhibit human traits and vice versa through anthropomorphism is also scrutinised. This is particularly interesting in regards to the parallels of my own research findings.
Berger goes on to talk about how it seems that domesticated animals and man were running parallel through time. Death brings them together. Does that mean that generally the killer and the killed join at some point? He touches on this in the common global beliefs "of the transmigration of souls" (Ibid. pp253).
Dualism and parallelism with our relationship with animals have however been lost is already discussed. Animals and their significance as metaphors in human language are also explored through the writings of Rousseau. Commonalities between creatures and humans have long been a source of wonder and explanation. We humans saw in animals similarities and desired attributes, as well as unfavourable and distasteful connections, amongst all our differences. Berger's intercession and observations of our own human origins are also made through metaphors and analogies of earlier writers and commentators. Way before Aristotle, before close scrutiny in the methodical, stringent and analytical ways of the Greek Academy, texts such as those of Homer, such as the Iliad, remark upon symbolic metaphors and semiological signifiers through the use of unemotional recounts of the death of both animals and humans on the battlefield. There is little distinction between the two as death is treated in just the same way for both. In a way, animals and humans are treated entirely equally (Ibid. 254).
Berger goes on to identify "anthropomorphism was the residue of the continuous use of the animal metaphor. In the last two centuries, animals have gradually disappeared. Today we live without them. And in this new solitude, anthropomorphism makes us doubly uneasy." (p255).
This observation is of particular importance because of its timing, in the mid-1970s. During that time there was much intellectual debate about the conditions that animals, both domesticated and those kept in the Zoological Gardens were being confined in. Moreover, creatures that were wild and free were also being recognised as subjects of persecution. Berger points out that Descartes and his division through dualism of the mind and the body, the division between the soul and the physical human body, led the way forward that as animals could not, therefore, have a soul, then they were nothing more than physical automatons like machines. The parallelism, the perceived mutual interconnected respect between animals and humans, and more importantly the actual connectedness understood by humans to animals, dissolve at this point.
Our assumed human elevation and dominance over animals, by "conquering" their individual powers, has been the general story for the last 250 or so years. References to animal behaviour and observations of their existence have become, what Berger terms "nostalgia", manifested as a development since the period of enlightenment. (Ibid. p255). It is only since the mid 20th-century that things have begun to change. This concurs with Baker's observations and other early alarm sounders such as Rachel Carson, together with very many contemporary writers of the 1980s onwards.
In the next section, Berger starts to discuss the more modern phenomenon of the keeping of domestic pets. Originally, as already described, domestic animals invariably had some kind of particular product, whether it was meat, milk, eggs, fur or wool, or another useful by-product. Domestic pets, however, serve merely as companionship for the most part. They perform little more than to establish the owner with a sense of control over another being (especially, I believe with dogs and their owners).
Rounding up the concept that humans have lost touch with animals as kinds of equals within the world, phenomena with which I also concur with Berger, that he says has only occurred over the last 150 or so years. He demonstrates the disconnection between humans and animals by exploring the way that humans look at zoo animals. Those imprisoned creatures that have been marginalised by humans to such an extent that when we look at them, they are unable to look back at us in any way approaching how they might look at us if they were truly wild and free. Instead, they have been so conditioned to be looked at that their stereotypical behaviours of pacing at the edge of their domains become so repetitive (through acute boredom no doubt) that they have lost the capacity to either view us as potential prey or potential threat. The whole experience for us humans, therefore, has become one of theatre or 'museum'. He likens the zoo to an art gallery in this respect too, in that viewers pass along a conveyor of gaze in each animal enclosure, similar to the somewhat blank gaze of many visitors observing art objects and paintings.
Berger finishes off with a declaration that I interpret as 'the human to animal - animal to human' connection that we once had, is now irretrievably lost.
Conclusions:
- An excellent source of writing and reflection.
- The synergies with some of my own thoughts are more than apparent, and I will use this reference to greater effect within the essay.
- A text of vital importance and widely recognised, its contents are as valid today as they were forty years ago when they were first written.
References:
Berger, J. (1980). Why Look at Animals from About Looking, Berger, J. (1980). Pantheon Books, A division of Random House, London. Cited in whole in Kalof, L. and Fitzgerald, A. (2007) The Animals Reader, pp 251- 261. Retrieved from Google Scholar, 4th July 2017. At https://itp.nyu.edu/classes/interspecies/texts/johnBerger.pdfBerger J. (1972). "Ways of Seeing" (Originally published in 1972, London, Penguin Books, 2008, Penguin Design Series edition).
Tuesday, 2 May 2017
Book Review, "Falcon" (2006), by Helen Macdonald, part 2.
Over the past week, I've been suffering from a horrible virus which is left me pretty much on fit to do anything involving physical exertion or even talking! In a way, even though I've spent far more time than usual sleeping, this sedentary existence has allowed me to read and reflect on Helen Macdonald's "Falcon" (2006) in a keenly focused way.
The sheer wonder of these creatures that Macdonald is so keen to articulate is truly amazing, and I am beginning to understand not only her own obsession with these highly developed masters of the sky, but the wider sense of awe beyond those involved in falconry, or even conservation of these animals. The aura that all birds of prey hold, in their skill and extreme sensory abilities, is somehow strengthened and supplemented with our own human interpretation. This, which intertwined with a sense of discreet isolation or separateness, a bit like an aloof man of religion, a doctor, a top sportsman, eminent politician, industry leader, university professor or even a highly decorated soldier. Humans naturally hold such people in awe. We metaphorically and sometimes physically, put them on a pedestal, in much the same way we also do the same with raptors. (Consider Horus, the Egyptian God, the highest deity, depicted as a human with a Peregrine's head, discussed in earlier blogs). Indeed, we put Falcons onto perches that are pedestals in their own right.
This humanised view, "the invisible mental lens of your own [human] culture through which [we] see the world," is what anthropologist Franz Boas calls Kulturbrille. (Macdonald, 2006, p15).If I recall, I think the word is a compound of culture and spectacles, that is eyeglasses. It is an allusion that we all view the world from a different standpoint. An English translation might be rose-tinted glasses, but I think the German version removes the idea of an ideal. That is, Kulturbrille is a much more personal thing, each of us can see positive or negative aspects independently.
Nevertheless, the point that Macdonald is making is again related to this mirror that we tend to use that reflects nature with ourselves. We make our own meanings from imaginary or real situations in encounters with animals. The animals, however, have no such symbolic needs to satisfy themselves. Their lives are occupied with survival, eating, breeding and flying.
I accept that this is, to a great extent, part of my own quest to make meaning through art and digital media. Equally, the search for mediation, between AJ Baker and his peregrines unfolds as his own impossible desire to virtually become one. Indeed Macdonald writes on p 17 and 18 about Baker's obsession to connect with the peregrines which eventually, at least to Baker, is successful after 10 years of dogged study.
Macdonald's initial chapters of "Falcon" provide an excellent introduction to falcon's in general and covers many of the more popular species out of the 60 or so known Raptors within Falconidae.
With regards to my own work, I see a huge caveat that Macdonald points out in the section "What Is It like to Be a Falcon?" where she states: [...]
"To try to attempt to understand the living world of another person is philosophically suspect; for a different animal, the attempt is perhaps absurd, - but undeniably fascinating."
While this might be a warning shot for my own pursuits, there is more, when coupled with the thought from Werner Hertzog that I read recently in the Guardian. [ He states that anybody who tries to make a film about JA Baker's the Peregrine] "should be taken out and shot" makes me a little bit uneasy, to say the least!
I'm referring here to a recent article in the Guardian entitled "Violent Spring: The nature book that predicted the future" published on 15th April 2017, by Robert McFarlane. I'm delighted that this newspaper has decided to celebrate the 50th year of publication of JA Baker's "The Peregrine" (1967), as this alone further underlines the currency of my own work. A highly fortuitous observation on their part for me, I must say!
Despite the Hertzog warning that "whoever tries to make a feature film of The Peregrine should be shot without trial," (his exact words). I'm not trying to make a feature film, far from it, I'm reversing the narrative hopefully in such a way that it is not a mirror but a different point of view. Maybe the grand master, Hertzog, may forgive me and accept in small part, that perhaps, my own naive arrogance is sufficient to allow me to continue.
Coming back to Dr Helen Macdonald's more scientific examination of what it might be like to be a Peregrine, the sheer speed in which they conduct their existence alone, means that their reactions are virtually within a different dimension of reality to that of humans. For example, Macdonald quotes that our combination of the persistence of vision and our ability to process moving pictures. (The old celluloid film, if I recall had a rate of approximately 16 frames per second, which provided a small amount of flicker). This rests around 20 frames per second. Hence interlaced television for the past 30 or so years (until the advent of HD) runs at 25 frames per second. Apparently, this seems to be too slow for Falcons to even recognise. They have the ability to see approximately 70 to 80 frames per second! This is just one example, and I have already begun to articulate the visual acuity of hawks and falcons elsewhere in my blogs so I need not repeat it here.
The detailed research and myriad wealth of knowledge that Macdonald has acquired over many years are expertly explained together with our historical and cultural union with these birds, not only in the Western traditions but moreover, a whole global picture of man's relationship with them. Many of the sources that I have researched appear in her book. An example; I was pleased to see the work of Vance Tucker, whom as I have just mentioned in the previous paragraph, provided me with the abundant research into the anatomy of falcon's eyes. His work is mentioned on p 38, in reference to the fast turns that Falcons have to make when exiting from a stoop (A near vertical dive). They experience G forces of over 25 Gs. Military aircraft pilots in pressure suits are likely to pass out (lose consciousness) at much beyond 6 or 7Gs. Accepted, there is a massive weight difference between a falcon and human, nevertheless the adaptations in the anatomy of falcons, and to a larger degree peregrines, in particular, shows how supremely attuned nature has allowed them to become.
The historical relationships between man and Falcons are highly diversified. So much of Macdonald's work brings focus to how their influence upon humans has been fundamental to our own development and culture. So much of it is often taken for granted. But the threat to this companion species cannot be underestimated.
In chapter 4 of "Falcon" Macdonald delineates the steady and undeniable decline of these magnificent creatures. This is even before the advent of DDT being used as a pesticide throughout the globe after World War II, which almost put a nail in the coffin of Horus (metaphorically speaking) and the whole raptor apex species.
Thankfully, by the early 1960s, there was a new recognition of the damage that DDT was causing, not only in America but in Europe. In 1962 Rachel Carson published the book "Silent Spring" (I have just ordered a copy!), Which provided a huge wake-up call to the general public about the lethality of pesticides and the damage that was being caused, not only to the natural world but ultimately to humans themselves. Others also were waking up to the urgent need to try and save a huge number of raptor species. (2006, pages 128 to 131).
In the United Kingdom work had already started at the Monks Wood Experimental Research Station in the toxicity of pesticides on apex predators, and raptors including Peregrines. I was delighted to see the connection to Huddersfield at this point in Macdonald's book, with a picture of 'our very own' Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who visited the establishment in 1970 (2006, p 133). (PM Wilson was born and schooled in Huddersfield, living in the town for much of his younger years and continued to support the town football club through his life. He never lost the Yorkshire accent. I was fortunate to briefly meet him in his later years, well after he had retired from active politics).
I love to see these connections, and while I'm very much aware that circumstance, luck and serendipity are all curiously linked through some random and unexplainable coincidences, they provide meaning and motivation to continue.
In reflecting on so much of this book over the last week or so, this seems to be a general connection emerging between my own lines of enquiry, and it seems Dr Helen Macdonald. The feeling that "I'm onto something" is continually being strengthened by even the smallest encounters. I hope this continues as there is a deep sense of fulfilment on the one hand, but unbounded curiosity and a yearning to learn more on the other.
References;
Carson, R. (1962) "Silent Spring" Penguin Books, London [1999 edition].
Holloway, D.J. (2008), "When Species Meet", The University Of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA.
Macdonald, H. (2006), "Falcon", Reaction Books Ltd, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014), "H is for Hawk", Vintage Books, London.
MacFarlane, R. (2017), The Guardian Newspaper, 15th April 2017, "Violent Spring; The book that predicted the future... https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/15/the-peregrine-by-ja-baker-nature-writing
Tucker, V.A. (2000) “THE DEEP FOVEA, SIDEWAYS VISION AND SPIRAL FLIGHT PATHS IN RAPTORS” Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham, NC,
in The Journal of Experimental Biology 203, The Company of Biologists Limited, Great Britain (pp 3745 – 3754).
The sheer wonder of these creatures that Macdonald is so keen to articulate is truly amazing, and I am beginning to understand not only her own obsession with these highly developed masters of the sky, but the wider sense of awe beyond those involved in falconry, or even conservation of these animals. The aura that all birds of prey hold, in their skill and extreme sensory abilities, is somehow strengthened and supplemented with our own human interpretation. This, which intertwined with a sense of discreet isolation or separateness, a bit like an aloof man of religion, a doctor, a top sportsman, eminent politician, industry leader, university professor or even a highly decorated soldier. Humans naturally hold such people in awe. We metaphorically and sometimes physically, put them on a pedestal, in much the same way we also do the same with raptors. (Consider Horus, the Egyptian God, the highest deity, depicted as a human with a Peregrine's head, discussed in earlier blogs). Indeed, we put Falcons onto perches that are pedestals in their own right.
This humanised view, "the invisible mental lens of your own [human] culture through which [we] see the world," is what anthropologist Franz Boas calls Kulturbrille. (Macdonald, 2006, p15).If I recall, I think the word is a compound of culture and spectacles, that is eyeglasses. It is an allusion that we all view the world from a different standpoint. An English translation might be rose-tinted glasses, but I think the German version removes the idea of an ideal. That is, Kulturbrille is a much more personal thing, each of us can see positive or negative aspects independently.
Nevertheless, the point that Macdonald is making is again related to this mirror that we tend to use that reflects nature with ourselves. We make our own meanings from imaginary or real situations in encounters with animals. The animals, however, have no such symbolic needs to satisfy themselves. Their lives are occupied with survival, eating, breeding and flying.
I accept that this is, to a great extent, part of my own quest to make meaning through art and digital media. Equally, the search for mediation, between AJ Baker and his peregrines unfolds as his own impossible desire to virtually become one. Indeed Macdonald writes on p 17 and 18 about Baker's obsession to connect with the peregrines which eventually, at least to Baker, is successful after 10 years of dogged study.
Macdonald's initial chapters of "Falcon" provide an excellent introduction to falcon's in general and covers many of the more popular species out of the 60 or so known Raptors within Falconidae.
With regards to my own work, I see a huge caveat that Macdonald points out in the section "What Is It like to Be a Falcon?" where she states: [...]
"To try to attempt to understand the living world of another person is philosophically suspect; for a different animal, the attempt is perhaps absurd, - but undeniably fascinating."
While this might be a warning shot for my own pursuits, there is more, when coupled with the thought from Werner Hertzog that I read recently in the Guardian. [ He states that anybody who tries to make a film about JA Baker's the Peregrine] "should be taken out and shot" makes me a little bit uneasy, to say the least!
