Representations of Dogs in Contemporary Theater - Embodiment, Becomings and Social Empathy

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Representations of Dogs in Contemporary Theater –

Embodiment, Becomings and Social Empathy

by Ioana Brailescu

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A thesis presented for Master`s degree Theater Studies

University of Amsterdam Netherlands January 2015

1_{This is a photograph of people standing in line to euthanize their dogs in Berlin 1926, after the dog ownership tax was} raised. Author unknown. Retrieved from www.vintag.es.

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The nature and significance of animals has been important in continental philosophy ever since Aristotle declared man the only political animal who can tell the difference between right and wrong. His contemporary, Pythagoras, was an advocate for vegetarianism and, contrarily to Aristotle, believed that animals` purpose is not solely human use. The debate continued throughout centuries, with renowned thinkers such as Descartes classifying animals as automatic machines that are not subject of pain3_{. Although Kant is the first modern philosopher who extensively wrote about the existence of a} human obligation of treating animals with kindness as a way of reinforcing humanity4_{, it is only} recently that accusations have started to surface according to which humans are speciesist, disadvantaging other animals on the plain basis of their species, with an undeniable gain for the biped, garment-wearing, flavored-cigar-smoking one. Speciesism is thus an arguable form of discrimination whose mechanisms of functionality and self-perpetuation are no different from those of other forms of repression which were identified long the years. But while hegemonic domination in the case of racism or sexism could be negotiated to a certain extent by both sides, here this constitutes an impossibility. Therefore reconsidering the status of animals as simple subjects is not only difficult to envisage because of the long tradition which has accustomed us to its being such, but also due to the fact that it is completely up to people to decide to what extent this is a priority. While the great majority of philosophers followed in Aristotle`s footsteps, mentioning animals in clear oppositions to people due to their lack of valued features such as consciousness or reason, postmodern philosophy with its passion for deconstruction came to touch upon this generally accepted distinction. In 1997, Jacques Derrida5_{was pleading for altogether abandoning the very word} – animal, which implies and enforces a distinction between man and animal. Interestingly, this idea strikes him on a casual morning, while exchanging gazes with his cat. Not only Derrida, but also other thinkers in the field of animal studies mention encounter and companionship between human and non-human animals as loci of comprehension. Therefore a way to tackle speicesism would be not to

2_{de Saint-Exupery, Antoine. The Little Prince.}

3_{Descartes, Rene. Discourse on the method of rightly conducting the reason, and seeking truth in the sciences. Project} Gutenberg, 2008.

4_{Kant, Immanuel.}_{The Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge, 1998.} 5_{Derrida, Jacques. The Animal that Therefor I Am(following). Critical Inquiry, 2002.}

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jump away from the distinction, as poststructuralistically appealing as that may be, but to explore it step by step, starting from close by. And nothing can be said to be equally close to man, in interdependence as well as historical duration as dog. The reasons for this symbiosis are difficult to explain. On the one hand, Zarathustra6_{, together with our contemporaries the radical ecologists,} deplores the taming of wolves as a wicked gesture, possibly even the first bio political act. On the other hand, Dona Harraway7_{comes to reassure that the process was about human residue instead of} human interest attracting the quadrupeds around the fire. However it is we got here, it is undisputable that what dogs constitute for people is far more than just pleasant company.

Nevertheless, the feelings towards dogs range from adoration to dismissal, as becomes clear from a quick glance into the numerous internet forums on which people discuss dogs, both as pets and as pests. Anthropologist Vintila Mihailescu puts it in a nutshell: “we avoid them, but we protect them from dog captors, we consider them dangerous but we feed them if they are around, we love them but we abandon their cubs, we consider them close to people, but our conscience is appeased when they are properly euthanized8_{”. Writing in the context of today`s Romania, where stray dogs do} indeed constitute a chief socio-political issue, many of his arguments can be passed over in the current paper, which does not intend to deal with the subject of dogs in a localized manner. However, he is right in pointing out that dog ownership is an indicator of economic development, being on the rise in stabilized countries, but even more so in countries that are currently asserting themselves. But alas, dogs do not come with an instruction manual and in most places the knowledge related to their raising and caring spreads much slower than their numbers increase. This is the main reason for often abusive treatments on an individual and collective level ranging from selective breeding, castration, captivity in an improper environment, cub abandonment and, more subtle but of an undeniable violence, assumed unconditional reciprocal love. We are thus dealing with sheer contradictions that result from misunderstanding and misrepresentation of dogs and their relation to humans. And since a contradiction is always more than just an opposition between two possibilities, it ought to be examined in its complexity.

