Side by side with the question of animals and history are the question of ethical inclusion in general, and the conception of the ethical position of animals in particular. Historian Gary David Shaw’s idea of “we” as a limiting principle in which those writing history decide which entities are ‘”…enough like us to count’” mirrors issues of animal ethics, as well as the more broad-sweeping ethical question that philosopher Richard Rorty asks: “Who Are We?” Perhaps considering Rorty’s ideas can help with the first theoretical question posed by Shaw: “what the animal is, historically” (Shaw 2013, 5).

Rorty views “Who Are We?” type questions in tandem with metaphysical and scientific “what” questions regarding man and other entities (Pogge & Horton 2008, 313, Introduction to “Who Are We?”). He asserts that the questions that postulate who we are exist as “attempts to forge, or reforge, a moral identity” and that this attempt can be linked to the metaphysical and scientific questions in a specific way (313).

Nietzsche and other philosophers regard methods like religion or science, which strive to answer the questions about “what” we (and other entities) are, as tools that each serve different understandings and ultimately different purposes and values, rather than as means for discovering an objective reality (that doesn’t exist). In a statement paralleling this perspective, Shaw states that:

the definition and usage of the word “animal” has never been straightforward. It has changed significantly through history in a variety of overlapping registers—scientific, agricultural, literary, colloquial, domestic, legal, and theological—that we continue to need to discern and analyze.  (Shaw, 6)

Shaw’s statement on the term “animal” appears to illustrate the perspective of Nietzsche that asserts that methods exist as tools that ground different purposes related to what we as humans are, as well as what other entities are, or are considered to be. Following the philosophical view on methods and relating to Shaw’s statement, Rorty suggests that by asking, first, who we are, we make decisions about values and purposes that will guide the answer to the “what” query (Pogge & Horton, 313).

In terms of the ethical question of inclusion particular to animals related to the bounds of the ethical “we,” the dominant view of animals still embeds questions regarding them on a scale of anthropocentrism. By placing emphasis on the instrumental value of animals for humans, unique intelligences and behaviors are diminished in importance through a comparison with human functions based on human perspectives. Philosopher Carl Cohen, for instance, in attempting to justify the use of animals in medical research, places great emphasis on the idea (now being questioned through non-medical research and study of animals) that morality is a uniquely human construct, and that therefore, animals can never possess more than indirect moral standing.

As I have noted amongst my Global Ethics students, such black and white views seem to make it very easy for those wishing to maintain their use of animals to categorize them as not ‘enough like us to count’—one very bright student even noting that animals certainly don’t get up and go to work like we do. Even though, as Shaw states, both shared feeling and scholarly work have begun to draw non-human animals into the circle of the human “we,” as someone who studies the question of the continuum of humans and the environment, ethically, animals are still generally considered to exist in the “world of nature that was difficult if not quite beyond us” (Shaw 1, 3).

Perhaps the resistance to considering the importance of animals is based on the vice of hubris, as Thomas Hill suggests regarding the preservation of nature in his essay on virtue ethics. Overcoming what seems to be a certain self-importance, as well as a learned fear of the agency and interagency of non-human creatures and the environmental realm, however are necessary and nuanced steps for deciding both, who constitutes ‘the “we” of history’ (Shaw, 12), as well as who constitutes the “we” of our moral identity.

When introducing deep history, Daniel Lord Small discussed two ideas that I see as particularly fertile both intellectually and in terms of cultural perspective.  The first is that of a unique, new interdisciplinarity that would link “physical and life sciences” to social sciences and the humanities (Small 2008, 9).  Considering history through the ‘”reciprocally creative relationship’” that comes from the interchange between the biological, behavioral, and cognitive elements of the human mind and human culture creates more nuanced understandings of the symbiosis of culture and biology (Small 2008, 8).

This interplay reminds me of environmental philosophy, particularly the idea that there is continuity between culture and nature rather than a natural division, or dualism, that became established through Enlightenment views of nature, human mastery, and Cartesian separation of brain and body.  Related indirectly to this sense of interdisciplinarity is what Small calls “ghost theories,” which he describes as “old ideas that continue to structure our thinking without our being fully aware of their controlling presence” (Small 2008, 3).  Small suggests that these entrenched ways of thinking about history frame and limit the understanding of the world, particularly the richness of the human world.  These ideas call into question the way that knowledge and the control of knowledge function in general, as well as in historical scholarship.