I'm referring here to a recent article in the Guardian entitled "Violent Spring: The nature book that predicted the future" published on 15th April 2017, by Robert McFarlane. I'm delighted that this newspaper has decided to celebrate the 50th year of publication of JA Baker's "The Peregrine" (1967), as this alone further underlines the currency of my own work. A highly fortuitous observation on their part for me, I must say!
Despite the Hertzog warning that "whoever tries to make a feature film of The Peregrine should be shot without trial," (his exact words). I'm not trying to make a feature film, far from it, I'm reversing the narrative hopefully in such a way that it is not a mirror but a different point of view. Maybe the grand master, Hertzog, may forgive me and accept in small part, that perhaps, my own naive arrogance is sufficient to allow me to continue.
Coming back to Dr Helen Macdonald's more scientific examination of what it might be like to be a Peregrine, the sheer speed in which they conduct their existence alone, means that their reactions are virtually within a different dimension of reality to that of humans. For example, Macdonald quotes that our combination of the persistence of vision and our ability to process moving pictures. (The old celluloid film, if I recall had a rate of approximately 16 frames per second, which provided a small amount of flicker). This rests around 20 frames per second. Hence interlaced television for the past 30 or so years (until the advent of HD) runs at 25 frames per second. Apparently, this seems to be too slow for Falcons to even recognise. They have the ability to see approximately 70 to 80 frames per second! This is just one example, and I have already begun to articulate the visual acuity of hawks and falcons elsewhere in my blogs so I need not repeat it here.
The detailed research and myriad wealth of knowledge that Macdonald has acquired over many years are expertly explained together with our historical and cultural union with these birds, not only in the Western traditions but moreover, a whole global picture of man's relationship with them. Many of the sources that I have researched appear in her book. An example; I was pleased to see the work of Vance Tucker, whom as I have just mentioned in the previous paragraph, provided me with the abundant research into the anatomy of falcon's eyes. His work is mentioned on p 38, in reference to the fast turns that Falcons have to make when exiting from a stoop (A near vertical dive). They experience G forces of over 25 Gs. Military aircraft pilots in pressure suits are likely to pass out (lose consciousness) at much beyond 6 or 7Gs. Accepted, there is a massive weight difference between a falcon and human, nevertheless the adaptations in the anatomy of falcons, and to a larger degree peregrines, in particular, shows how supremely attuned nature has allowed them to become.
The historical relationships between man and Falcons are highly diversified. So much of Macdonald's work brings focus to how their influence upon humans has been fundamental to our own development and culture. So much of it is often taken for granted. But the threat to this companion species cannot be underestimated.
In chapter 4 of "Falcon" Macdonald delineates the steady and undeniable decline of these magnificent creatures. This is even before the advent of DDT being used as a pesticide throughout the globe after World War II, which almost put a nail in the coffin of Horus (metaphorically speaking) and the whole raptor apex species.
Thankfully, by the early 1960s, there was a new recognition of the damage that DDT was causing, not only in America but in Europe. In 1962 Rachel Carson published the book "Silent Spring" (I have just ordered a copy!), Which provided a huge wake-up call to the general public about the lethality of pesticides and the damage that was being caused, not only to the natural world but ultimately to humans themselves. Others also were waking up to the urgent need to try and save a huge number of raptor species. (2006, pages 128 to 131).
In the United Kingdom work had already started at the Monks Wood Experimental Research Station in the toxicity of pesticides on apex predators, and raptors including Peregrines. I was delighted to see the connection to Huddersfield at this point in Macdonald's book, with a picture of 'our very own' Prime Minister Harold Wilson, who visited the establishment in 1970 (2006, p 133). (PM Wilson was born and schooled in Huddersfield, living in the town for much of his younger years and continued to support the town football club through his life. He never lost the Yorkshire accent. I was fortunate to briefly meet him in his later years, well after he had retired from active politics).
 |
| Image of Harold Wilson, from "Falcon" by Helen MacDonald (2006) p133. Scan took from an original photograph by an unknown photographer. |
In reflecting on so much of this book over the last week or so, this seems to be a general connection emerging between my own lines of enquiry, and it seems Dr Helen Macdonald. The feeling that "I'm onto something" is continually being strengthened by even the smallest encounters. I hope this continues as there is a deep sense of fulfilment on the one hand, but unbounded curiosity and a yearning to learn more on the other.
References;
Carson, R. (1962) "Silent Spring" Penguin Books, London [1999 edition].
Holloway, D.J. (2008), "When Species Meet", The University Of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA.
Macdonald, H. (2006), "Falcon", Reaction Books Ltd, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014), "H is for Hawk", Vintage Books, London.
MacFarlane, R. (2017), The Guardian Newspaper, 15th April 2017, "Violent Spring; The book that predicted the future... https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/apr/15/the-peregrine-by-ja-baker-nature-writing
Tucker, V.A. (2000) “THE DEEP FOVEA, SIDEWAYS VISION AND SPIRAL FLIGHT PATHS IN RAPTORS” Department of Biology, Duke University, Box 90338, Durham, NC,
in The Journal of Experimental Biology 203, The Company of Biologists Limited, Great Britain (pp 3745 – 3754).
Tuesday, 25 April 2017
Book Review - "Falcon" (2006), by Helen Macdonald. Reaktion Books, London. Part 1
Having been struggling with the book by Donna Haraway "When Species Meet" (2008), I've decided to take a little diversion, rather than an abandonment reading Haraway. A book that really resonated with me a month or so ago was another book by Helen Macdonald called "H is for Hawk" (2014) which won the Samuel Johnson prize in 2016. In comparison with Haraway and her rather American style of writing, which almost seems like a kind of chatter (much of which seems entirely superfluous to me, but that might just be my own possibly prejudiced view), Helen Macdonald, who is equally an academic, provides a much easier style of sharing information.
Having bought the book a couple of weeks ago, which is the 2016 addition, Macdonald writes a short preface to it, and on the very first page, she even mentions our very own JA Baker! So that gets me off to a splendid start.
Macdonald is quick to point out that even though this book in scrutiny was written in 2006, she states that just like "H is for Hawk" nature is used as a mirror to the human condition and this book is no different to the one that she wrote almost 10 years later. She explains that the reason for this book at the time (the thoughts of which started in the early 2000s), came from a part of her studies towards her dissertation for a PhD in the history of science. The interesting point that Dr Macdonald makes is that she was so distracted with her own engagement with falconry, that this became a greater priority in some ways than the research of her PhD. Apparently, she didn't want to waste all the effort, and explicit source material that she had collected, and the chance to write a book to capture and share this work came to her through a serendipitous meeting with the editor of the book's publishers. The rest as she says was her celebration of the memories and anecdotes tied together into this book.
Her encounters with falconry and birds of prey had already been a huge influence, not only on her late childhood but also in her maturing years. The key passage that she mentions on p11 of the preface talks about her reflection on her own state of mind in 2006, just before her father passed away. There is even a reference about her Hawk "Mabel" who is the central feature of her later book "H is for Hawk". This is in the line where she expresses "it wasn't until that dark year with my own Hawk Mabel that the visceral truth that we use nature as a mirror of our own needs became something I understood, rather than merely knew." This is exactly the point that I think Donna Haraway has been trying to articulate in all the reading of "When Species Meet" (2008), which until this discovery, I had been oblivious to. Macdonald is able to capture it twice within the preface of her book!
"Falcon" (2006), is Macdonald's intimate analysis about the relationship between human culture and that of the history with Falcons, and how our lives have been intertwined with these creatures for thousands of years. In my own opinion, there is a much greater sense of independence of those falcon's than perhaps the subjects of study that Donna Haraway has chosen to analyse, particularly in her relationship and studies of dog behaviour. Nevertheless, the similarities of both writers provide highly illuminated reflections on our own existence and anthropocentric interpretations.
And finally in Macdonald's preface to "Falcon" (2006) that she has added to the book in 2016, she finishes off by saying;
References:
Holloway, D.J. (2008), "When Species Meet", The University Of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA.
Macdonald, H. (2006), "Falcon", Reaction Books Ltd, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014), "H is for Hawk", Vintage Books, London.
Having bought the book a couple of weeks ago, which is the 2016 addition, Macdonald writes a short preface to it, and on the very first page, she even mentions our very own JA Baker! So that gets me off to a splendid start.
Macdonald is quick to point out that even though this book in scrutiny was written in 2006, she states that just like "H is for Hawk" nature is used as a mirror to the human condition and this book is no different to the one that she wrote almost 10 years later. She explains that the reason for this book at the time (the thoughts of which started in the early 2000s), came from a part of her studies towards her dissertation for a PhD in the history of science. The interesting point that Dr Macdonald makes is that she was so distracted with her own engagement with falconry, that this became a greater priority in some ways than the research of her PhD. Apparently, she didn't want to waste all the effort, and explicit source material that she had collected, and the chance to write a book to capture and share this work came to her through a serendipitous meeting with the editor of the book's publishers. The rest as she says was her celebration of the memories and anecdotes tied together into this book.
Her encounters with falconry and birds of prey had already been a huge influence, not only on her late childhood but also in her maturing years. The key passage that she mentions on p11 of the preface talks about her reflection on her own state of mind in 2006, just before her father passed away. There is even a reference about her Hawk "Mabel" who is the central feature of her later book "H is for Hawk". This is in the line where she expresses "it wasn't until that dark year with my own Hawk Mabel that the visceral truth that we use nature as a mirror of our own needs became something I understood, rather than merely knew." This is exactly the point that I think Donna Haraway has been trying to articulate in all the reading of "When Species Meet" (2008), which until this discovery, I had been oblivious to. Macdonald is able to capture it twice within the preface of her book!
"Falcon" (2006), is Macdonald's intimate analysis about the relationship between human culture and that of the history with Falcons, and how our lives have been intertwined with these creatures for thousands of years. In my own opinion, there is a much greater sense of independence of those falcon's than perhaps the subjects of study that Donna Haraway has chosen to analyse, particularly in her relationship and studies of dog behaviour. Nevertheless, the similarities of both writers provide highly illuminated reflections on our own existence and anthropocentric interpretations.
And finally in Macdonald's preface to "Falcon" (2006) that she has added to the book in 2016, she finishes off by saying;
"now more than ever… We need to look long and hard at how we view and interact with the natural world. […] We are living through the world's sixth great extinction caused entirely by us [human activity…]. How and why we see landscapes and creatures as we do, how we value them and why we should protect them… Is far more important than academic interest. They are questions to which the answers are simply about how we can save the world."This is the crux of my own motivations for engaging in the project that I have chosen to do! I am hooked by this book already!
References:
Holloway, D.J. (2008), "When Species Meet", The University Of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, USA.
Macdonald, H. (2006), "Falcon", Reaction Books Ltd, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014), "H is for Hawk", Vintage Books, London.
Saturday, 22 April 2017
Harraway's "When Species meet", part 4.
In the final section of the first chapter of "When Species Meet" (2007), Haraway draws an important observation about the fact that we are in the midst of a "reinvented Pastoral-tourist economy", which is having a great impact on the general populace of the West, and their sense of appreciation of what they think to be "wild, open and unspoilt natural places". While this in itself is significant as a step forward towards people having respect for such places, it should be noted that the landscape, particularly in Britain, has changed multiple times over the last millennia due to man's continued and varied agricultural activities. (For example see the book the making of the English landscape, (1955) by W.G. Hoskins). So we can hardly call this, an unspoilt natural place, but perhaps that is a moot point.
What I'm trying to get at here though, is that Haraway recognises a resurgence, especially in Europe and the United States, people want to get outside and enjoy what they believe to be open countryside and "nature". The story that Haraway explains this through comes from a small brochure that was sent to her from a friend during a hiking tour of the French Alps. The brochure alerted walkers that they may encounter "the local guard dogs, large white dogs whose task it is to guard the flocks." In a way, what is being reached for here is to encourage tourists to politely respect the jobs of those working dogs and "for hikers to be on their best countryside behaviour." I love this idea of being polite, it conjures up a kind of rapport that is unspoken between the tourists and these huge white guard dogs, who might be thinking a completely opposite attitude towards the human gawping tourists. Hence their likely angry barks, which is what I have always encountered from dogs whenever I have inadvertently stepped into their zone of territory. To me, what Haraway is doing again, is projecting a human behaviour towards another animal (i.e. dogs), with an expectation that they might respond perhaps in a likely human way.
This anthropomorphic treatment of other species surely has to be thoroughly challenged. We need to investigate other ways of establishing a rapport with companion species that fits with their worldview, and not our own?
In fairness to Haraway, she does point this out in her final sentence as what she calls "a prosaic detail: the exercise of good manners makes the competent working animals those whom the people need to learn to recognise." The footnote to this explains it all correctly, however. "Apparently friendly and curious behaviour from wild wolves directed people is most likely to be an exploration of a possible lupine lunch rather than an affectionate cross-species romp." So in fairness to Haraway, she is well aware that real life is not a case of romantic naturalism, that really about eating and being eaten.
The next chapter entitled "Value Added Dogs and Lively Capital", explores the relationship between modern capitalism and workers rights (based on the values originally proposed by Karl Marx), and the potential rights of other living breathing sentient beings (and here, for Haraway, read mostly dogs). Marx's notions of use value, versus exchange value, come into play here, which ultimately turn into exploitation. Humans have been exploiting each other well before we emerged as a separate species. Likewise, animals exploit each other too. Again I struggled with Haraway's points of trying to tie the works of Karl Marx and the exploitation of labour together with our more historical habits of exploiting animals. Ultimately, I do recognise and understand her drive to expand on the fact that early 21st-century "capitalist techno-culture" is providing an environment where we as humans "might deepen our abilities to understand value added encounters."
In summary, I think that Haraway is commenting on our current culture is in the midst of a change in attitudes. To me, this seems an obvious discourse rather, as we are always in the middle of history in my view, not at the end. We are constantly in flux and in the middle of change at any point in history, and while it is important to record and observe cultural attitudes and narratives, I feel there is always a need for a more holistic recognition that we are merely in the midst of time. Attitudes change, and it is important for all disciplines, anthropology, biology et cetera (the sciences), to work in tandem with the arts, in helping to shape cultural attitudes.
I'm glad to say that it is more or less at this point (p 82), that Haraway starts to talk in a slightly different tone, that is to say, "Caring." This is more now focus on how do we share "suffering". This is a subtle move away from the anthropomorphism that the first couple of chapters seem to engage with. Haraway is not talking about some kind of heroic copying of pain and suffering, but instead to "do the work of paying attention and making sure that suffering is minimal, (necessary?), And consequential. In this sense, my exploration of JA Baker's writing in his book "the Peregrine" (1967) seems a perfect point to finish on, that it is clear that Baker is indeed trying to position himself in the responsible and caring way of sharing the suffering of his subject Peregrines.
References;
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, US.