It is in this area that my interest lies. While some dogs have highly specialized “jobs” in

6_“_{Man has made wolf into dog and himself man`s favorite pet.”, via Sloterdijk, Peter. Rules to the Human Zoo: A response}

letter on humanism. 2007. P. 22.

7_{Haraway, Dona. Companion Species Manifesto. University of Minnesota, 2008.}

8_{Mihailescu, Vintila. The Story of Leutu Dog: About the New Domestic Order and the Crisis of the Human. Bucharest, 2013.} P. 39.

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attending people who are blind or suffer from impairments, in rescue teams or in police departments, others function as live trophies, nonjudgmental affection providers or pests. In this polarization, scholars on the topic would argue, the liability can only be laid on people and the way in which they make sense of the world, invariably through representations. Hence the task at hand is to question these representations and the assumptions that led to and are reflected in their existence, while also investigating alternative ways of dealing with the human-animal and particularly human-dog binaries. After all, who is to say that men are the only political animals when canines have been accompanying the street demonstrations of the past years? Loukanikos9_{is the most famous such individual and has} been featured in international publications for having chosen his side from the start and standing by the demonstrators against austerity measures in Greece, through tear gas and smoke bombs which damaged his health.

And if the main problem lies with representation, a solution should not be sought any further. The notion of crisis of representation, standing at the basis of postmodernism, can be understood as an inability to reconstitute lived reality, both at an ideological and material level. In our case, it is the imaginary line dividing man and non-human animals in clear opposition, resulting from a centuries-long adherence to Christian views, which were only minimally challenged by evolutionism: natural world is still, to a large extent, viewed as a ladder on which humans take the top position, instead of, for example, a tree-like structure, where different branches visually explain diversity and differences. In matters of communication abilities, tool usage, interrelationality and whatever else it is assumed that humans have and animals lack, research shows that differences are merely in degree: most animals have, to a certain extent, systems of communication, in-group hierarchies, understanding of tools, and even theory of mind, though not to the full capacity and function as those that humans employ. So while many aspects are rather unifying of the human and non-human realms, there is one characteristic, as argued by Christine Korsgaard10_{, that sets humans apart: they are the ones who have}

the power of normativity, that is they can decide for themselves and the others what the rules ought to be. However tempting it may be to see one`s self and peers as the standard and therefore privileged group, many philosophers follow Kant`s reasoning that a treatment inclusive of other species reinforces what we like to call and praise as humanity.

9_{Wearden, Graeme. Greece`s riot dog Loukanikos Dies. The Guardian, October 9}th_{2014. Retrieved on December 17}th_2014. http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/oct/09/greece-riot-dog-loukanikos-dies-eurozone-crisis.

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Far from being a plea for animal rights or their equality to humans, this paper intends to survey the attitudes existing in philosophy, research and performance art regarding this topic. Ultimately, the findings will be critically applied to two relatively recent theater productions that attempt to bring human and dog together not through dialogue, but through bodily experience. The two cases which were chosen to be studied are (1) Alvis Hermanis`s Call of the Wild, a performance in which a group of dog owners, distressed by their inability to relate to people as closely as they do to their dogs, gradually transform into a pack and (2) Heart of a Dog, an adaptation of Bulgakov`s novel about a scientific experiment: transplanting human organs onto a stray dog. Both of the cases are quite relevant to the topic because, on the one hand, they deal, each in its own manner, with two different ways of approaching the animal other: biological and instinctive; on the other hand they both present a hybrid between dog and human, thus creating an interspecies platform of negotiation. A third case study then comes to challenge: a different production of A Dog`s heart, this time commissioned by the Nationale Nederlandse Opera and directed by Alexander Raskatov. This follows the same story, but realizes it in a completely different fashion: the dog is represented through a big iron puppet maneuvered by several people on stage. On the one hand, this case, at least apparently, reverses the question of representation in the form of embodiment. We are dealing here not with flesh and bone, but with a heavy metal which comes to life, though laboriously operated by people, thus being confronted with a different medium which in itself casts a new light to the issue of representation. On the other hand, all the three cases explore the notion of becoming animal in a hybrid form, blurring the lines of what it means to be dog and human alike, entering an indefinite in-between area that philosopher Giorgio Agamben calls the open, arguing for its importance in the redefining of human-animal understanding.