For instance, the idea that documents and writing have more credibility as scholarly historical evidence than do artifacts or oral stories parallels issues in indigenous studies, and even Foucauldian concepts, that show that ways of knowing have been hierarchized in dominant Western thought.  When non-dominant forms of thinking, living, and being are acknowledged through those studies, it is possible to see the world in a new light that includes elements overlooked through the predominant perspective.  By joining biology and culture to the world of history in a non-presentist manner, a new, deep sense of historical continuity can develop that might open our eyes to more elements of history and of the present.

“As Holtmaat and Naber state in Women’s Human Rights and Culture: From Deadlock to Dialogue, the concept of the fundamental equality of all humans, regardless of their categorization related to their unique characteristics, in the service of  universalist ideals, cannot be statically applied through the exact same treatment of all individuals”  (Schwartz 2013, 4).

As I read Joan Scott’s “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” I recalled an  issue I had pursued in a paper I wrote in a course called Women’s Rights as Human Rights.  My final essay was entitled:  “Social Justice through an Eco-feminist Critique of International Rights Instruments.”  Through it, I pursued two lines of inquiry.  First was the asymmetry of environmental effects on women and men.  Second was the conceptualization of universalism that international legal instruments develop.   These conceptions often dismiss or undermine women’s perspectives and needs regarding their quality of life.  Several of Scott’s concerns, for instance, that much theory used in historical (and subsequent political) work related to gender lacks cohesiveness, as well as her strategies for combating these difficulties reminded me of the way my eco-feminist project attempted to interrogate the issues of essentialism and concepts of universality.

I was particularly interested in Scott’s suggestions for creating a deeper and more theoretical approach to historical analysis of gender, including methods such as employing context specific critique regarding the interrelationship of gender and politics; the use of biography (and I would add after our reading from last week) autobiography;  and two elements of Foucault’s method, a concern for beginnings as opposed to origins, and the utilization of her proposition that “gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power” (Scott 1986, 1069-1070).

Much of Scott’s methodological critique considers the importance of the way in which social processes work through specific instances of history.  She also wishes to consider how meanings become attached to gender, while acknowledging that the categories of woman and man are both ‘empty and overflowing’ (1074).  She states that they are not transcendent, and that even when they seem stable, they include “alternative, denied, or suppressed definitions” (1074).  Within this recognition is an understanding of the need to look closely at specific situations to establish a critique of gender that avoids being ahistorical.  At the same time, understanding gender as a multi-faceted categorization related to power that one can analyze in different and evolving ways, avoids a timeless legitimation of (or ‘testimony to’) the establishment of power that precludes any substantive benefit from historical scholarship.

Technically, class-consciousness has not been conceived of as psychological consciousness.  It has been separated from ‘the empirically given, and from the psychologically describable and explicable ideas that men form about their situation in life’, and has been seen rather as a possible set of reactions people might have to discovering the implications of the position they occupy within the realm of production (Steedman 1986, 13).

This quote by historian, Carolyn Kay Steedman, reveals one of her main issues with histories dealing with class and class-consciousness, their generalizing and universalizing tendencies. She asserts that the most predominant of these places nearly all individuals of the British working class within a stereotyped, ‘emotionally passive’ life ‘”where survival is more important than elaboration of relationships.  .  .  “(Seabrook)’ and “the streets are all the same;  nothing changes” (Steedman 10-11).

To me, it is evident why this reading follows Foucault in the order of class readings. Foucault’s strategy was to utilize discourse analysis in order to illuminate the measures of control and discipline embedded in those discourses.  Here is one instance of a “Why?” and “How?”  related to the discourse of history that can be applied to Steedman’s project, in which she says:

This extraordinary attribution of sameness and the acceptance of sameness to lives arises from several sources. First of all delineation of emotional and psychological selfhood has been made by and through the testimony of people in a central relationship to the dominant culture, that is to say by and through people who are not working class.

The development of selfhood by those external to the working class does not necessarily totally discredit it. However, it does provide a reason for one following Foucault’s methods, to question who is, in fact, developing the interpretation of the selfhood of the working class in order to determine what the payoff in terms of power relations is for them.

This Foucauldian type of questioning might function as part of an archaeology/genealogy in which particular moments in the historiography of the working class can be uncovered and then utilized to open up the discussion of these formulas.

Utilizing a working class perspective through her autobiographical method, Steedman begins the project of reassessing the “granite-like plot” of the working class that considers only issues of exploitation and production.  She finds her own interpretation of “Why?” and “How?” in the question of the timing, the process of development, of working class ‘mental life’, or consciousness (14).  Like Foucault’s use of historical specificity, Steedman’s work attempts to “particularize” the stereotypical illustration (and she says, “profoundly a-historical landscape”) used in traditional working class histories.