What I'm trying to get at here though, is that Haraway recognises a resurgence, especially in Europe and the United States, people want to get outside and enjoy what they believe to be open countryside and "nature". The story that Haraway explains this through comes from a small brochure that was sent to her from a friend during a hiking tour of the French Alps. The brochure alerted walkers that they may encounter "the local guard dogs, large white dogs whose task it is to guard the flocks." In a way, what is being reached for here is to encourage tourists to politely respect the jobs of those working dogs and "for hikers to be on their best countryside behaviour." I love this idea of being polite, it conjures up a kind of rapport that is unspoken between the tourists and these huge white guard dogs, who might be thinking a completely opposite attitude towards the human gawping tourists. Hence their likely angry barks, which is what I have always encountered from dogs whenever I have inadvertently stepped into their zone of territory. To me, what Haraway is doing again, is projecting a human behaviour towards another animal (i.e. dogs), with an expectation that they might respond perhaps in a likely human way.
This anthropomorphic treatment of other species surely has to be thoroughly challenged. We need to investigate other ways of establishing a rapport with companion species that fits with their worldview, and not our own?
In fairness to Haraway, she does point this out in her final sentence as what she calls "a prosaic detail: the exercise of good manners makes the competent working animals those whom the people need to learn to recognise." The footnote to this explains it all correctly, however. "Apparently friendly and curious behaviour from wild wolves directed people is most likely to be an exploration of a possible lupine lunch rather than an affectionate cross-species romp." So in fairness to Haraway, she is well aware that real life is not a case of romantic naturalism, that really about eating and being eaten.
The next chapter entitled "Value Added Dogs and Lively Capital", explores the relationship between modern capitalism and workers rights (based on the values originally proposed by Karl Marx), and the potential rights of other living breathing sentient beings (and here, for Haraway, read mostly dogs). Marx's notions of use value, versus exchange value, come into play here, which ultimately turn into exploitation. Humans have been exploiting each other well before we emerged as a separate species. Likewise, animals exploit each other too. Again I struggled with Haraway's points of trying to tie the works of Karl Marx and the exploitation of labour together with our more historical habits of exploiting animals. Ultimately, I do recognise and understand her drive to expand on the fact that early 21st-century "capitalist techno-culture" is providing an environment where we as humans "might deepen our abilities to understand value added encounters."
In summary, I think that Haraway is commenting on our current culture is in the midst of a change in attitudes. To me, this seems an obvious discourse rather, as we are always in the middle of history in my view, not at the end. We are constantly in flux and in the middle of change at any point in history, and while it is important to record and observe cultural attitudes and narratives, I feel there is always a need for a more holistic recognition that we are merely in the midst of time. Attitudes change, and it is important for all disciplines, anthropology, biology et cetera (the sciences), to work in tandem with the arts, in helping to shape cultural attitudes.
I'm glad to say that it is more or less at this point (p 82), that Haraway starts to talk in a slightly different tone, that is to say, "Caring." This is more now focus on how do we share "suffering". This is a subtle move away from the anthropomorphism that the first couple of chapters seem to engage with. Haraway is not talking about some kind of heroic copying of pain and suffering, but instead to "do the work of paying attention and making sure that suffering is minimal, (necessary?), And consequential. In this sense, my exploration of JA Baker's writing in his book "the Peregrine" (1967) seems a perfect point to finish on, that it is clear that Baker is indeed trying to position himself in the responsible and caring way of sharing the suffering of his subject Peregrines.
References;
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, US.
Tuesday, 18 April 2017
Struggling on with Donna Haraway!... Some further thoughts on her book, "When Species Meet" (2007) #3
Having made a start in reading the work of Donna Haraway, I've decided to revisit her book "When Species Meet" (2008), by the University of Minnesota Press. Minneapolis. I've chosen to spend a fair time of my Easter holiday trying to absorb her work in a different way perhaps than my first attempt back in January/February this year.
Haraway opens the book by describing it as "an acknowledgement of the lively knottings that tie together the world I inhabit". This seems to be a good start! It fits with my intentions to study relationships between humans and, as Haraway puts it, 'nonhuman animals' and with the knowledge that Haraway, being a professor of anthropology, it seems that her enquiries are indeed likely to resonate with some of my own thoughts.
However, I quickly find in the acknowledgements section at the beginning of the book, much of it is devoted to the relationship between humans and dogs. While there is a clue that this may be the case through the depiction of the silhouette of a black Labrador extending its paw into a cupped human hand, the title itself "When Species Meet" suggests that there may be a wider enquiry. Not being a very doggy person myself, I will pursue reading to her lengthy tome of over 400 pages, but with the caution that I may find myself struggling with it at times! If I find this to be the case and this battle becomes a chore, I will probably abandon the exercise, but this time I'm determined to give it a better chance than the 30 or 40 pages that I read at the beginning of the year.
Some of her initial points to position enquiry I've paraphrased. They are useful because she sets out (as her second objective) as "how is 'becoming with' practice of becoming worldly?" Which is about her initial question of "whom and what do I touch when I touch my dog?" And I read this as also being, whom and what does a human touch, in any human to animal encounter?
Haraway explains that us humans are actually only really made up of pure human genomes in about 10% of all the cells of the human body, the rest of the cells are filled with a plethora of various organisms genomes, including fungi, bacteria and a whole host of other life forms, all of which come together to harmoniously allow us to live! Many of these critters (and the critter is a term that Haraway consistently uses) get a free ride in that vessel that we call our bodies. She observes that her sense of self is almost entirely overwhelmed by all of these various other tiny companions.
So again, it seems we're off to a good start in that there is an explicit recognition of companion species, both within ourselves and without. But soon enough, Haraway's rather rambling and florid (and times a little archaic) writing turns the subject back to dogs… Although there is an interesting discourse on p 19 about the observations of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, about an encounter that he had with his cat. He recognised that his cat was looking at him, and so he knew that he was in the presence of someone, a sentient being capable of thinking, not some autonomous machine. But what Haraway points out is that Derrida did not start to question what his pet was actually feeling or thinking, or even doing, and as such suggests that he "failed the simple obligation of companion species". I find this interesting because there is an implied duty by Haraway, which whilst I understand her concept of companionship being a sharing of experiences (and Haraway deconstructs in detail the meaning of companionship, its derivation and etymology, its literal Latin translation meaning "with bread" as an inference to sharing and eating together), the observation by Jacques Derrida, was very much based on a singular event. Haraway attempts to criticise his failed attempt to enquire further, which is fair enough, but I think she misses the point which ultimately Derrida was trying to say. That is, what's the difference between a response and reaction? This was a linguistic enquiry, simply because Derrida was more interested in the language of encounters and exchange rather than biological intimacy.
Moving on, Haraway sites the work of two other French philosophers, Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in their famous jointly written book, "A Thousand Plateaus". At the time that this book was written, (through the 1970s and published in 1980), it must be recognised that our culture and attitude towards animals (other than humans) was only just beginning to change from the dominator (and arguably, non-feminist) perception, like the master and slave, or human sovereignty over nature. This, I believe is what Deleuze and Guattari were also ultimately trying to break down, the masculine-centric, patrilineal thinking that has dominated philosophy before their very own writing about it. This is important here because I believe in the 30 or so years that have elapsed since their original thoughts, Haraway identifies (correctly) that their attitudes are vastly out of touch with her own (which of course are based on her own cultural environment and particularly a progressive, almost ideological, milieu found in California and the West Coast of the United States). Perhaps that's rather unfair, as neither of those two French philosophers has a chance of defending themselves in our modern culture.
Then back to writing more about dogs and observations of events! A regular pattern of prose rises with Haraway, where she often provides, instead of descriptions that illuminate imagination, she merely provides lists of nouns, separated by commas, which go on and on, such as that on p 39, the politics of wolves, dogs, cattle, tics, pathogens, tanks, minefields, soldiers, displaced villagers, cattle thieves et cetera et cetera. The staccato, almost scattergun approach to her articulation is tough for somebody like me, who is more visually orientated, to imagine or visualise as a kind of rendering of a picture, which is required to establish a clear understanding. Even in the last part of this last sentence, as I analyse it, the language is much more visualistic and image orientated!
In thinking about Haraway and her style, from a visual point of view, it's almost like a series of flickering photographic slides of all sorts of ideas, being bombarded at the spectator, rather than a smoothly unfolding (and arguably more sophisticated), narrative that brings a sense of journey (like a cinema film does) to the viewer.
Anyway, it's around here after about 40 pages that I stopped the last time, so I'm determined to keep going in the hope that I will start to absorb a deeper sense of rapport and common ground to find with Haraway. Onwards and upwards, but I think this reflection articulates my struggle with this author!
References;
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, US.
Haraway opens the book by describing it as "an acknowledgement of the lively knottings that tie together the world I inhabit". This seems to be a good start! It fits with my intentions to study relationships between humans and, as Haraway puts it, 'nonhuman animals' and with the knowledge that Haraway, being a professor of anthropology, it seems that her enquiries are indeed likely to resonate with some of my own thoughts.
However, I quickly find in the acknowledgements section at the beginning of the book, much of it is devoted to the relationship between humans and dogs. While there is a clue that this may be the case through the depiction of the silhouette of a black Labrador extending its paw into a cupped human hand, the title itself "When Species Meet" suggests that there may be a wider enquiry. Not being a very doggy person myself, I will pursue reading to her lengthy tome of over 400 pages, but with the caution that I may find myself struggling with it at times! If I find this to be the case and this battle becomes a chore, I will probably abandon the exercise, but this time I'm determined to give it a better chance than the 30 or 40 pages that I read at the beginning of the year.
Some of her initial points to position enquiry I've paraphrased. They are useful because she sets out (as her second objective) as "how is 'becoming with' practice of becoming worldly?" Which is about her initial question of "whom and what do I touch when I touch my dog?" And I read this as also being, whom and what does a human touch, in any human to animal encounter?
Haraway explains that us humans are actually only really made up of pure human genomes in about 10% of all the cells of the human body, the rest of the cells are filled with a plethora of various organisms genomes, including fungi, bacteria and a whole host of other life forms, all of which come together to harmoniously allow us to live! Many of these critters (and the critter is a term that Haraway consistently uses) get a free ride in that vessel that we call our bodies. She observes that her sense of self is almost entirely overwhelmed by all of these various other tiny companions.
So again, it seems we're off to a good start in that there is an explicit recognition of companion species, both within ourselves and without. But soon enough, Haraway's rather rambling and florid (and times a little archaic) writing turns the subject back to dogs… Although there is an interesting discourse on p 19 about the observations of the French philosopher Jacques Derrida, about an encounter that he had with his cat. He recognised that his cat was looking at him, and so he knew that he was in the presence of someone, a sentient being capable of thinking, not some autonomous machine. But what Haraway points out is that Derrida did not start to question what his pet was actually feeling or thinking, or even doing, and as such suggests that he "failed the simple obligation of companion species". I find this interesting because there is an implied duty by Haraway, which whilst I understand her concept of companionship being a sharing of experiences (and Haraway deconstructs in detail the meaning of companionship, its derivation and etymology, its literal Latin translation meaning "with bread" as an inference to sharing and eating together), the observation by Jacques Derrida, was very much based on a singular event. Haraway attempts to criticise his failed attempt to enquire further, which is fair enough, but I think she misses the point which ultimately Derrida was trying to say. That is, what's the difference between a response and reaction? This was a linguistic enquiry, simply because Derrida was more interested in the language of encounters and exchange rather than biological intimacy.
Moving on, Haraway sites the work of two other French philosophers, Giles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, in their famous jointly written book, "A Thousand Plateaus". At the time that this book was written, (through the 1970s and published in 1980), it must be recognised that our culture and attitude towards animals (other than humans) was only just beginning to change from the dominator (and arguably, non-feminist) perception, like the master and slave, or human sovereignty over nature. This, I believe is what Deleuze and Guattari were also ultimately trying to break down, the masculine-centric, patrilineal thinking that has dominated philosophy before their very own writing about it. This is important here because I believe in the 30 or so years that have elapsed since their original thoughts, Haraway identifies (correctly) that their attitudes are vastly out of touch with her own (which of course are based on her own cultural environment and particularly a progressive, almost ideological, milieu found in California and the West Coast of the United States). Perhaps that's rather unfair, as neither of those two French philosophers has a chance of defending themselves in our modern culture.
Then back to writing more about dogs and observations of events! A regular pattern of prose rises with Haraway, where she often provides, instead of descriptions that illuminate imagination, she merely provides lists of nouns, separated by commas, which go on and on, such as that on p 39, the politics of wolves, dogs, cattle, tics, pathogens, tanks, minefields, soldiers, displaced villagers, cattle thieves et cetera et cetera. The staccato, almost scattergun approach to her articulation is tough for somebody like me, who is more visually orientated, to imagine or visualise as a kind of rendering of a picture, which is required to establish a clear understanding. Even in the last part of this last sentence, as I analyse it, the language is much more visualistic and image orientated!
In thinking about Haraway and her style, from a visual point of view, it's almost like a series of flickering photographic slides of all sorts of ideas, being bombarded at the spectator, rather than a smoothly unfolding (and arguably more sophisticated), narrative that brings a sense of journey (like a cinema film does) to the viewer.
Anyway, it's around here after about 40 pages that I stopped the last time, so I'm determined to keep going in the hope that I will start to absorb a deeper sense of rapport and common ground to find with Haraway. Onwards and upwards, but I think this reflection articulates my struggle with this author!
References;
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, US.
Thursday, 30 March 2017
Book Review, "H is for Hawk" by Dr Helen Macdonald (2014), Part #4.
As the book begins to unfold and McDonald's ideas of fear and anxiety become more evident and present, I was delighted to find a reference that she made to something that she found on one of her friends bookshelves: "the new edition of J.A. Bakers the Peregrine, the story of a man obsessively watching wintering wild peregrines in the Essex countryside of the late 1960's" whilst I think she was correct to say that it was published in the 1960's, in is within the text notes of "The Peregrine" (Baker, J.A. 1967), which suggests it was his observations through the 1950's that were then translated and condensed into effectively a single year. The book was published in 1967. Perhaps my own observational pedantry is coming through even here? !
Nevertheless, my pedantry aside... The fact that Helen MacDonald remembers reading this book on a previous occasion, where she is able to explain, not only the obsessive observations of "The Peregrine" that Baker is entwined with but also his sense of mortality, and in her words "an awful desire for death and annihilation"(MacDonald, H. 2104, p199). I was both a little shocked, but also heartened, that while I recognised his sorrowful and saturnine approach to his writing, with a melancholic reference throughout, I must say I couldn't read the yearning for annihilation as such? This nihilism is much more akin to the writing of Frederick William Nietzsche, (another favourite philosopher of mine).