Open are also the questions that will guide and give structure to the present research. First of all, (1) how does embodiment and performance of other species serve as a means of researching into the other? (2) Does theater dispose of tools that can help create new ways of representation to contribute to the human-animal negotiation? I will depart from the optimistic hypothesis that the question of becoming animal in terms of performance can challenge the discussion on representation. Finally, whether this will be confirmed or not will lead to a more ample question that regards not only the current topic, but theater in general and its scope: (3) Does theater work along with other disciplines in contesting current socio-political context or is it merely a podium for recreation and

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reflection on what happens in a tumultuous, ever-shifting global world? (4) And further, departing from theater into the political dimension, can we extrapolate these ways of understanding and relating to the animal other into ways of relating to the human other?

The topic and the way in which it shall be approached are relevant not only to the role of theater, but also to its placement into the new, yet very complex and interdisciplinary field of animal studies. As for my personal interest, it arose while writing a paper on the increasing presence of animals in theater and discovering how many loose threads in philosophy can be both applied and researched into through theatrical practice. At the same time, the body is getting more and more attention from critical theory, with concepts that intertwine with explorations in the performing arts. It is very interesting how the humanities took so long to take as a subject of inquiry the very human body, but current academic tendencies, stirred chiefly by postmodernism and gender studies intend to make up for the omission. An example in this sense which is too ambiguous and ample to develop here, but combines theory with transcendental bodily experiences is butoh, a form of dance performance which completely redefines what the human body can undergo, express and represent.

It cannot be stressed enough that I intend to stay clear of any activist position within the field. Indeed, it is a difficult task when trying to navigate sources that claim to be manifestos, declarations for animal rights and ethical cases for an egalitarian coexistence. I am as skeptical about animal friendly politics as I am about animal friendly meat. Nonetheless, it is interesting to navigate between different approaches of behavior towards animals and their legitimization in cultural and political terms. Because these cases depict a schizoid society constantly contradicting itself: loving some animals while slaughtering others, advantaging pets over homeless people, adopting dogs only to abandon them again when a house turns out not to be enough. It is a chance for me to reevaluate my own opinions regarding the place of animals in society between radical environmentalism and developmentalism, while trying to understand how this extreme reasoning came to be and take from each the fair share of reasonable arguments. This essay will abstract regional specificity because, as said before, the issue is one that pertains to humanity and not to a specific government. For instance, when the mayor of Istanbul decided for the execution of thousands of stray dogs, this illustrated a problem not only of Istanbul residents, the same way human rights violations are to be dealt with at an international level.

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philosophical ideas about humanity and animality and what stands in between them, as well as what the overlaps could be and whether it is possible to develop from these common points. Thus it will become clearer what is meant by becoming and performing animal, crucial notions which will be scrutinized against the aforementioned case studies, as well as other instances. As said before, this paper bases its premises in the field animal studies, an emerging interdisciplinary field which will be introduced and whose relation to performance will be explained in a first short chapter. Then we will develop on what is understood as a crisis of representation, relate it to different ways in which dogs are featured in cultural products and explore its ramifications into social and political life, illustrating why representation ought to be considered with various examples from the art world. Having described the existing context, the following part will be destined to the discussion of various acts which challenge it, both in the everyday and in the institutionalized theater world, also with a more ample discussion of how becoming animal and performing species can be achieved. Only then will we move to an in-depth analysis of the three performances, discussing whether they achieve what has been described in the previous part and dealing with the further problematizations they might bring about. However, before setting off to this endeavor, several concepts require disambiguation.

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Key concepts

Embodiment is a crucial issue that could be easily dealt away with by accepting the widely known

definition of transforming an idea into materiality by using the body. However, in the field of theater and performance so much thought process has been given to this concept that it would be inconsiderate to take for granted an oversimplified definition. Generally, theoreticians who have tackled this issue have had as a starting point the split between body and mind as it was understood by Descartes. Since embodiment means to function as a hybrid between the two, another understanding which is not so mutually excluding the two is needed. Merleau-Ponty provides an early and quite extensive treatment of the notion in his Phenomenology of Perception which appeared in English in 1962 and has widely influenced subsequent theories and practices regarding the body, setting the tone for the experiments with live performance that were yet to come. To begin with, it must be understood how he distinguishes between three levels of embodiment. The first refers to the innate existence of bodies:

“In so far as I have hands, feet, a body, I sustain around me intentions which are not dependent upon my decisions and which affect my surroundings in a way which I do not choose. These intentions are general... they originate from other than myself, and I am not surprised to find them in all psycho-physical subjects organized as I am11_.”