Her motivation, too, is particularly genealogical and postmodern in intention as its particularizing elements are not meant to establish universals, but rather, to empower “the people in exile, the inhabitants of the long streets…to use the autobiographical ‘I’, and tell the stories of their life” (16).

“Foucault…provided detailed accounts of the lineages of both Western institutions and subjectivity. These genealogical accounts are carried out in a language and set of concepts that recognize themselves to be within the lineage that they describe;  the descriptive accounts have a decentering effect on the values and  forms of knowledge that give the lineage its authority.  As his genealogical studies make questionable these previous axiomatic values, his studies themselves become questionable in their place in the lineage that they describe and suggest in the performance of their own concepts the need for movement beyond the truths and values that establish their own intelligibility and import.” (Columbia History of Western Philosophy, Edited by Richard H. Popkin, 1999, 750, my emphasis)

Foucault made many contributions in many fields.  In reading the materials for our discussion of Foucault, I came across several ideas that were somewhat familiar to me by way of philosophy courses.  My intention as I read and continue to think about Foucault for our upcoming class is to reconsider some of Foucault’s ideas in relation to history and historical methods.

Again, I found the Columbia History of Western Philosophy helpful in unpacking some of the moves within Foucault’s works.  For instance, consider Foucault’s introduction of the historico-critical attitude in “What is Enlightenment?”  There he suggests that one develop an experimental method blending ‘historical inquiry’ and ‘contemporary reality’ in an open(-ended) manner in order to understand ourselves as subjects.  He then suggests that specific instances, or ‘transformations’, within history be considered.

As Franz Peter Hugdahl states (in the Columbia History), Foucault’s interest was in investigating “a variety of social and political practices and institutions as manifestations of power in order to expose the particular understanding of those concepts concerning culture, society, and the individual that the systems require to function under those conditions” (Popkin 1999, 742).  What is important to historical methods in considerations of the historico-critical attitude is the use of specific instances and understandings of historical moments, as well as cultural terms in order to more fully acknowledge the contingency of concepts that are likely to be considered “enduring empirical facts” (742-43).

These historico-critical attitudes seem to conform to Foucault’s ‘poststructural skepticism’, which “operate[s] a decentering that leaves no privilege to any center (Foucault, Archeology of Knowledge [1982], p. 205)” (744).  Foucault still strives for knowledge, but in realizing that it is imperfect, and will always be, he seeks to utilize genealogical inquiry to find ruptures in accepted histories and discourses.  It is a sort of hermeneutic, continually developing understanding that there is and will always be contingent and limited understanding that is the hallmark of Foucauldian inquiry.

“Once human behavior is seen as…symbolic action—action which, like phonation in speech, pigment in painting, line in writing, or sonance in music…– the question as to whether culture is patterned conduct or a frame of mind, or even the two somehow mixed together loses sense…The thing to ask is what their import is…” (Geertz, “Thick Description,” 1973, 10)

As I read Geertz’ work on “thick description,” our discussions regarding history and historiography shadowed my thoughts. It seemed a natural extension of materials related to cultural historiography and I found myself trying to find a clearer connection between the essay and my perspective on historical methods.  With that aim in mind, I found two points from Geertz’ essay particularly compelling as a basis for developing a sensibility about historical methodology that could prove to be more nuanced in relation to the issue of culture.

First was the idea that it is necessary to look at actual behavior—events—rather than “abstracted entities” made to fit into “unified patterns” when considering a cultural system (Geertz, “Thick Description” 1973, 17). This practice can help to avoid many of the pitfalls of ‘thin description’, as well as of the abstracted analysis that attempts to fit behaviors into a(n) (over)generalized understanding of culture.

The second concept that I found particularly compelling was the idea that cultural coherence as a basis for ethnography or anthropology (and, I think, for historiography as well) is overrated (Geertz, TD, 17-18). First of all, Geertz says that an element of systems (including cultural ones) is coherence.  Geertz’ contention that coherence is overrated (“…there is nothing so coherent as a paranoid’s delusion or a swindler’s story,” p. 18) appears meant to emphasize important elements the nature of the act of interpretation itself.

His position seems to be that interpretation is a natural part of constructing understandings of culture and that the quality of the interpretation can allow the basis for the interpretation to shine through, or be further obscured allowing cultural significances to remain obscured (18).  Coherence, while a seemingly logical and appealing means of interpreting culture, may distort interpretations of culture.  Such a reliance on coherence may be another way of confusing ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ descriptions in a manner similar to Geertz’ thought that one might confuse “knowing how to wink as winking” (12).