McDonald compares the writing of Baker and her intentions, with's the writings of TH White, in that inspired of his [White's] dreadfully failed attempts of training his goshawk, the struggle that White was having was in fact, against his own death, although in "The Goshawk" (White T.H. 1951), he recognised that there were beautiful things going on, in the outside world, and there is a sense of hope. However, when MacDonald compares this to J.A. Bakers "the Peregrine" she explains that his 'worldview' showed mostly death and dying, and this mirrored the Hawks (Falcons) as "Icons of extinction: ours, their's and his own". According to MacDonald, to Baker, his death was inevitable, and any hope was utterly dashed; hence she writes "there are no place names, though people in his book. They'd fallen away.… (Bakers) Hawks were made of death." (Page 200).
While other commentators of JA Baker's "The Peregrine" (1967) do underline his sense of mortality, I think McDonald's reading of it is particularly dark. I did not feel the same way about the outcomes of the book that clearly had such an effect on MacDonald. In my case, on first reading the Peregrine some six months ago, the book apparently inspired me to think from a different viewpoint altogether.
I'm pleased to stay that this position remains and my continued desire to use Baker's book remains fast and genuine.
Nevertheless, in the analysis of MacDonald's grief and despair, it is not surprising that "the conversation of death" (MacDonald, H., 2014, p210) remains close to the surface. The anxiety and depression she seems to be suffering this point caused her to withdraw even deeper within that grief. She "jumped in panic when the postman knocked on the door: recoiled from the ringing phone. I stopped seeing people. Too, cancelled my gallery talk. Deadlocked at the front door. Out on the hill by fled from walkers, dodged behind hedges when farm vehicles drove up… Some days I lay in bed in so much mysterious pain and began to believe the only explanation was a terminal disease." (p210, p211). Her depression was taking hold of her. I have lived through similar bouts myself and can speak first hand of the wretched fear and darkness that it brings.
In her sorrow, she thinks only of Mabel, the goshawk, and again draws parallels through her own reading of relationships formed between animals and humans, particularly in research conducted in anthropology. For example, she quotes the work of Rane Willerlev, who lived with the hunters in the extreme environment of Siberia in the north-east of Russia for a year. He wrote how the hunters "believed that animals and humans can turn into each other by temporarily taking on one another's bodies" (Macdonald, H., 2104, p211). Macdonald goes on to say that such notions can be very dangerous and continues to explain that Willerslev suggested that by taking on such transformations of mind it can "make you lose sight of your original species identity and undergo an invisible metamorphosis" (p211). This idea of transforming a human soul, our very inner being, as the way we think and see the world about us, by viewing it through an animal's eyes can indeed "imperil the human soul" (p211).
Perhaps this is a warning for me?
Indeed this idea of taking on a spiritual and otherworldly extension is explained further by Macdonald who states "the ability of Hawks to cross borders that humans cannot is a thing far older than Celtic myth, older than Orpheus-four in ancient chauvinistic traditions right across Eurasia, hawks and falcons were seen as messengers between this world and the next."(p226). I have already articulated in previous blogs the relationship that Egyptians had with hawks and peregrines in particular. For example, the principal deity ancient Egyptian God, Horus, and his father Osiris are both depicted as gods in the form of a man, - with a man's arms, legs and body; but crucially, illustrated with the Peregrine or falcon's head.
But there is hope, and as Helen Macdonald is beginning the journey on the road to recovery from her despair and depression she sees something more than "not just winter moving onwards to spring:… But a land filling slowly with spots and lines of beauty." (p238). She is starting to see a kind of new birth, through her own individual contact with nature, and a special place that she begins to call home. Indeed she tells of the hill becoming her home. She says;
"I know it intimately. Every hedgerow, every track through dry grass where the hares cut across field -boundaries, each discarded piece of rusted machinery, every earth and warren and tree… ...Yellowhammers chirping and hedges. Cumulus rubble. The maritime light of this island, set as it is under a sky mirrored and uplit by sea." (Page 239).
This particular paragraph is so much like the style that JA Baker writes of when he is reflecting upon his place, his special place, within the Essex marshes in his book "The Peregrine" (1967).
Macdonald goes on to say "I don't own this land. I've only got permission to fly in here. But in walking it over and over again and paying in great greatest attention, I've made mine." (Macdonald, H. p239). It is clear that a sense of hope is growing in Macdonald's mind. The latter part of the book is much more uplifting, and again in her own words "there is a sense of creation about it: when the hare leapt up from our feet today, it was as if it had been made by the field ex nihilo." (p241). The sense of wonderment is almost palpable. The reattachment of her own soul to her place in the world and her appreciation of each and every stone or blade of grass begins to take significance again. She writes "it's a child's world, full of separate places. Give me a paper and pencil now and ask me to draw a map of the fields I roamed about when I was small, and I cannot do it. But change the question, and asked me to list what was there and I can then fill the pages. The wood ants' nest. The newt pond. The oak tree covered in marble galls."(p241). I find this particularly interesting because it is clear that Macdonald's 'first' language, that is, her first method of communication, is linguistic.
Whereas I believe my own sense of communication, while deeply rooted in the linguistic, has the benefit of imagery and imagination through drawing. Macdonald's explanations provide an insight into another person's perception of the wonderment of nature and the world around us. But I can't help myself creating mental images, which are far more 'tactile and tangible' than merely linguistic prose.
This gives me great heart and confidence again to continue with my intended drawing as a mediation of understandings between Baker and his Peregrines, and vice versa.
But then again, am I giving Macdonald a disservice in suggesting that her first language is linguistically recalled rather than imagistic?
As her recovery from the dreadful grief begins to return, further excursions into the countryside with her hawk Mabel helps her to see!
A passage that is particularly engaging is an encounter that she and Mabel have while out hunting, where they see a herd of deer some half a mile away. It seems that she recalls how her hawk, having already located a hare as potential prey, turns its' attention to the deer, 'some 30 Fallow Deer' near to a river. She says "The deer in procession resemble charcoal cave paintings rendered manifest. Art's magic working backwards." (Macdonald, H., p262). This imagistic reference of cave art provides more resonance to her identification as an illustrator; it gives more of a graphic meaning behind this primal notion of drawing as a form of recorded expression. It is clear that she recognises such importance as an artist herself, for not only the linguistic medium but clearly the graphic articulation as well. It is further expanded upon and again, has resonance with J.A. Baker, as she quotes "Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings." (p265). This imaginary place, this notion of something out there that perhaps no longer exists, this idea, maybe again, of a liminal place can equally be brought to bear in the sketches and images that I'm making too.
A sense of contentment begins to emerge towards the end of the book. It seems that Macdonald is re-finding her own feelings of happiness. She comments on her emotional state of mind in a short reflection of TH White's book "The Goshawk", and states "I have not thought of White for a while. As I grew happier his presence receded, his world more and more distant from mine." (p274).
This sense of happiness is also transmitted to Mabel, the goshawk too. "I know she is content: the half closed, happy I, the rattling of her feathers: these are signs of raw good humour. I cannot know what she's thinking, but she's very alive."(p275) The sensation of 'being alive' within herself provides an outlet of joy and happiness in Macdonald at last, it seems. It is evident again, now that her transference of soul into the hawk, while still tenuously present, has become more healthy. She thinks about how T.H. White has gone through such despair and sadness and goes on to say;
"I swear to myself, standing there with the book open in my hand ['s goshawk] is, that I will not ever reduce my hawk to hieroglyph, and historical figure or misremembered villain.… I can't. Because she is not human. Overall lessons I've learned in my months with Mabel, this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there -rocks and trees and stones in the grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. In my time with Mabel, I've learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not." (Page 275)
This last selected paragraph, while not ultimately the ending of her book, is a fitting conclusion of both a recognition of the incredible majesty of hawks (and Falcons), but also a tribute to the writer that she has been able to detach herself from an intense relationship with Mabel, and return to 'human-ness', with a continued and open sense of wonderment of the world(s) we inhabit.
Nevertheless, my pedantry aside... The fact that Helen MacDonald remembers reading this book on a previous occasion, where she is able to explain, not only the obsessive observations of "The Peregrine" that Baker is entwined with but also his sense of mortality, and in her words "an awful desire for death and annihilation"(MacDonald, H. 2104, p199). I was both a little shocked, but also heartened, that while I recognised his sorrowful and saturnine approach to his writing, with a melancholic reference throughout, I must say I couldn't read the yearning for annihilation as such? This nihilism is much more akin to the writing of Frederick William Nietzsche, (another favourite philosopher of mine).
McDonald compares the writing of Baker and her intentions, with's the writings of TH White, in that inspired of his [White's] dreadfully failed attempts of training his goshawk, the struggle that White was having was in fact, against his own death, although in "The Goshawk" (White T.H. 1951), he recognised that there were beautiful things going on, in the outside world, and there is a sense of hope. However, when MacDonald compares this to J.A. Bakers "the Peregrine" she explains that his 'worldview' showed mostly death and dying, and this mirrored the Hawks (Falcons) as "Icons of extinction: ours, their's and his own". According to MacDonald, to Baker, his death was inevitable, and any hope was utterly dashed; hence she writes "there are no place names, though people in his book. They'd fallen away.… (Bakers) Hawks were made of death." (Page 200).
While other commentators of JA Baker's "The Peregrine" (1967) do underline his sense of mortality, I think McDonald's reading of it is particularly dark. I did not feel the same way about the outcomes of the book that clearly had such an effect on MacDonald. In my case, on first reading the Peregrine some six months ago, the book apparently inspired me to think from a different viewpoint altogether.
I'm pleased to stay that this position remains and my continued desire to use Baker's book remains fast and genuine.
Nevertheless, in the analysis of MacDonald's grief and despair, it is not surprising that "the conversation of death" (MacDonald, H., 2014, p210) remains close to the surface. The anxiety and depression she seems to be suffering this point caused her to withdraw even deeper within that grief. She "jumped in panic when the postman knocked on the door: recoiled from the ringing phone. I stopped seeing people. Too, cancelled my gallery talk. Deadlocked at the front door. Out on the hill by fled from walkers, dodged behind hedges when farm vehicles drove up… Some days I lay in bed in so much mysterious pain and began to believe the only explanation was a terminal disease." (p210, p211). Her depression was taking hold of her. I have lived through similar bouts myself and can speak first hand of the wretched fear and darkness that it brings.
In her sorrow, she thinks only of Mabel, the goshawk, and again draws parallels through her own reading of relationships formed between animals and humans, particularly in research conducted in anthropology. For example, she quotes the work of Rane Willerlev, who lived with the hunters in the extreme environment of Siberia in the north-east of Russia for a year. He wrote how the hunters "believed that animals and humans can turn into each other by temporarily taking on one another's bodies" (Macdonald, H., 2104, p211). Macdonald goes on to say that such notions can be very dangerous and continues to explain that Willerslev suggested that by taking on such transformations of mind it can "make you lose sight of your original species identity and undergo an invisible metamorphosis" (p211). This idea of transforming a human soul, our very inner being, as the way we think and see the world about us, by viewing it through an animal's eyes can indeed "imperil the human soul" (p211).
Perhaps this is a warning for me?
Indeed this idea of taking on a spiritual and otherworldly extension is explained further by Macdonald who states "the ability of Hawks to cross borders that humans cannot is a thing far older than Celtic myth, older than Orpheus-four in ancient chauvinistic traditions right across Eurasia, hawks and falcons were seen as messengers between this world and the next."(p226). I have already articulated in previous blogs the relationship that Egyptians had with hawks and peregrines in particular. For example, the principal deity ancient Egyptian God, Horus, and his father Osiris are both depicted as gods in the form of a man, - with a man's arms, legs and body; but crucially, illustrated with the Peregrine or falcon's head.
But there is hope, and as Helen Macdonald is beginning the journey on the road to recovery from her despair and depression she sees something more than "not just winter moving onwards to spring:… But a land filling slowly with spots and lines of beauty." (p238). She is starting to see a kind of new birth, through her own individual contact with nature, and a special place that she begins to call home. Indeed she tells of the hill becoming her home. She says;
"I know it intimately. Every hedgerow, every track through dry grass where the hares cut across field -boundaries, each discarded piece of rusted machinery, every earth and warren and tree… ...Yellowhammers chirping and hedges. Cumulus rubble. The maritime light of this island, set as it is under a sky mirrored and uplit by sea." (Page 239).
This particular paragraph is so much like the style that JA Baker writes of when he is reflecting upon his place, his special place, within the Essex marshes in his book "The Peregrine" (1967).
Macdonald goes on to say "I don't own this land. I've only got permission to fly in here. But in walking it over and over again and paying in great greatest attention, I've made mine." (Macdonald, H. p239). It is clear that a sense of hope is growing in Macdonald's mind. The latter part of the book is much more uplifting, and again in her own words "there is a sense of creation about it: when the hare leapt up from our feet today, it was as if it had been made by the field ex nihilo." (p241). The sense of wonderment is almost palpable. The reattachment of her own soul to her place in the world and her appreciation of each and every stone or blade of grass begins to take significance again. She writes "it's a child's world, full of separate places. Give me a paper and pencil now and ask me to draw a map of the fields I roamed about when I was small, and I cannot do it. But change the question, and asked me to list what was there and I can then fill the pages. The wood ants' nest. The newt pond. The oak tree covered in marble galls."(p241). I find this particularly interesting because it is clear that Macdonald's 'first' language, that is, her first method of communication, is linguistic.
Whereas I believe my own sense of communication, while deeply rooted in the linguistic, has the benefit of imagery and imagination through drawing. Macdonald's explanations provide an insight into another person's perception of the wonderment of nature and the world around us. But I can't help myself creating mental images, which are far more 'tactile and tangible' than merely linguistic prose.
This gives me great heart and confidence again to continue with my intended drawing as a mediation of understandings between Baker and his Peregrines, and vice versa.
But then again, am I giving Macdonald a disservice in suggesting that her first language is linguistically recalled rather than imagistic?
As her recovery from the dreadful grief begins to return, further excursions into the countryside with her hawk Mabel helps her to see!
A passage that is particularly engaging is an encounter that she and Mabel have while out hunting, where they see a herd of deer some half a mile away. It seems that she recalls how her hawk, having already located a hare as potential prey, turns its' attention to the deer, 'some 30 Fallow Deer' near to a river. She says "The deer in procession resemble charcoal cave paintings rendered manifest. Art's magic working backwards." (Macdonald, H., p262). This imagistic reference of cave art provides more resonance to her identification as an illustrator; it gives more of a graphic meaning behind this primal notion of drawing as a form of recorded expression. It is clear that she recognises such importance as an artist herself, for not only the linguistic medium but clearly the graphic articulation as well. It is further expanded upon and again, has resonance with J.A. Baker, as she quotes "Old England is an imaginary place, a landscape built from words, woodcuts, films, paintings, picturesque engravings." (p265). This imaginary place, this notion of something out there that perhaps no longer exists, this idea, maybe again, of a liminal place can equally be brought to bear in the sketches and images that I'm making too.
A sense of contentment begins to emerge towards the end of the book. It seems that Macdonald is re-finding her own feelings of happiness. She comments on her emotional state of mind in a short reflection of TH White's book "The Goshawk", and states "I have not thought of White for a while. As I grew happier his presence receded, his world more and more distant from mine." (p274).