These given body parts and abilities are trained in order to respond to our surroundings. Given that the surroundings elicit increasingly more specific response as we advance through life, we can understand these acquired abilities in terms of skills, which become refined and combined over the time. Finally, there are cultural characteristics, which are independent of the natural body and its acquired abilities. Thus a body can be understood as a combination of its innate structures, acquired general skills and cultural adaptations, which also define its way of being in the world as embodiment. He then goes on to describe different levels of proficiency in using these components: novice, advanced beginner, competence, proficient, expertise and finally, the supreme level of intentionality without representation. These levels are defined both by the skillful use of the three components and

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by the role played by motivation: “Sometimes, the meaning aimed at cannot be achieved by the body's

natural means; it must then build itself an instrument, and it projects thereby around itself a cultural world12_.”

Although it is clear that embodiment as we will treat it in this paper is not about the physical body per se, it could be useful to mention other views. Thomas Csordas claims embodiment to have arisen as an alternative to previous body rhetoric: “shift from viewing the body as a nongendered,

prediscusive phenomenon that plays a central role in perception, cognition, action and nature to a way of living or inhabiting the world through ones acculturated body13_{." We can thus derive that}

embodiment as a way of being refuses the Cartesian duality, replacing it with an unmediated connection between the physical and mental. This is very important for the current research, since performance of another species is not mere imitation, not complete rationalization, but a process in which the body and the subconscious work together to create a new form of being. As for the role of embodiment, Erica Fischer Lichte would say “specific techniques and practices of embodiment

enabling him (the performer) to generate energy14_.”

As for the embodiment of other species, the reason why this is worth analyzing is explained by Una Chaudhuri: “if language is indeed a barrier, then the quest for a deeper, richer, mode of understanding the animality we share with nonhumans might logically lead one to the embodied arts of performance15_”.

Space is also a very important coordinate when dealing with animals in general and especially with

dogs, since humans and dogs lead their lives in such proximity. So space can be understood first of all as a natural territory, necessary for the normal development of a being, who will instinctively fight for it and defend it from threat and intruders. All animals do this and humans none the less. On the other hand, we must take into consideration the opposition between public and private space, with their prescribed roles for people and for animals alike. This will help figuring out whether the place of the dogs is strictly within the confinements that define them as pets or whether there is still the possibility to allow other beings to inhabit, however marginally, the busy and increasingly utility-driven public areas. In the opinion of Mihailescu, the problem with stray dogs lies precisely with the fact that they

12_{Merleau-Ponty, (1962) p. 146}

13_{Csordas, Thomas. Embodiment as a paradigm for Anthropology. Ethos 1990. P. Xiv.} 14_{Fischer-Lichte, Erika. The transformative power of performance. Routledge, 2008.P. 98.}

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are “out of place” (read, agreement as to where they belong cannot be reached) which makes them dangerous because they can dodge systematic control. It is important to note that stray dogs are an urban constant across Europe, although the numbers vary greatly: 1 dog for every 1100 people in London, approximately 1 per 2200 in Paris, 1 dog per 300 inhabitants in Moscow, 1 per 120 in Sofia and an alarming 1/30 in Bucharest16_{. Alarming, that is, because what these countries have in common} is a belief that no dog ought to be roaming the streets. The very conviction that this is a phenomenon that must be fought against is one of the aspects that this paper wishes to challenge.

The appartenance to a spatial coordinate is also important due to the fact that it dictates who is in charge of managing the population. When a privately owned animal misbehaves, the owner is sanctioned. However, when hundreds roam the city, it becomes a political and economic problem: sterilization is more costly than euthanasia and sometimes a quick solution is needed, such as when Istanbul rid itself of thousands of dogs in preparation for the United Nations Conference in the year 199617_{. Such situations gave rise to questions of animals owning land and being autonomous within a} certain space. This pertains to the wild, where natural conditions are crucial to survival, as well as to the urban space, inhabited by so many animals that they cannot be considered marginal inhabitants of the city or pests. This open discussion which is far from settled will be transposed from the vast outside life into the limited and highly subject to conventions space of a theater. Will issues of space then become more pressing or easier to see through?

Representation Although it is dangerous to talk about representation in theater after the fall of the

fourth wall and with the rise of postdramatic theater, this concept is central to our present endeavor. Therefore it is important to clarify that representation will not be understood in the Stanislavskian sense of representational acting, but as the conceptual image of dogs that the work positions, since this will be further on contrasted to pre-existent ideas and conceptions. Of course, distinguishing to what extent the acting is presentational or representational will be analyzed in order to determine how both methods contribute to conveying the final ideological product.

