Notes: The Human-Animal Dialectic

February 27, 2006

Extra Credit Lecture

what living things count as non-human?
how is violence defined by human-animal relations?

reading Great Expectations via Human-Animal Studies

1. to be a dog in this novel is to lack narrative - to be forgotten is to be an animal
2. protagonist "Pip" is also called "Young Dog" - his identity is threatened

animals are given semi-character status
even minor human characters have more identity than dogs
dogs can always be killed/obliterated

Victorian periodicals - dogs are written of in anecdotes describing loyalty

1. still fail to achieve individuality ("one of the dogs")

animal character is an incomplete/fragile character by definition
Peter Singer - author of philosophical basis for animal rights

the gaze of an animal as a signifier of otherness

1. Derrida - gaze of cat - feeling of immodesty

Pip is threatened by someone who says he will dispose of Pip's body
"I won't have a bone of you left on earth" - they will never know nothing
the threat of being misremembered
before I kill you "like any other beast" - always too many

to be disremembered to be dismembered

dead human is worthy of special treatment
dead animal is meat