This sense of happiness is also transmitted to Mabel, the goshawk too. "I know she is content: the half closed, happy I, the rattling of her feathers: these are signs of raw good humour. I cannot know what she's thinking, but she's very alive."(p275) The sensation of 'being alive' within herself provides an outlet of joy and happiness in Macdonald at last, it seems. It is evident again, now that her transference of soul into the hawk, while still tenuously present, has become more healthy. She thinks about how T.H. White has gone through such despair and sadness and goes on to say;
"I swear to myself, standing there with the book open in my hand ['s goshawk] is, that I will not ever reduce my hawk to hieroglyph, and historical figure or misremembered villain.… I can't. Because she is not human. Overall lessons I've learned in my months with Mabel, this is the greatest of all: that there is a world of things out there -rocks and trees and stones in the grass and all the things that crawl and run and fly. They are all things in themselves, but we make them sensible to us by giving them meanings that shore up our own views of the world. In my time with Mabel, I've learned how you feel more human once you have known, even in your imagination, what it is like to be not." (Page 275)
This last selected paragraph, while not ultimately the ending of her book, is a fitting conclusion of both a recognition of the incredible majesty of hawks (and Falcons), but also a tribute to the writer that she has been able to detach herself from an intense relationship with Mabel, and return to 'human-ness', with a continued and open sense of wonderment of the world(s) we inhabit.
Final Conclusions;
- In final summary, the intertwining of Helen Macdonald's experiences of distress and grief, as she goes through the awful mourning of her late father, entwined with the agent of T.H. White's book "The Goshawk"(1951), provides an excellent setting and anchor points, for not only emotions to be explored and compared with, but also the psychological exploration of the relationship with a goshawk. In both cases, the relationship helps both writers to overcome their anguish and drive forward towards new beginnings.
- I thoroughly loved reading Helen Macdonald's book, it is a worthy prize-winner of the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction (2014) and her intellectual and articulate style is incredibly appealing. So much so, that I have already ordered her earlier book entitled "Falcon"(2006) which will give me further reference material from a very credible and validated academic source, to continue with my theme.
- In the meantime, my reading of Rebecca Solnit may have to be temporarily postponed while I read another book from a student of an associate of Solnit, that is, Professor Donna Haraway, and her student anthropologist Thom van Dooren, with his book "Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction" (2016) published by Columbia University Press, Chichester, West Sussex.
- There is a busy time in front of me!
Full References (inc. Previous blogs of this book review);
Auden, WH (1930) "Consider This" (first published 1930) in "The English Auden", edited by Mendelssohn, E.Faber and Faber (1978), p 46.
Baker, J.A. (1967) "The Peregrine", (2105 edition) HarperCollins Publishing, London.
Blain, G. (1936), "She is Noble in her Nature"(pp229-230) from "Falconry",(1936), Phillip Allen, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.
Morris, D. (1967) "The Naked Ape" (2nd Ed. 2005), Vantage Books, London
Solnit, R. (2002) "Wanderlust", Verso Books, London.
Solnit, R. (2006), " A Field Guide to Getting Lost", Canongate, Edinburgh.
Van Dooren, T., (2016) "Flight Ways: Life and Loss at the Edge of Extinction" (2016) published by Columbia University press, Chichester, West Sussex.
White, T.H. (1951), "The Goshawk", Jonathan Cape, London.
Monday, 27 March 2017
Book Review, "H is for Hawk" by Dr Helen Macdonald, Part #3
As the book progresses with the trials and tribulations of training Mabel, eventually Macdonald is able to remove the leash or 'creance' from the raptor's Jessies and allow the free flight to commence.
This idea of freedom and its association with flight is one of the most powerful images that we have; equally, the sense of liberty is essential in considering the mutual respect that a falconer must have for their Falcon. A falconer is not, therefore, a 'keeper' of Falcons, but merely a guide.
Our own human yearning for freedom, which is almost universal, is of peculiar interest here as Macdonald describes her visit to an art gallery and her encounter with a full-size copy of a bird hide. The construction is rebuilt within the museum, an identical copy of real structure in California. The exhibition itself shows a recording video through the windows of the hide of the flight of a wild Californian condor. The intent was to bring attention to the fate of not just that particular bird and its close encounter with extinction, but a more general observation of wildness and freedom and the complicated relationship that humans have with it. Macdonald interprets the piece perfectly in my opinion. She states
"I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing, -not just from the wild, but from people's everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals have. Eventually, rarity is all that they are made of.… There is a vast difference between my visceral, bloodied life with Mabel and the reserved, distanced view of modern nature appreciation." (Page 181)
Dr Macdonald is still dealing with her deep sense of grief, and through her hawk Mabel, she finds a new kind of escape and freedom from the enduring emptiness she is experiencing. She talks about her distress and numbness of mind and the mundane activities of day-to-day life. Macdonald hints at the escape from it while out flying with her hawk. She states "I stayed out longer with Mabel, found it harder and harder to return, because out with the hawk I didn't need a home. Out there I would forget I was human at all. Everything the hawk saw was raw and real and drawn hair fine, and everything else was dampened to nothing." (p186).
Again the use of language to describe the hawk's perceived images is being drawn, 'hair fine', and is very resonant with my own thoughts about how I could speculatively represent an alternative view of their world.
That alternative perspective of the world through the hawk's contemplation has been written about before and again I'm glad to see it. Macdonald talks about a time when her mother calls while she is with the Raptor and half in conversation, she notices;
"Hawk on my fist, tail fanned, shoulders dropped, staring through me and the phone, and her attention catching on everything serially. Field-fence-fieldfare-wing flick-pheasant-feather-on--some-on-wire-12-wood pigeons-half-a-mile-distant-tick-tick-tick".(p187).
I love the way that Macdonald thinks about the hawk's brain processing things serially. Does it do this? Or is the hawk's mind much more capable of processing data in a parallel way? The idea of digital drawing and the serial processes of engagement come to light here.
Later, in the same vein, Macdonald recalls an incident when a huge flying fortress aircraft flies overhead and brings terror to the wild animals beneath it. Except for Mabel, who virtually ignores this huge, yet perhaps perceived as a similar, a 'harbinger' of death. While Macdonald is mesmerised, her mind draws an example from the poet WH Auden who stated "consider this, and in our time as the hawk sees it, or the helmeted airmen:" (Auden, W.H.,1930), (Macdonald, H. (2104) p188).
This comparison of hawk and aircraft as bringers of death, or is it that, rather than 'bringers' of death, they have an ability to decide? Macdonald goes on to say on page 189 "the hawk is on my fist. 30 ounces of death in a feathered jacket; a being whose world is drawn in plots and vectors that pulls her towards lives ends." The idea that the choices of life and death can be made in an instant often haunts us, not through our own desire to carry out dreadful acts, but more the simple fragility of life and death itself. (Page 189). Macdonald articulates her own sense of clarity, and she quotes the remainder of WH Auden's poem with the lines "the clouds rift suddenly look there".
She feels "the insistent pull to the heart that the hawk brings, that very old longing of mine to possess the hawk's eye. To live the safe and solitary life; to look down on the world from height and keep it there. To be watcher; invulnerable, detached, complete. My eyes fill with water. Here I am, I think. And I do not think that I am safe." (Page 189).
It is interesting that in this turmoil of seclusion and isolation, in this total loneliness, it keeps coming through in Macdonald's writings and in an earlier passage she even quotes a piece of poetry by Marianne Moore: "the cure for loneliness is solitude" (page 32).
That sense of isolation and loneliness is another trait of a slightly different writer, Rebecca Solnit of whom I have read one of her books "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" (2006) Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, UK. The sense of walking alone to is further explored by Solnit in a book that I have just acquired called "Wanderlust: a history of walking" (2001) published by Verso Books, London. - Something I need to read and create a critical evaluation of in the next few months no doubt.
References:
Auden, WH (1930) "Consider This" (first published 1930) in the English Auden, edited by Mendelssohn, E.Faber and Faber (1978), p 46.
Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.
Morris, D. (1967) "The Naked Ape" (2nd Ed. 2005), Vantage Books, London.
Solnit, R. (2006) "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, UK.
Solnit, R. (2001) "Wanderlust: a history of walking" published by Verso Books, London.
White, T.H. (1951), "The Goshawk", Jonathan Cape, London.
This idea of freedom and its association with flight is one of the most powerful images that we have; equally, the sense of liberty is essential in considering the mutual respect that a falconer must have for their Falcon. A falconer is not, therefore, a 'keeper' of Falcons, but merely a guide.
Our own human yearning for freedom, which is almost universal, is of peculiar interest here as Macdonald describes her visit to an art gallery and her encounter with a full-size copy of a bird hide. The construction is rebuilt within the museum, an identical copy of real structure in California. The exhibition itself shows a recording video through the windows of the hide of the flight of a wild Californian condor. The intent was to bring attention to the fate of not just that particular bird and its close encounter with extinction, but a more general observation of wildness and freedom and the complicated relationship that humans have with it. Macdonald interprets the piece perfectly in my opinion. She states
"I think of what wild animals are in our imaginations. And how they are disappearing, -not just from the wild, but from people's everyday lives, replaced by images of themselves in print and on screen. The rarer they get, the fewer meanings animals have. Eventually, rarity is all that they are made of.… There is a vast difference between my visceral, bloodied life with Mabel and the reserved, distanced view of modern nature appreciation." (Page 181)
Dr Macdonald is still dealing with her deep sense of grief, and through her hawk Mabel, she finds a new kind of escape and freedom from the enduring emptiness she is experiencing. She talks about her distress and numbness of mind and the mundane activities of day-to-day life. Macdonald hints at the escape from it while out flying with her hawk. She states "I stayed out longer with Mabel, found it harder and harder to return, because out with the hawk I didn't need a home. Out there I would forget I was human at all. Everything the hawk saw was raw and real and drawn hair fine, and everything else was dampened to nothing." (p186).
Again the use of language to describe the hawk's perceived images is being drawn, 'hair fine', and is very resonant with my own thoughts about how I could speculatively represent an alternative view of their world.
That alternative perspective of the world through the hawk's contemplation has been written about before and again I'm glad to see it. Macdonald talks about a time when her mother calls while she is with the Raptor and half in conversation, she notices;
"Hawk on my fist, tail fanned, shoulders dropped, staring through me and the phone, and her attention catching on everything serially. Field-fence-fieldfare-wing flick-pheasant-feather-on--some-on-wire-12-wood pigeons-half-a-mile-distant-tick-tick-tick".(p187).
I love the way that Macdonald thinks about the hawk's brain processing things serially. Does it do this? Or is the hawk's mind much more capable of processing data in a parallel way? The idea of digital drawing and the serial processes of engagement come to light here.
Later, in the same vein, Macdonald recalls an incident when a huge flying fortress aircraft flies overhead and brings terror to the wild animals beneath it. Except for Mabel, who virtually ignores this huge, yet perhaps perceived as a similar, a 'harbinger' of death. While Macdonald is mesmerised, her mind draws an example from the poet WH Auden who stated "consider this, and in our time as the hawk sees it, or the helmeted airmen:" (Auden, W.H.,1930), (Macdonald, H. (2104) p188).
This comparison of hawk and aircraft as bringers of death, or is it that, rather than 'bringers' of death, they have an ability to decide? Macdonald goes on to say on page 189 "the hawk is on my fist. 30 ounces of death in a feathered jacket; a being whose world is drawn in plots and vectors that pulls her towards lives ends." The idea that the choices of life and death can be made in an instant often haunts us, not through our own desire to carry out dreadful acts, but more the simple fragility of life and death itself. (Page 189). Macdonald articulates her own sense of clarity, and she quotes the remainder of WH Auden's poem with the lines "the clouds rift suddenly look there".
She feels "the insistent pull to the heart that the hawk brings, that very old longing of mine to possess the hawk's eye. To live the safe and solitary life; to look down on the world from height and keep it there. To be watcher; invulnerable, detached, complete. My eyes fill with water. Here I am, I think. And I do not think that I am safe." (Page 189).
It is interesting that in this turmoil of seclusion and isolation, in this total loneliness, it keeps coming through in Macdonald's writings and in an earlier passage she even quotes a piece of poetry by Marianne Moore: "the cure for loneliness is solitude" (page 32).
That sense of isolation and loneliness is another trait of a slightly different writer, Rebecca Solnit of whom I have read one of her books "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" (2006) Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, UK. The sense of walking alone to is further explored by Solnit in a book that I have just acquired called "Wanderlust: a history of walking" (2001) published by Verso Books, London. - Something I need to read and create a critical evaluation of in the next few months no doubt.
References:
Auden, WH (1930) "Consider This" (first published 1930) in the English Auden, edited by Mendelssohn, E.Faber and Faber (1978), p 46.
Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.
Morris, D. (1967) "The Naked Ape" (2nd Ed. 2005), Vantage Books, London.
Solnit, R. (2006) "A Field Guide to Getting Lost" Canongate Books Ltd, Edinburgh, UK.
Solnit, R. (2001) "Wanderlust: a history of walking" published by Verso Books, London.
White, T.H. (1951), "The Goshawk", Jonathan Cape, London.
Saturday, 25 March 2017
Book Review, "H is for Hawk" by Dr Helen Macdonald, Part #2
In chapter 6, entitled "The Box of Stars", an interesting explanation of her goshawk's physiology, which I found particularly interesting as I too have been researching on the perception of Hawks and Falcons, in particular, work that I have already made some short notes upon. Macdonald's explanation of her hawk is useful for me to make a note of here. She is talking about the wildness and independent irritability (it seems that they are quite truculent creatures).
She goes on to say;
"nervousness, of course, isn't quite the right word: it is simply that they have jacked up nervous systems in which the nerve pathways from the eyes and ears to the motor neurones that control their muscles have only minor links with associated neurones in the brain. Goshawks appear nervous because they live life 10 times faster than we do, and they react to stimuli literally without thinking." (Macdonald, H. p56).
The idea of patience and waiting for the right moment that was encouraged in her upbringing is a continual theme of the book. Indeed referring to her own father's photography and obsessive observations she quotes Henry Cartier-Bresson and states "the taking of a good photograph is a decisive moment. Your eye must see a composition or an expression of that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera, the moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever." (p72). This patience and sense of expectation create an anxiety of the sort in both artists and photographers alike, and it is interesting here that those same feelings come through from a source of another point of reference. The sense of patience comes through the quiet observations that the hawk has, and I suspect, all birds of prey have in their moment of seeing prey which they then arrogate for themselves, they seize, claim and expropriated the life of the hunted creature. The time in between those moments is a silent moment of introspection. Macdonald hints at this when she is describing her own observations of Mabel. "She is interested in flies, and specs of floating dust, in the way light falls on certain surfaces. What is she looking at? What is she thinking?" (p84) It is in these quiet moments that Macdonald too exposes her grief again and states "the hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. I was turning into a hawk."