16_{Recent official data, via Mihailescu (2013) p. 63} 17_{Mihailescu (2013) p. 62}

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Chapter 1. An overview of Animal Studies and its relation to Performance

John Stuart Mill said that “every great movement must experience three stages: ridicule, dis-cussion and adoption18_{”. The movement for animal rights is, as it seems, somewhere between the} first two stages, having been considered a preposterous proposition at first, but lately it has been gaining more and more ground and influencing policies of testing on animals and animal rearing, as well as getting more academics from various disciplines interested in their own ways in the matter of animalness. The seminal text, considered by many the birthmark of this study, is Peter Singer`s Animal

Liberation, published in 1975, a treaty of applied ethics in which he reasons for a utilitarian approach

that includes non-humans in the consideration of the greater good. As the name suggests it, animal studies is such a wide field that it could as well be considered a general direction in which several dis-ciplines are heading. In other words, it is a relatively new discipline born out of increasing interest to-wards animals not as object, but as subject of study in various academic areas. Animal studies en-compasses bio science and philosophy, anthropology and art studies, religion, globalization and femi-nism and many others (see Journal for Critical Animal Studies19_{for a two-page long list of possible} ap-proaches). The aim of animal studies, with collaborative forces from the aforementioned disciplines is to bring animals into academic discourse as a serious and long-ignored topic, a subject in and of themselves and not just as companions, subordinates, victims and objects of human action. As the opening article of the first number of the Journal for Critical Animal Studies puts it, a constant pres-ence in the academia of animal issues, together with activist actions on the field are their platforms. The final goal of this would be to abolish what is called speciesism, the form of discrimination based on species which undermines non-human animals. Although these are some of its components, ani-mal studies is not about aniani-mal rights, endangered species or natural reservation, but rather about questioning and trying to improve the worldviews that have created the current, undoubtedly un-pleasant living conditions for many of our contemporary animals.

There is, thus, among animal studies scholars and activists, a wide range of opinions regarding what course of action ought to be taken: some people, known as abolitionists, would say that any human influence on animals should be eliminated, from hunting and exploitation, in whatever condi-tions, to pet ownership. Another strand, deriving from utilitarian philosophy, militate for weighing the

18_{Via Slicer, Deborah. Your Daughter or your dog? Hypathya, 1991. P. 1.} 19_{http://www.criticalanimalstudies.org/.}

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benefits against the costs of suffering when dealing with animals, while egalitarians would propose an equality in rights and privileges between human and non-human animals. An interesting perspective comes from political theorists Sue Donaldson and Will Kymlicka who, in their book Zoopolis20_{, propose} an extended theory of citizenship tailored to include animals, according to the relationship and close-ness they have with people. They thus distinguish between three major categories. First come the cit-izens with equal rights, the ones who have been selected to live in the vicinity of people, which in-clude pets and animals used for their produce alike. Besides being entitled to rights, they are to re-ceive rewards for their favors lent to their owners, who must also ensure conditions for their flourish-ing. Secondly, there are the wild animals, sovereign over the area they inhabit, with whom humans are not to interact and whose habitat they ought not to damage. Finally, there are marginal animals who, for one reason or another, have chosen to live in proximity to people, but whose presence is not always desired or directly beneficial to these. In this category are animals such as pigeons, rats and the numerous insects which are at all times so close to us that it is understandable we often consider them pests. Donaldson and Kymlicka propose for them a status similar to that of asylum seekers who can be removed, if wanted, but without causing them any harm. Overall, this theory has the quality of suggesting, unlike others, that the rapport between men and animals is not hierarchical, but rather a relational one. Another advantage is that they pinpoint how parallels can be drawn between the treatment of human and-non human others in policies and politics. Nonetheless, their theory is not the most equitable, since it still gives greatest importance to human agency.

The theoretical backbone of the discipline consists, to a large extent, of philosophical reinter-pretations of classical texts with the inclusion of animals in the discussion. For instance, a forefather of animal studies can be considered to be Peter Singer, who first made a case for ethical treatment towards animals based on utilitarian principles of ethics. Although Singer`s model was continued by a number of scholars, Derrida`s famous lecture, The Animal that Therefore I am (Derrida, 1997) pro-posed a new approach, in which animals and humans are no longer seen as separate categories. What followed was a turn from the still anthropocentric approach of Singer, in which humans had to acknowledge their duties toward animals because of their inferiority and lesser powers to a current tendency in critical theory of problematizing the opposition altogether and attempting to find new, not so black-and-white ways of tackling the situation.