Following my critical analysis of Weinberger’s use of the term ‘expert’ in my last post, I now consider his discussion on the fluidity and interactivity of the internet. I find these concepts making a deep impression on me though leading to more mixed conclusions about the nature of books versus the internet than those of Weinberger. The most fascinating part of his discussion begins with his introduction of historian of books, Robert Darnton, who expresses frustration at trying to convey history through the long-form arguments of books and who seeks a nuanced way to hybridize books and digital networks.

Darnton’s statement that books make it difficult “to communicate the fathomlessness of the archives and the bottomlessness of the past,” is a perfect example of the lack of fluidity, of interactivity, and of the possibility of expanding discussions beyond the boundaries of books that Weinberger wishes to investigate in his exploration of the internet (Weinberger 2011, 95). Darnton’s desire to “show how themes criss-cross outside my narrative and extend far beyond boundaries of my book” seems to lead effortlessly to the notion that the internet can solve these difficulties and open up the limitations that books may hold (95). It is possible however, that both Darnton and Weinberger generalize about the nature of books. Are books of poetry and mathematics linear and leading? And alternatively, aren’t many oral narratives linear?

I was intrigued by Darnton’s use of a pyramid metaphor to show how books could be restructured to include some of the positive ‘capabilities’ of the internet (95). His discussion of the pyramid reminded me of discussions in my Comparative Law class regarding the differences between, on the one hand, civil and common law, and on the other, Talmudic law. This discussion led me to remember a very old system that I believe encompasses the positive fluidity and interactivity associated with the internet, yet also makes great use of the bound book.

The use of the pyramid was diametrically opposed in the civil/common and Talmudic strands of legal thought. Civil and common law included absolutes at the base of the pyramid, with few refinements or adjustments, which developed as the pyramid narrowed toward the closed/bounded top. Talmudic law used/uses an inverted pyramid—actually similar, but upside-down—to the one that Darnton describes as a way to structure a book “in layers” in order to open up its possibilities (95).

In the Talmudic pyramid, the bottom was the ‘word’ (of God). It rested on the narrowest part of the pyramid, its pointed tip. Again paralleling Darnton, occurring at the next wider level were clarifications of the torah’s arguments. The top and widest levels of the pyramid would, like Darnton’s widest layer, consider and discuss previous scholarship. This layer was never considered bounded in Talmudic scholarship. A predominant Talmudic ideal is that all discussion related to the ‘word’ is part of the very nature of it and necessary to its understanding. Talmudic discussion, therefore, is intended to be inclusive of differing perspectives and is certainly not consensus building in the strictest sense.

The Talmud then, seems to be an early example of networked knowledge that hybridizes the book with the open discussion ‘capabilities’ of the internet (although men were the only accepted contributors traditionally). As time went on, many of what became considered the most important contributions (through open dialogues where expertise was considered largely through quality of one’s participation—or ‘attempt’ in Latin) were set down in a newly bound volume, but the idea that the discussion was/is never complete remains inherent within Talmudic study.

This circles back to a vital point made by Weinberger. Just because the internet can afford the “possibility of connecting across boundaries, forming expert networks that are smarter than their smartest participants,” doesn’t mean that the possibilities will come to fruition (91). As he says, we must “…want to be smarter” (91). Perhaps my dilemma regarding the internet is less about what it can offer than about what society appears to ask from it.

Historical Awareness and the Historical Continuum
In The Pursuit of History, John Tosh describes historical awareness as a sense of history that avoids some of the interpretive distortions to historical events, like blatant nationalism, that personal or social memory and its justifications often produce. According to Tosh, the three constitutive elements of such awareness are: “historical empathy,” which fosters sensitivity to differences between actors in various historical periods; contextualization of the numerous intersections of a group’s everyday existence so as to provide a full understanding of a particular event or historical situation; and process, the significance that the unfolding of time lends to events. This processural ‘historical continuum’ “cuts both ways: just as nothing has remained the same in the past, so too our world is the product of history” (Tosh 2010, 12). Cultural historian, Mieke Bal, advances this idea of a continuum that expresses mutual effects on the past and the present through an exploration of the interplay between baroque art and contemporary artworks that “quote,” that is, utilize images from the baroque era. Like Tosh, Bal asks whether baroque images illuminate contemporary art and also, therefore, the present, or the contemporary sheds light on the baroque era. Like the baroque iconic draping cloth that obscures the object to be viewed, Bal considers the baroque as a means to understand the contemporary. This analogy seems to be a good place to begin to question the idea of the mutual cut of the historical processural historical continuum.