This also is a time while Macdonald is virtually spending 24 hours a day with Mabel, as a kind of habituation, getting used to each other's presence in every single way. Part of the training of the hawk requires a special bond to be created between human and raptor, and this bonding or habituation process can indeed take not just days but up to 3 weeks of intimate sharing of existence within the world together. During all of this time, Macdonald is not only watching the Hawks progress but her own dealing with her grief. The obsessive watching again comes into play.
She states "the first few days with wild new hawk dictate a reflexive dance of manners. To judge when to scratch your nose without offence, when to walk and when to sit, when to retreat and when to come close, you must read your hawk's state of mind. You do this by watching her posture and her feathers, the workings of which turned the birds shape into an exquisitely controlled barometer of mood." (p85).
This piece of text draws on my memory again; to an often remembered piece of work by one of my favourite anthropologists, and zoologist. A keen observer and that is the work of Desmond Morris. He talks at length about the ideas of human body language and its derivation from our primal ancestors. In "The Naked Ape" (Morris D, 1967) he discusses the subtle and exquisitely detailed movements of expression that humans make, which later goes on to become a foundation of behavioural study and a whole science of "body language". It is of interest that this notion of body language and communication through gesture is clearly coming through in Macdonald's articulations. She goes on to say "to train a hawk you must watch it like a hawk,… You seem to feel what it needs what it feels." (Macdonald, H. p86). She talks about this sense of feeling what something else feels, that heightened sense of empathy. She quotes the poet Keats, who called this a "chameleon quality"; the ability to "tolerate the loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting in the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment" (page 86). This too has special appeal to me in my own attempts to see the world from another point of view. To become something else, and literally, to see with something different's vision, requires a very deep and meditative contemplation which will, of course, be speculative at all times, and hence my notion of continental philosophy and ontology through speculative realism is so important.
Once the habituation and acclimatisation of the hawk Mabel are firm; has become sufficiently bonded with Macdonald, she feels able to start short forays outside, with the hawk retained on the type of leash attached to her feet, through what are known as Jessies. These are tough leather anklets on which various falconry attire and furniture can be placed, such as hoops, rings and bells. The leash is known as a 'creance', which is very thin but extremely durable doubled-up leather cord, attached to the Hawks' jessies and allowed to extend at greater lengths as the training of the bird becomes more established. Out in the open, in the bigger world, the isolation that Macdonald has been placing herself within, and sharing only with Mabel, becomes apparent. Just a simple walk into the walled garden of her cottage (which seems to be within the bounds of Cambridge University), makes a frightening experience for Macdonald as she has acquired the nervous anxiety, almost agitation, with unusual objects, sounds, experiences and phenomena. She remarks on the light, the movement and noise in this outside world, but goes on to say "the hawk is unperturbed. She tips her head sideways to look up at the moving clouds-in daylight her irises are flat and shiny and slightly blurred, with pupils that dilate and contract like a camera lens as she focuses, zip-zip-zip-zip, up to track a passing Cessna aircraft perhaps,-and then she returns her gaze and head upside down to watch a nearby fly, and then tracks another, et cetera"(p98). Macdonald then realises "the world she lives in is not mine. Life is faster for her; time runs slower. Her eyes can follow the wing beats be as easily as ours following the wing beats of a bird. What is she seeing? I wonder, and my brain does backflips trying to imagine it, because I can't."(p98). She then goes on to discuss how Hawks and birds of prey have a different perception of the world. Not only because of their acute eyesight and the deep fovea which I have discussed in a previous blog, but also the fact that a raptor's eyes, its' rods and cones, those light-sensitive receptors that are matched to the wavelengths of the colours red green and blue in our own eyes, are complemented with additional sensitivities. These other modified rods and cones allow raptors to see well into the ultraviolet as well as polarised light ranges and even into the infrared spectrum, which allows hawks to virtually see the thermal currents of warm air during flight. It is also thought that they may even be able to sense the magnetic lines of force for them to recognise the poles of the earth! Raptors, as well as many other bird species, hence have the ability to trace the subtle variances of geography and topology with that added navigational reference.
This idea of perception of the other dimensions, that we are clearly unfamiliar with as humans becomes interesting too in my own work in trying to mediate some kind of language of recognition through the eyes of the Peregrine. I was particularly encouraged and drawn to an observation that Helen Macdonald makes during a quieter moment of her training Mabel. It is a moment where Macdonald recognises that as this hawk has been hand reared through an incubator from being an egg, she has never seen a prey animal before. Yet seems to instinctively, almost through 'a priori', to know what other animals she may hunt, and those that she may not. Described here, is the first encounter with moorhens and Mabel recognises immediately the need to chase them (p137).
But it is Macdonald's observation that occurred a few days earlier, while Mabel had been sitting on a perch and Macdonald had been going about her business when she noticed the hawk...
"I'd seen her looking at a small drawing of partridges in the book that I'd left open on the floor. Intrigued I picked up the book and held it in front of her. She kept her eyes fixed on the picture, even when I moved the book about in the air. No way! I thought. The drawing was a link; it was stylised and sparse: it caught the feel and form of partridges, but there was no colour or detail to it. I flipped through the book, showed her the drawings: finches, seabirds, thrushes. She ignored them all. Then I showed her drawing of a pheasant. Her black pupils dilated; she leant forward and stand down her beak directly at it, fascinated as he had been with the partridges. I was amazed. Amazed that she could understand two-dimensional images, and even more amazed that something deep in her brain so these sparse inked curves as fitting the category "game birds" and had pronounced them worthy of interest."(p137).
Morris, D. (1967) "The Naked Ape" (2nd Ed. 2005), Vantage Books, London.
She goes on to say;
"nervousness, of course, isn't quite the right word: it is simply that they have jacked up nervous systems in which the nerve pathways from the eyes and ears to the motor neurones that control their muscles have only minor links with associated neurones in the brain. Goshawks appear nervous because they live life 10 times faster than we do, and they react to stimuli literally without thinking." (Macdonald, H. p56).
The idea of patience and waiting for the right moment that was encouraged in her upbringing is a continual theme of the book. Indeed referring to her own father's photography and obsessive observations she quotes Henry Cartier-Bresson and states "the taking of a good photograph is a decisive moment. Your eye must see a composition or an expression of that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera, the moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever." (p72). This patience and sense of expectation create an anxiety of the sort in both artists and photographers alike, and it is interesting here that those same feelings come through from a source of another point of reference. The sense of patience comes through the quiet observations that the hawk has, and I suspect, all birds of prey have in their moment of seeing prey which they then arrogate for themselves, they seize, claim and expropriated the life of the hunted creature. The time in between those moments is a silent moment of introspection. Macdonald hints at this when she is describing her own observations of Mabel. "She is interested in flies, and specs of floating dust, in the way light falls on certain surfaces. What is she looking at? What is she thinking?" (p84) It is in these quiet moments that Macdonald too exposes her grief again and states "the hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief, and numb to the hurts of human life. I was turning into a hawk."
This also is a time while Macdonald is virtually spending 24 hours a day with Mabel, as a kind of habituation, getting used to each other's presence in every single way. Part of the training of the hawk requires a special bond to be created between human and raptor, and this bonding or habituation process can indeed take not just days but up to 3 weeks of intimate sharing of existence within the world together. During all of this time, Macdonald is not only watching the Hawks progress but her own dealing with her grief. The obsessive watching again comes into play.
She states "the first few days with wild new hawk dictate a reflexive dance of manners. To judge when to scratch your nose without offence, when to walk and when to sit, when to retreat and when to come close, you must read your hawk's state of mind. You do this by watching her posture and her feathers, the workings of which turned the birds shape into an exquisitely controlled barometer of mood." (p85).
This piece of text draws on my memory again; to an often remembered piece of work by one of my favourite anthropologists, and zoologist. A keen observer and that is the work of Desmond Morris. He talks at length about the ideas of human body language and its derivation from our primal ancestors. In "The Naked Ape" (Morris D, 1967) he discusses the subtle and exquisitely detailed movements of expression that humans make, which later goes on to become a foundation of behavioural study and a whole science of "body language". It is of interest that this notion of body language and communication through gesture is clearly coming through in Macdonald's articulations. She goes on to say "to train a hawk you must watch it like a hawk,… You seem to feel what it needs what it feels." (Macdonald, H. p86). She talks about this sense of feeling what something else feels, that heightened sense of empathy. She quotes the poet Keats, who called this a "chameleon quality"; the ability to "tolerate the loss of self and a loss of rationality by trusting in the capacity to recreate oneself in another character or another environment" (page 86). This too has special appeal to me in my own attempts to see the world from another point of view. To become something else, and literally, to see with something different's vision, requires a very deep and meditative contemplation which will, of course, be speculative at all times, and hence my notion of continental philosophy and ontology through speculative realism is so important.
Once the habituation and acclimatisation of the hawk Mabel are firm; has become sufficiently bonded with Macdonald, she feels able to start short forays outside, with the hawk retained on the type of leash attached to her feet, through what are known as Jessies. These are tough leather anklets on which various falconry attire and furniture can be placed, such as hoops, rings and bells. The leash is known as a 'creance', which is very thin but extremely durable doubled-up leather cord, attached to the Hawks' jessies and allowed to extend at greater lengths as the training of the bird becomes more established. Out in the open, in the bigger world, the isolation that Macdonald has been placing herself within, and sharing only with Mabel, becomes apparent. Just a simple walk into the walled garden of her cottage (which seems to be within the bounds of Cambridge University), makes a frightening experience for Macdonald as she has acquired the nervous anxiety, almost agitation, with unusual objects, sounds, experiences and phenomena. She remarks on the light, the movement and noise in this outside world, but goes on to say "the hawk is unperturbed. She tips her head sideways to look up at the moving clouds-in daylight her irises are flat and shiny and slightly blurred, with pupils that dilate and contract like a camera lens as she focuses, zip-zip-zip-zip, up to track a passing Cessna aircraft perhaps,-and then she returns her gaze and head upside down to watch a nearby fly, and then tracks another, et cetera"(p98). Macdonald then realises "the world she lives in is not mine. Life is faster for her; time runs slower. Her eyes can follow the wing beats be as easily as ours following the wing beats of a bird. What is she seeing? I wonder, and my brain does backflips trying to imagine it, because I can't."(p98). She then goes on to discuss how Hawks and birds of prey have a different perception of the world. Not only because of their acute eyesight and the deep fovea which I have discussed in a previous blog, but also the fact that a raptor's eyes, its' rods and cones, those light-sensitive receptors that are matched to the wavelengths of the colours red green and blue in our own eyes, are complemented with additional sensitivities. These other modified rods and cones allow raptors to see well into the ultraviolet as well as polarised light ranges and even into the infrared spectrum, which allows hawks to virtually see the thermal currents of warm air during flight. It is also thought that they may even be able to sense the magnetic lines of force for them to recognise the poles of the earth! Raptors, as well as many other bird species, hence have the ability to trace the subtle variances of geography and topology with that added navigational reference.
This idea of perception of the other dimensions, that we are clearly unfamiliar with as humans becomes interesting too in my own work in trying to mediate some kind of language of recognition through the eyes of the Peregrine. I was particularly encouraged and drawn to an observation that Helen Macdonald makes during a quieter moment of her training Mabel. It is a moment where Macdonald recognises that as this hawk has been hand reared through an incubator from being an egg, she has never seen a prey animal before. Yet seems to instinctively, almost through 'a priori', to know what other animals she may hunt, and those that she may not. Described here, is the first encounter with moorhens and Mabel recognises immediately the need to chase them (p137).
But it is Macdonald's observation that occurred a few days earlier, while Mabel had been sitting on a perch and Macdonald had been going about her business when she noticed the hawk...
"I'd seen her looking at a small drawing of partridges in the book that I'd left open on the floor. Intrigued I picked up the book and held it in front of her. She kept her eyes fixed on the picture, even when I moved the book about in the air. No way! I thought. The drawing was a link; it was stylised and sparse: it caught the feel and form of partridges, but there was no colour or detail to it. I flipped through the book, showed her the drawings: finches, seabirds, thrushes. She ignored them all. Then I showed her drawing of a pheasant. Her black pupils dilated; she leant forward and stand down her beak directly at it, fascinated as he had been with the partridges. I was amazed. Amazed that she could understand two-dimensional images, and even more amazed that something deep in her brain so these sparse inked curves as fitting the category "game birds" and had pronounced them worthy of interest."(p137).
Initial conclusions;
- This last paragraph is a strange yet marvellous observation in itself which spurs me on to continue my own quest!
- The theme of drawing as a kind of articulation and the halfway point of language between man and hawk fits!
- It is purely speculative of course, but in that short paragraph (p137) there is a sense of triangulation of proof at last, that my journey is worthwhile.
References;
Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.Morris, D. (1967) "The Naked Ape" (2nd Ed. 2005), Vantage Books, London.
Friday, 24 March 2017
A book review of "H is for Hawk"(2014) by Dr Helen Macdonald, Published by Jonathan Cape, London. Part #1
I finished reading this book around ten days ago, and I have since, allowed it to begin to sink in and crystallise in my thoughts.
A quick introduction of Dr Helen Macdonald; Dr Macdonald is a historian with the Department of History and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. She is also an illustrator and poet, and here her writing has been exemplified through a discourse of the difficulties she faced while going through her personal grief after losing her father. She is also a Falconer, which is what drew my attention to her methods and writing.
Initially, this book was recommended to me by Dr Stella Baraklianou, around a month ago during an informal discussion about my project. And the work I am trying to articulate through drawing, against the literary backbone, which is the book "the Peregrine" by JA Baker (1967, second edition 2015).
Immediately after starting to read the book by Helen Macdonald, I realised, not only elegant way in which she recorded her story, but also the profoundly moving way in which she explained her feelings. In a way, the book is almost an autobiography, however, while the book does provide a detailed insight into some of her personal thoughts, which were generated through very close but bringing and relationship with her father, it is also an utterly engaging story about her relationship with a Hawk. The hawk in question is of a type known as a 'Goshawk'.
Macdonald explains her fascination with falconry started at a very young age and at the time of writing this book, she was already a proficient Falconer and had trained many different breeds of both falcons and hawks. However, early on in the narrative, it was made clear that this particular strain, the goshawk, provides a robust and challenging raptor for a falconer to train. They virtually remain wild and that sense of independence and individualism, of the bird's thoughts, seem to come through very clearly in Macdonald's writings.
As a point of reference for "H is for Hawk", Macdonald chose to use a previous piece of literature written by T.H. White, during the early 1950s. TH White's book was entitled "The Goshawk"(1951), and it describes his relationship as a complete novice, trying to attempt to train a goshawk. It delineates the seeming constant battle that he has with the hawk, because of his pride and deeply ingrained sensitivities, perhaps amplified, during the time that he was a schoolmaster. It is his belief that 'through kindness, children should be taught', which seems to go against the general fashion of his day. He attempts to apply this idea of 'training through kindness' to the goshawk that he acquires. His frustrations and almost frightening engagement with the bird puts him into a state of total distance from reality. As he is attempting to train this wild creature without having any previous knowledge of falconry, it is made all the harder.