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The structuralist way of seeing the world, reflected in language and behavior is what explains the genealogy of speciesism, the same way it has been proved to do so with other modes of discrimi-nation on the basis of race and gender. That is why animal studies borrows from postcolonial studies and feminist writings in order to challenge the deep-rootedness of hierarchical views within the natu-ral world. The following example from Carol Adams is a perfect analogue of how women and animals are constituted as objects by means of language, minimizing the fact that this is a consequence of somebody acting upon them. She starts from the explanation given by Sarah Hoagland: "John beat Mary," becomes "Mary was beaten by John," then "Mary was beaten," and finally, "women beaten," and thus "battered women"21_{. Similarly, Adams argues, animals become abstracted from beings to} meat, leaving aside the fact that this is a result of human choice and not an inherent quality of ani-mals. What the parallel with gender and disability studies means to show is that “dependency is not inherently degrading or undignified, and certainly not unnatural. What matters is how we respond to dependency, and in both the human and animal case, a central task of a citizenship perspective is pre-cisely to uphold the dignity of those co-citizens who over the course of their lifetime exhibit various stages and degrees of dependence.”

While the relation between animal studies and other disciplines is hopefully articulate by now, it is still unclear what animal studies has to do with performance. On the one hand, it could be said, following Judith Butler`s reasoning regarding gender, in that it is a category which gets realized and enforced through everyday performance, that species is also something that is performed. However, since animals are restricted in their possibility for action by man-made factors, it is hard to say that the performance of species can be considered in a similar way as performance of gender. When it comes to dogs, though, matters are slightly different. They can be said to represent 'natureculture', in a similar way as humans do: on the one hand, they are guided by instincts, while on the other hand they are bred, tamed and learn to play a role, whether it is that of the underdog or the high-class dog. Having clarified this similar double-encoding shared by humans and dogs, it becomes more appropri-ate to talk about species performance in the case of dogs, which will be useful in further chapters.

Another way to look at this issue would be to analyze the use of the animal in theater, either as flesh and bone presence or as performed concept. Luckily, this is precisely what Professor of Eng-lish and Drama at the New York University, Una Chaudhuri has been busy with for several years now.

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Her interest was aroused by the increased presence of animals in theatrical and cinematographic pro-ductions destined for adults, which can be considered a sign that we are moving away from using an-imal imagery as mere symbols for human life (in a simplified form for children understanding). The central concept of her work is zooesis, a self-coined notion meant to stand for “a complex ideological discourse of space and place22_{” consisting “of the myriad performance and semiotic elements} in-volved in and around the vast field of cultural animal practices23_{”.Zooesis, as she describes it, refers to} the ways of artistic and meaning creation through the use of the animal as body or figure and fits per-fectly with the current issue, for every inclusion of animals in artistic creation comes to either chal-lenge or reinforce the existing associations. Some of her examples, as well as other instances which fall under zooesis will be further discussed in later chapters. Besides discussing various instances of zooesis in contemporary theater, Chaudhuri also describes the process of creating a theater show that has as a basis the relation between men and animals, a case which illustrates how theater can consti-tute a method for animal studies.

This one project that she was involved in as a dramaturge in 2001 is called The Animal Project, and was according to her “the first self-conscious theatrical engagement, in the United States, with the new academic field known as Critical Animal Studies.24_{” This was a way to practically discover} what the fields of performance and animal studies have to offer to each other. The project was strongly based on the ideas of Deleuze and Guattari, trying to put into theatrical practice the idea of becoming animal by staging a Hamlet with a twist. The classical playwright and the intention stand in stark contradiction, as Hamlet is a coronation of human heroism which they intended to strip to the most basic animal level. While the methods and results of this project will be further discussed when talking about becoming animal, it is important to note how performance and animal studies can inter-changeably constitute subject and method for each other. And this, as Chaudhuri notes, is not always confined to the stage, but can “include the popular, folk, and children`s theatrical and dance forms of world culture, as well as the numerous performative dimensions of cultural animal practices (includ-ing activism, fashion, sports and spectacle)25_”.

22_{Chaudhuri, Una. Animal Acts for Changing Times: When Does the Non-Human Become More Than a Metaphor On Stage?} American Theater, 2004. P. 647.

23_{Ibidem, p. 647.}

24_{Chaudhuri, Una. Animalizing Performance, Becoming-Theatre: Inside Zooesis. Theater Topics, 2006. P. 2.}

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Chapter 2

Animal representation, crisis of representation and representations of dogs in art

As an inspirational illustration to how representation can forever change the way we perceive animals and to how we shape our attitudes towards them, this chapter will start with an anecdotal story presented by John Mooallem in a Ted Talk from March 2014 entitled How the teddy bear taught

us compassion26_{. He traces down the origin of the extremely common toy to president Theodore}

Roo-sevelt`s sparing the life of a helpless bear while on a hunting expedition. This brief story was turned by the mass media and toy producers into a mascot for the president which, by far, outlived him. Mooallem argues that it was not as much the historical episode that made this happen as the overall context of urbanization, increased alienation from nature, as well as fear of the wild-animal that asked for an alternative medium, so to speak, of approaching the bear and even protecting it. Also, it can be considered a turning point for people realizing to what a great extent the fate of a species de-pends on their actions. The confronting conclusion of this story is that it is up to us which animals will survive and what the quality of their lives will be and that this is much influenced by how we fell about them. Representation all the way.

Consequently, this chapter will further explain why representation ought to be a central point when discussing the issue of human-animal relationship. Naturally, it must be clarified from the start that representation is understood in the broadest sense, ranging from mental imagery to cultural ac-ceptations (though often incongruous, as will be shown) and artistic instances. This will equally in-clude classical and contemporary images of canines, in order to trace a timeline of sensitivities. Spe-cial attention will be given to hybrid forms between human and dog, as they lead the discussion fur-ther into the chapter on becoming. However, it must first be explained what is meant by crisis of rep-resentation, the issue that stands at the core of considering dogs a social problem in Mihailescu`s book. He tackles this issue from a socio-cultural way, trying to find out why the feelings towards dogs are so polarized in Romania and elsewhere. Then the focus will move to philosopher Giorgio Agam-ben, who attempts to understand and challenge the existing ideas that determine the human-animal relationship. A particularly interesting case, which reflects not only the ideas of Mihailescu and

26_{Jon Mooallem}

https://www.ted.com/talks/jon_mooallem_the_strange_story_of_the_teddy_bear_and_what_it_reveals_about_our_relat ionship_to_animals?language=en retrieved on December 19th_2014.

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ben, but also the analogy between dogs and other instances of foreignness and marginality in con-temporary politics and worldviews, is the recent Hungarian film White God. Therefore the movie will be analyzed for its parabolic discourse on dog and human otherness.

2.1 Vintila Mihailescu: The crisis of Domestic life

Mihailescu`s ethnography, published at the end of 3013, comes to fill an epistemic gap in a subject which is very often discussed and regarding to which virtually everybody has a well-constructed opinion: the multi-faceted issue of stray dogs. He analyzes the genealogy of this problem by combining a deep look at the nature-culture relationship with an investigation into the formation and upholding of the cultural other. It is at this intersection that he positions the contemporary dog. What best illustrates the ambiguous position of dogs in Romanian society (his examples depict a simi-lar image elsewhere) is the case of Leutu, a stray dog whose house is half on the sidewalk, half in a family`s yard, a part time bum that locals nevertheless appreciate and cater for, a dog in a state of permanent liminality, like many other dogs and even people. This makes the anthropologist wonder whether dog has and, of course, whether it ought to have a pre-ascribed place in society. Domesticat-ed common sense might answer that a dog belongs around a household, contributing with its skills and receiving in exchange food and an environment in which to develop. But is that so very natural in the man-dog coevolution? Haven`t we so many times been proven wrong in assigning labels and roles to the ones around us?

Studies cited by Mihailescu have yielded a long list of advantages that those who keep a pet have over those who don`t: “they are more sociable, more extroverted, in a better physical shape, they present less domestic violence, a lower risk of cardiovascular disease, they are less prone to de-pression and it may even be that the presence of cats and dogs might strengthen their immunity sys-tem27_{.” The author argues that this is not because of an inherent therapeutic property of the animals,} but just an effect of physical contact with the other. This speaks about a repression of the human body, but also about a need for relating to a natural world that humans have become unwarily re-moved from. And we are often willing to overcompensate for the privilege of having a pet and the un-conditional affection that comes along the way we have gotten to know best: through services, rang-ing from personal hygiene to relaxation treatments, and even religious services in some places and special dog yoga in India. It could be thus said that, since people get something from their pets which

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is humanely important, they reward them in a similarly human way. In 65% of cat households and 39% of dog households, they are allowed to sleep with the owner28_{. A number of people choose even} to be buried together with their best furry pal, which indicates that their family and persona extends to include the pet. Mihailescu underlines that this is not because dogs and cats were so astute as to sneak into the modern family, but rather that the concept of family has mutated to the point where it can include a number of selected others, such as the cute furry critters. It is this that the author calls the new domestic order, arguing it lays at the basis of a crisis of humanity.