In a similar way to my intentions of using JA Baker's book "the Peregrine" (1967) as a backbone for my work, much of Macdonald's writing keeps the idea of TH White's "The Goshawk" in her rearview mirror. She recognises his vain and ill-conceived ideas about training his goshawk, and yet apparently makes the tribute to the fact that TH White, the learned and scholarly man that he is, is not attempting to undertake his journey alone. That is, without having read a significant amount of practical literature which goes back to the Middle Ages on the rearing and upbringing of hawks. It is probably worth pointing out also, that TH White is more famous for writing the book "the Sword in the Stone" (published in 1938) which is an English favourite, telling the story of the legend of King Arthur. Within that book, the inference of falconry comes through in many places; for example, the wizard known as Merlyn is indeed named after one of Britain's smallest Hawks, the 'Merlin'. Furthermore, there are various references within the book concerning mediaeval hunting and falconry, as at one stage the young Arthur is himself turned into a hawk for a short time.
By the time TH White had received a good degree of fame for his earlier works, and after having sold the rights to "the Sword in the Stone" to the Walt Disney company, he wrote the book "The Goshawk" in 1951. But it reflects the turbulent time of his own life some 15 to 20 years prior. That was before the Second World War too. Macdonald's choice in using his book as a backbone to her writings comes through clearly. Her battle with her emotions after losing her beloved father, while at the same time attempting to train this wild creature is equally reflected through her grief and in my opinion her suffering of a deep depression. Various sentences within Macdonald's writing draw the viewer towards this conclusion, such as whole chapters entitled for example "Darkness", (p92 -p98), "Hiding," Chapter 20 (p185-194); and a section entitled "Fear" (p195 - p204). I will go into these chapters a little bit further on in this review but to suffice it to say that Macdonald's suffering was made very clear. Putting grief and despair and depression to one side, the book explores how her relationship with falconry, emerges from a childhood fascination which may have originally come from her father's fascination with flight. And in his case man's flight through aircraft.
She tells of times she spent with her father, having almost been forced into 'plane spotting' with him, and her attention often drifting across the wide open spaces of airfields and grassland (p10). What she learnt from these excursions with her father was a sense of patience. As a photographer for a newspaper, he had a critical eye and inculcated into his daughter that same searching almost obsessive habit, of learning to wait for the right moment, and capturing it in some recordable way.
And then the shock of receiving the news that her father has passed away is soon to turn her world upside down. Like all people suffering from profound grief, the usual reaction is shocked, then to withdraw from society and take stock of what is important in life. I too have suffered many times in that loss, of not only my parents but also more recently, my eldest brother. And again, more recently, and so the feelings that Macdonald articulates are still quite raw in my mind, even though a long time has elapsed since the death of my parents, but the painful memories are still quite near to the surface, and I expect them to remain so.
Clearly, the subject matter in most hunting and falconry discourses have to engage with the theme of death at some stage. Whether that is the death of the prey animal or indeed other aspects of mortality, those notions are always near to the surface too. The idea that life goes on and things just happen almost in a parallel existence is also articulated in "H is for Hawk". A hint is found of that otherworldliness on page 21 where Macdonald describes some men hunting and quotes
"the disposition of their [the falconers] Hawks was peculiar. But it wasn't unsociable. It was something much stranger. It seemed that the Hawks couldn't see us at all, that they'd slipped out of our world entirely and moved to another, wilder world from which humans had been utterly raised. These men knew they had vanished. Nothing could be done except to wait."
This passage is where Macdonald is talking about her early observations and first encounters with falconry and how the men that kept the Hawks retained this sense of patience. - Allowing things to happen and unfold in their own ways. It is a deep sense of respect that the falconers have for their charges as they know and understand that the birds have a choice; to be wild completely, or, to acquiesce in some small way, but only when they, and they alone, decide to do so. It is also at this point in the book that Macdonald points out the difference between a hawk and falcon, the latter being a bird of prey and raptor whose name is derived from the Greek word meaning sickle. The very words sickle and Falcon, which somehow infuse a sense of speed, both slicing through the air. Moreover, she explains the general view that "falcons seem to be better than hawks", as the latter have an apparent wildness and, in Macdonald's words "psychopathic" (p22) aspect to the way that they hunt and kill their prey. Indeed she quotes a line by Captain Gilbert Blain (1936) which suggests that "the Peregrine Falcon is the finest bird on earth." "Of all the living creatures she is the most perfect embodiment of power, speed and grace" (Blain, 1936).
At first, it seems that Macdonald is coming to terms with the loss of her father but again, like many experiencing grief, there are good days and bad days, which turn into good weeks and bad weeks, or good months and bad months and so on. The idea of presence and notions of liminal existences comes back again after a few months. "Something else was there, something standing next to me that I couldn't touch or see, the thing a fraction of a millimetre away from my skin, something vastly wrong, making infinite the distance between me and all the familiar objects in my house. I ignored it. I'm fine, I told myself. Fine." (p24), and later, "I dreamed of the hawk slipping through wet air to [something] somewhere else. I wanted to follow it."(p24).
It is clear that Macdonald needs some sort of outlet to the grief that she is experiencing and decides that the time is right for her to acquire one of the hardest hawks of all to befriend and to train. As already explained, the Goshawk.
It is here that she starts to also recall her reading of TH White, and "the Sword in the Stone" (1938). His own intention in writing 'The Goshawk' (1951), the book, he said "it would be about the efforts of a second-rate philosopher, who lived alone in a wood, being tired of most humans in any case, to train a person who is not human, but a bird" (White, T.H. 1952, in an unpublished manuscript found by Macdonald).
Macdonald states on page 38, "when I trained my hawk I was having a quiet conversation, of sorts, with the deeds and works of the long dead man [that is, TH White], who was suspicious, morose, determined to despair. A man whose life disturbed me. But a man, too, who loved nature, who found it surprising, bewitching and endlessly novel." Macdonald goes on to then say "by skilfully training a hunting animal, by closely associating with it, by identifying with it, you might be allowed to experience all your vital, sincere desires, even though most bloodthirsty ones, in total innocence. You could be true to yourself." (p43).
Once she had acquired her new charge, a young female goshawk (that she named Mabel), Macdonald describes her initial meeting with it through a brilliant examination and description and says "she is a conjuring trick. A reptile. A fallen angel. A Gryphon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water". (p53)
It seems fitting to pause here and allow this opening of the book review to sink in further.
References;
Blain, G. (1936), "She is Noble in her Nature"(pp229-230) from "Falconry",(1936), Phillip Alen, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.
White, T.H. (1951), "The Goshawk", Jonathan Cape, London.
A quick introduction of Dr Helen Macdonald; Dr Macdonald is a historian with the Department of History and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge. She is also an illustrator and poet, and here her writing has been exemplified through a discourse of the difficulties she faced while going through her personal grief after losing her father. She is also a Falconer, which is what drew my attention to her methods and writing.
Initially, this book was recommended to me by Dr Stella Baraklianou, around a month ago during an informal discussion about my project. And the work I am trying to articulate through drawing, against the literary backbone, which is the book "the Peregrine" by JA Baker (1967, second edition 2015).
Immediately after starting to read the book by Helen Macdonald, I realised, not only elegant way in which she recorded her story, but also the profoundly moving way in which she explained her feelings. In a way, the book is almost an autobiography, however, while the book does provide a detailed insight into some of her personal thoughts, which were generated through very close but bringing and relationship with her father, it is also an utterly engaging story about her relationship with a Hawk. The hawk in question is of a type known as a 'Goshawk'.
Macdonald explains her fascination with falconry started at a very young age and at the time of writing this book, she was already a proficient Falconer and had trained many different breeds of both falcons and hawks. However, early on in the narrative, it was made clear that this particular strain, the goshawk, provides a robust and challenging raptor for a falconer to train. They virtually remain wild and that sense of independence and individualism, of the bird's thoughts, seem to come through very clearly in Macdonald's writings.
As a point of reference for "H is for Hawk", Macdonald chose to use a previous piece of literature written by T.H. White, during the early 1950s. TH White's book was entitled "The Goshawk"(1951), and it describes his relationship as a complete novice, trying to attempt to train a goshawk. It delineates the seeming constant battle that he has with the hawk, because of his pride and deeply ingrained sensitivities, perhaps amplified, during the time that he was a schoolmaster. It is his belief that 'through kindness, children should be taught', which seems to go against the general fashion of his day. He attempts to apply this idea of 'training through kindness' to the goshawk that he acquires. His frustrations and almost frightening engagement with the bird puts him into a state of total distance from reality. As he is attempting to train this wild creature without having any previous knowledge of falconry, it is made all the harder.
In a similar way to my intentions of using JA Baker's book "the Peregrine" (1967) as a backbone for my work, much of Macdonald's writing keeps the idea of TH White's "The Goshawk" in her rearview mirror. She recognises his vain and ill-conceived ideas about training his goshawk, and yet apparently makes the tribute to the fact that TH White, the learned and scholarly man that he is, is not attempting to undertake his journey alone. That is, without having read a significant amount of practical literature which goes back to the Middle Ages on the rearing and upbringing of hawks. It is probably worth pointing out also, that TH White is more famous for writing the book "the Sword in the Stone" (published in 1938) which is an English favourite, telling the story of the legend of King Arthur. Within that book, the inference of falconry comes through in many places; for example, the wizard known as Merlyn is indeed named after one of Britain's smallest Hawks, the 'Merlin'. Furthermore, there are various references within the book concerning mediaeval hunting and falconry, as at one stage the young Arthur is himself turned into a hawk for a short time.
By the time TH White had received a good degree of fame for his earlier works, and after having sold the rights to "the Sword in the Stone" to the Walt Disney company, he wrote the book "The Goshawk" in 1951. But it reflects the turbulent time of his own life some 15 to 20 years prior. That was before the Second World War too. Macdonald's choice in using his book as a backbone to her writings comes through clearly. Her battle with her emotions after losing her beloved father, while at the same time attempting to train this wild creature is equally reflected through her grief and in my opinion her suffering of a deep depression. Various sentences within Macdonald's writing draw the viewer towards this conclusion, such as whole chapters entitled for example "Darkness", (p92 -p98), "Hiding," Chapter 20 (p185-194); and a section entitled "Fear" (p195 - p204). I will go into these chapters a little bit further on in this review but to suffice it to say that Macdonald's suffering was made very clear. Putting grief and despair and depression to one side, the book explores how her relationship with falconry, emerges from a childhood fascination which may have originally come from her father's fascination with flight. And in his case man's flight through aircraft.
She tells of times she spent with her father, having almost been forced into 'plane spotting' with him, and her attention often drifting across the wide open spaces of airfields and grassland (p10). What she learnt from these excursions with her father was a sense of patience. As a photographer for a newspaper, he had a critical eye and inculcated into his daughter that same searching almost obsessive habit, of learning to wait for the right moment, and capturing it in some recordable way.
And then the shock of receiving the news that her father has passed away is soon to turn her world upside down. Like all people suffering from profound grief, the usual reaction is shocked, then to withdraw from society and take stock of what is important in life. I too have suffered many times in that loss, of not only my parents but also more recently, my eldest brother. And again, more recently, and so the feelings that Macdonald articulates are still quite raw in my mind, even though a long time has elapsed since the death of my parents, but the painful memories are still quite near to the surface, and I expect them to remain so.
Clearly, the subject matter in most hunting and falconry discourses have to engage with the theme of death at some stage. Whether that is the death of the prey animal or indeed other aspects of mortality, those notions are always near to the surface too. The idea that life goes on and things just happen almost in a parallel existence is also articulated in "H is for Hawk". A hint is found of that otherworldliness on page 21 where Macdonald describes some men hunting and quotes
"the disposition of their [the falconers] Hawks was peculiar. But it wasn't unsociable. It was something much stranger. It seemed that the Hawks couldn't see us at all, that they'd slipped out of our world entirely and moved to another, wilder world from which humans had been utterly raised. These men knew they had vanished. Nothing could be done except to wait."
This passage is where Macdonald is talking about her early observations and first encounters with falconry and how the men that kept the Hawks retained this sense of patience. - Allowing things to happen and unfold in their own ways. It is a deep sense of respect that the falconers have for their charges as they know and understand that the birds have a choice; to be wild completely, or, to acquiesce in some small way, but only when they, and they alone, decide to do so. It is also at this point in the book that Macdonald points out the difference between a hawk and falcon, the latter being a bird of prey and raptor whose name is derived from the Greek word meaning sickle. The very words sickle and Falcon, which somehow infuse a sense of speed, both slicing through the air. Moreover, she explains the general view that "falcons seem to be better than hawks", as the latter have an apparent wildness and, in Macdonald's words "psychopathic" (p22) aspect to the way that they hunt and kill their prey. Indeed she quotes a line by Captain Gilbert Blain (1936) which suggests that "the Peregrine Falcon is the finest bird on earth." "Of all the living creatures she is the most perfect embodiment of power, speed and grace" (Blain, 1936).
At first, it seems that Macdonald is coming to terms with the loss of her father but again, like many experiencing grief, there are good days and bad days, which turn into good weeks and bad weeks, or good months and bad months and so on. The idea of presence and notions of liminal existences comes back again after a few months. "Something else was there, something standing next to me that I couldn't touch or see, the thing a fraction of a millimetre away from my skin, something vastly wrong, making infinite the distance between me and all the familiar objects in my house. I ignored it. I'm fine, I told myself. Fine." (p24), and later, "I dreamed of the hawk slipping through wet air to [something] somewhere else. I wanted to follow it."(p24).
It is clear that Macdonald needs some sort of outlet to the grief that she is experiencing and decides that the time is right for her to acquire one of the hardest hawks of all to befriend and to train. As already explained, the Goshawk.
It is here that she starts to also recall her reading of TH White, and "the Sword in the Stone" (1938). His own intention in writing 'The Goshawk' (1951), the book, he said "it would be about the efforts of a second-rate philosopher, who lived alone in a wood, being tired of most humans in any case, to train a person who is not human, but a bird" (White, T.H. 1952, in an unpublished manuscript found by Macdonald).
Macdonald states on page 38, "when I trained my hawk I was having a quiet conversation, of sorts, with the deeds and works of the long dead man [that is, TH White], who was suspicious, morose, determined to despair. A man whose life disturbed me. But a man, too, who loved nature, who found it surprising, bewitching and endlessly novel." Macdonald goes on to then say "by skilfully training a hunting animal, by closely associating with it, by identifying with it, you might be allowed to experience all your vital, sincere desires, even though most bloodthirsty ones, in total innocence. You could be true to yourself." (p43).
Once she had acquired her new charge, a young female goshawk (that she named Mabel), Macdonald describes her initial meeting with it through a brilliant examination and description and says "she is a conjuring trick. A reptile. A fallen angel. A Gryphon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water". (p53)
It seems fitting to pause here and allow this opening of the book review to sink in further.
References;
Blain, G. (1936), "She is Noble in her Nature"(pp229-230) from "Falconry",(1936), Phillip Alen, London.
Macdonald, H. (2014) "H is for Hawk" Jonathan Cape Publishers, London.
White, T.H. (1951), "The Goshawk", Jonathan Cape, London.
Thursday, 9 February 2017
Book review - Donna Harraway's 'When Species Meet" (2008), - Continued... # 2
Further to my recent notes commencing the review of this excellent source (Haraway, D. "When Species Meet" (2008), University of Minnesota Press), Haraway takes us through an initial introduction and discourse about positioning her ideas of companion species, and "companion animals" that is. However, and this seems to be a literary habit, by the way, she tends to explain in every minutia that those titled companion animals are dogs, cats, horses, small monkeys, miniature donkeys, etc., etc., et cetera and goes on to define almost every one of them. (She does tend to use very many words to get across a meaning when only perhaps one or two might do)!
Anyway, nevertheless her introduction goes on to explain how there is a feeling of 'belonging' when in the presence of particular species (which I would call simply pets). And she also talks about the notion of "becoming with," as a kind of place in which we inhabit in a common sense of living.
The origin of the word 'companion' is 'com panis' from the Latin expression to mean "with bread". In other words, we tend to eat at the same table, if you like. This makes sense, and I like the idea of comparing the fact that apparently, the word 'company' also comes from this Latin origin too. It was originally used to describe a company of Knights, that being the lowest 'officer' ranking individuals, who shared a common table together when eating. And it is from here that the idea of the Knights of the Round Table can perhaps be given further credence.
Haraway goes on to discuss species, and my present understanding of the word (from my time in engineering), reminds me of the idea, and that in itself, the word 'species', if I recall, was indeed an idea. I also seem to have in mind, that 'species' was a term that referred to an early form of money as coinage, but this is something I need to research a little further.
Eventually, back to the book, we might be getting to the heart of the matter, and I think it's important to point out here, that Haraway makes note that she was brought up in a Roman Catholic family. I am always interested when a person has had a strict secular upbringing, as it seems they sometimes rebel completely against it in later life, or, they openly embrace it wholly (No pun intended). In other words, there appears to be a polarisation in many cases and answers (regardless of the specific religion (and there again is that word 'species' or a derivative in 'specific')) a possible cause of certain thought patterns (schema). This notion of polarisation of beliefs in certain people of a particular temperament, appears to abound in the way that some writers choose to report their observations and I should consider caution that it may be happening in this text itself?
Putting all that aside for a moment, Haraway does provide an excellent and thorough breakdown of all the etymology in her chosen key words. Indeed, to use Jacques Derrida's method of 'deconstruction', she refers the word 'species' to its Latin origin of speciae. Then in reflection, she talks of the Latin word specare, (To look, as in spectacle, hence speculate, etc), and ties in this together with the "act of re-spect". It is here that we can then drill down and think of this term of 'respect' in paying some sort of deference to an other; that is, to hold some other in a higher regard or esteem.
It is also here that Haraway then puts together the idea of species and companion where she mentions the writing of Anna Tsing; who says "human nature is an interspecies relationship." (This line appears to be taken from a jointly written book with Harraway entitled “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species,” ed. Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, (forthcoming), MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts). I was unable to find that original book referred to by Haraway, but instead, Tsing has since published "The Mushroom at The End of The World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins" (2015), Princeton University Press, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, UK. (This latest book by Tsing, is one for me to try to get hold of as I believe there is much resonance with many of the ideas that she is working with, and those with which I am also working towards. However, I will resist a review until later in the year perhaps!).
Haraway then chooses a lecture given by Derrida which was entitled "And say the animal responded!" In that original address which was later followed with another one entitled "The animal that therefore I am (more to follow)", he explained how his pet cat went into the bathroom one morning, as he was washing. Derrida talks about the encounter and individuality of that specific cat, and how it responded when it saw him naked. My own interpretation of this (which is interesting if one considers Haraway's spiritual and secular upbringing maybe?), is that she too identifies with animals in the sense that they are sentient beings. She doesn't say this outright, but I think that that is ostensibly what she is trying to get to.
Arguably, therefore, animals that we recognise as companion species have "souls"? They are 'beings' in their own right, are sentient beings. Consider, in just the same way that Buddhism and Confucianism (which arguably are not religions at all, but merely good rules to live by), recommend that we as 'human beings' treat all animals (that is sentient beings), as we treat ourselves. That is, we must respect them!
But perhaps I'm missing the point here too? In Derrida's case, he was just talking about how his cat made a response, (which is very different from a reaction). He merely speaks of the fact that the cat did respond, and from a philosophical point of view Derrida does not attach any anthropocentric emotional context to this. His concern about being naked is completely human, the cat would simply be indifferent, as it is probably indifferent to any other animal being 'covered or uncovered'. From a cat's point of view, is it surely not just an encounter with the species that it might recognise as being a human? Equally so, everything that we try and impose through the personification of our pets is entirely superfluous too?
In response to Derrida's writing, Haraway, however, makes the critique that she seems to think that he failed to take the encounter further in the analysis. Haraway suggests that we should know what the cat was actually thinking or feeling, doing or knowing? Is this not personification again? Isn't Haraway's analysis of the account indeed the encounter being viewed anthropocentrically? Haraway believes that Derrida made a significant error and lost the opportunity to speculate further about some 'otherworldliness' that his cat lived within.
However, in defence of Haraway, this notion of trying to see the world from the point of view of another, is what is being rejected as imperialist (as she calls it) and arguably facile. I believe that Derrida's enquiry at the time was about his cat's response through the term 'gaze'. This mutual exchange of looking, and what we as humans believe to be thinking behind the looking, becomes 'the gaze'.
Was the cat actually gazing in this sense? That Derrida was gazing at the cat and locking 'eye to eye' in some sort of primitive animal behaviour? It is true that cats generally avoid the stare, that is the 'eye to eye', direct contact, for a prolonged period. That is one of their features of behaviour in avoiding aggression. This is quite unlike dogs, where the stare is considered an act of assault and must be met with an equal stare in response. That is, dogs stare because they are pack animals and naturally aggressive but cats don't stare as they avoid aggression!
Isn't the discourse that both Derrida and Haraway engage in, purely philosophical perhaps? Of course, it is! This is the point! I sometimes question that in trying to think from another point of view (that is from the point of view of another species), it is always going to be clouded with our own judgement, based on our own individual experiences and encounters, and in these writings, these notions are exposed.
Interesting for me, though, Haraway goes on to say (on page 21) "Why did Derrida leave unexamined the practices of communication outside the writing technologies he did know how to talk about?" This is important to me because Haraway identifies the concept of communication and extending it to the idea and the notion of the gaze.
Haraway goes on to say. Instead, Derrida makes an enquiry through a kind of pity. He asks the question (as many others have done before him) based on 'does the cat suffer'? And do we know if animals can suffer? Haraway argues against these traditional thoughts and instead talks in terms of "can animals play?" But then I think she further falls into the human hierarchical behaviour of 'can I play with this cat'? Which in my opinion puts her at odds with what she is indeed trying to do, and that is, to get down (whoops there I go again with hierarchy), onto the same level as the cat, so that we truly can share an encounter or experience together.
All in all, Haraway's treatment of Derrida still, I think, seems to be somewhat anthropocentric unless I have missed her other points somewhere in her rather rambling style of writing? However, I'm pleased to see that in further chapters, she then talks in terms of "becoming with". This then brings me back to the central notion of my own plot for investigation, that is how one can attempt to reinterpret and re-articulate the world from another being's point of view on the same level.
Watch this space for further speciae!
References;
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, US.
Tsing, A. (forthcoming) Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species,” ed. Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (Unable to find this source).
Tsing, A. L. "The Mushroom at The End of The World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins" (2015), Princeton University Press, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, UK.
Anyway, nevertheless her introduction goes on to explain how there is a feeling of 'belonging' when in the presence of particular species (which I would call simply pets). And she also talks about the notion of "becoming with," as a kind of place in which we inhabit in a common sense of living.
The origin of the word 'companion' is 'com panis' from the Latin expression to mean "with bread". In other words, we tend to eat at the same table, if you like. This makes sense, and I like the idea of comparing the fact that apparently, the word 'company' also comes from this Latin origin too. It was originally used to describe a company of Knights, that being the lowest 'officer' ranking individuals, who shared a common table together when eating. And it is from here that the idea of the Knights of the Round Table can perhaps be given further credence.
Haraway goes on to discuss species, and my present understanding of the word (from my time in engineering), reminds me of the idea, and that in itself, the word 'species', if I recall, was indeed an idea. I also seem to have in mind, that 'species' was a term that referred to an early form of money as coinage, but this is something I need to research a little further.
Eventually, back to the book, we might be getting to the heart of the matter, and I think it's important to point out here, that Haraway makes note that she was brought up in a Roman Catholic family. I am always interested when a person has had a strict secular upbringing, as it seems they sometimes rebel completely against it in later life, or, they openly embrace it wholly (No pun intended). In other words, there appears to be a polarisation in many cases and answers (regardless of the specific religion (and there again is that word 'species' or a derivative in 'specific')) a possible cause of certain thought patterns (schema). This notion of polarisation of beliefs in certain people of a particular temperament, appears to abound in the way that some writers choose to report their observations and I should consider caution that it may be happening in this text itself?
Putting all that aside for a moment, Haraway does provide an excellent and thorough breakdown of all the etymology in her chosen key words. Indeed, to use Jacques Derrida's method of 'deconstruction', she refers the word 'species' to its Latin origin of speciae. Then in reflection, she talks of the Latin word specare, (To look, as in spectacle, hence speculate, etc), and ties in this together with the "act of re-spect". It is here that we can then drill down and think of this term of 'respect' in paying some sort of deference to an other; that is, to hold some other in a higher regard or esteem.
It is also here that Haraway then puts together the idea of species and companion where she mentions the writing of Anna Tsing; who says "human nature is an interspecies relationship." (This line appears to be taken from a jointly written book with Harraway entitled “Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species,” ed. Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, (forthcoming), MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts). I was unable to find that original book referred to by Haraway, but instead, Tsing has since published "The Mushroom at The End of The World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins" (2015), Princeton University Press, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, UK. (This latest book by Tsing, is one for me to try to get hold of as I believe there is much resonance with many of the ideas that she is working with, and those with which I am also working towards. However, I will resist a review until later in the year perhaps!).
Haraway then chooses a lecture given by Derrida which was entitled "And say the animal responded!" In that original address which was later followed with another one entitled "The animal that therefore I am (more to follow)", he explained how his pet cat went into the bathroom one morning, as he was washing. Derrida talks about the encounter and individuality of that specific cat, and how it responded when it saw him naked. My own interpretation of this (which is interesting if one considers Haraway's spiritual and secular upbringing maybe?), is that she too identifies with animals in the sense that they are sentient beings. She doesn't say this outright, but I think that that is ostensibly what she is trying to get to.
Arguably, therefore, animals that we recognise as companion species have "souls"? They are 'beings' in their own right, are sentient beings. Consider, in just the same way that Buddhism and Confucianism (which arguably are not religions at all, but merely good rules to live by), recommend that we as 'human beings' treat all animals (that is sentient beings), as we treat ourselves. That is, we must respect them!
But perhaps I'm missing the point here too? In Derrida's case, he was just talking about how his cat made a response, (which is very different from a reaction). He merely speaks of the fact that the cat did respond, and from a philosophical point of view Derrida does not attach any anthropocentric emotional context to this. His concern about being naked is completely human, the cat would simply be indifferent, as it is probably indifferent to any other animal being 'covered or uncovered'. From a cat's point of view, is it surely not just an encounter with the species that it might recognise as being a human? Equally so, everything that we try and impose through the personification of our pets is entirely superfluous too?
In response to Derrida's writing, Haraway, however, makes the critique that she seems to think that he failed to take the encounter further in the analysis. Haraway suggests that we should know what the cat was actually thinking or feeling, doing or knowing? Is this not personification again? Isn't Haraway's analysis of the account indeed the encounter being viewed anthropocentrically? Haraway believes that Derrida made a significant error and lost the opportunity to speculate further about some 'otherworldliness' that his cat lived within.
However, in defence of Haraway, this notion of trying to see the world from the point of view of another, is what is being rejected as imperialist (as she calls it) and arguably facile. I believe that Derrida's enquiry at the time was about his cat's response through the term 'gaze'. This mutual exchange of looking, and what we as humans believe to be thinking behind the looking, becomes 'the gaze'.
Was the cat actually gazing in this sense? That Derrida was gazing at the cat and locking 'eye to eye' in some sort of primitive animal behaviour? It is true that cats generally avoid the stare, that is the 'eye to eye', direct contact, for a prolonged period. That is one of their features of behaviour in avoiding aggression. This is quite unlike dogs, where the stare is considered an act of assault and must be met with an equal stare in response. That is, dogs stare because they are pack animals and naturally aggressive but cats don't stare as they avoid aggression!
Isn't the discourse that both Derrida and Haraway engage in, purely philosophical perhaps? Of course, it is! This is the point! I sometimes question that in trying to think from another point of view (that is from the point of view of another species), it is always going to be clouded with our own judgement, based on our own individual experiences and encounters, and in these writings, these notions are exposed.
Interesting for me, though, Haraway goes on to say (on page 21) "Why did Derrida leave unexamined the practices of communication outside the writing technologies he did know how to talk about?" This is important to me because Haraway identifies the concept of communication and extending it to the idea and the notion of the gaze.
Haraway goes on to say. Instead, Derrida makes an enquiry through a kind of pity. He asks the question (as many others have done before him) based on 'does the cat suffer'? And do we know if animals can suffer? Haraway argues against these traditional thoughts and instead talks in terms of "can animals play?" But then I think she further falls into the human hierarchical behaviour of 'can I play with this cat'? Which in my opinion puts her at odds with what she is indeed trying to do, and that is, to get down (whoops there I go again with hierarchy), onto the same level as the cat, so that we truly can share an encounter or experience together.
All in all, Haraway's treatment of Derrida still, I think, seems to be somewhat anthropocentric unless I have missed her other points somewhere in her rather rambling style of writing? However, I'm pleased to see that in further chapters, she then talks in terms of "becoming with". This then brings me back to the central notion of my own plot for investigation, that is how one can attempt to reinterpret and re-articulate the world from another being's point of view on the same level.
Watch this space for further speciae!
References;
Haraway, D. (2008) When Species Meet, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, US.
Tsing, A. (forthcoming) Unruly Edges: Mushrooms as Companion Species,” ed. Sharon Ghamari-Tabrizi, MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts (Unable to find this source).
Tsing, A. L. "The Mushroom at The End of The World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins" (2015), Princeton University Press, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, UK.
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