This new domestic order, according to a theory by Richard Bulliet, is what characterizes post-domestic societies, as opposed to the traditional ones. The distinction is based only on the relations between man and animals. Traditionally, people are not only in direct contact with animals, but also with their birth, death and physiological functions, from which they learn about the world, and which dictate their daily and yearly schedule in a reasonable and somewhat predictable way. Conversely, in the post-domestic world, the connection has been lost with the reality of animal lives, while they con-tinue to exist around us as metaphors. They are either fetishized or victimized, and the organic utili-tarian association between man and animal has been replaced with an affective one, of love, hate or indifference, which no longer needs to be rationally motivated. On the other side, the natural world which was wished away once people moved to the city comes back with a new luring technique: it is healthy and good for anyone to consume it regularly, either through diet or generally through prac-tices. While nature is accordingly turned into a luxury product, pets are, unequivocally, a pricy sort of social capital.

As mentioned before, the new domestic order, though inclusive when it comes to selected pets, is to a very large extent exclusive of animals and not only on purely arbitrary criteria. Dogs, as Mihailescu shows, are both adored and demonized by the very same citizens, depending on where they live and how they look. The same, it could easily be argued, happens to children, homeless peo-ple and foreigners. Such contradictory feelings are, in anthropological terms, called cognitive disso-nance29_{, which appears when different beliefs clash within one individual, causing mental distress. Of} course, this can be extrapolated to the macro level, in which case we are talking about social disso-nance. Both the individual and the society will have the tendency to wish away one of the elements

28_{Mihailescu (2013) p. 75} 29_{Mihailescu(2013), p. 41.}

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which affect their mental wellbeing, so they choose to forget, hide or eliminate them at whatever cost. It is therefore fascinating to see that, although people are protected by various rights and agreements as opposed to animals, the mechanisms for exclusion are so subtle and efficient in both cases.

2.2 Agamben – The Open

Another work that attempts to critically map out the positions of man and animal nature within our understanding and society is Giorgio Agamben`s comparative theory work, The open: man

and animal. For this book he uses a wide array of texts, from the Bible and early biological taxonomies

to philosophical inquiries of all times, with a significant emphasis on Heideggerian metaphysics. His argument, continued throughout the differently themed chapters, is a gradual and meticulously constructed demonstration of how the wrongly assumed superiority of man created a chasm between species. Although his methods are not very clear, he does plea for a reconfiguration of the place man and animal occupy in the common imagination and hence representation. Since the work is quite recent, it has the quality of including perspectives that have proved impactful in the latest decades, such as Fukuyama`s prediction of an imminent end of history. It is in the light of this theory and, as the first chapter describes, according to the omens of an antique miniature that Agamben frames his investigation. The miniature presents the final banquet, dedicated to the righteous, who have followed the word of God until the last day of life on earth. The crowned heads are not of human saints, but of an eagle, ox, fish, leopard and donkey, prophesizing that by the end of time the most righteous will not be humans, but animals. Agamben interprets this not as a fall of human from the preferential position at the top of the natural chain, but as an imperative to reconfigure the relations with the rest of divine creation. Moreover, a biblical passage also hints toward a need for change in position: “the wolf shall live with the sheep, and the leopard lie down with the kid; the calf and the young lion shall grow up together, and a little child shall lead them30_{.” Thus, not only will there be no} more interspecies fighting, but man, having transcended to an incipient stage of innocence, will re-become the shepherd of beings, to paraphrase Heidegger.

As the title announces, the book sets out to investigate that which lies between the thresholds of humanity and animality and, more importantly, what it is that has created this division. His search starts at a biological level, consulting in this respect the first to ever have made a classification of all

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beings alive: Linnaeus. The biologist himself wonders at the achievements of his fellow humans, although from the perspective of his work he cannot see any difference between man and apes, “save for the fact that the latter have an empty space between their canines and their other teeth.31_{” He} continues in trying to define the particularity of the superior apes, arriving at the ironic conclusion that they are the only ones who need to rationalize their own existence in order to become that which they claim to be, humans: “man is the animal that must recognize itself as human to be human32_”.

Another distinction is that made by Biacht, an 18th_{century anatomist, who classified beings according} to the functions they perform. Thus there can be seen an organic function of bodily operations and an “animal existing outside33_{”, who is the one responsible for relating with the world. Whereas the first} one is common to every living being, the latter is interestingly combined in the case of humans: their relation to the world is not solely made for survival purposes.

These two distinctions lead Agamben to argue further on that indeed there is no intrinsic difference between man and animal, but that this is artificially created with the help of what he calls anthropological machine – “an ironic apparatus that verifies the absence of a nature proper to Homo, holding him suspended between a celestial and a terrestrial nature, between animal and human.34_” He argues these mechanisms are so imbued in our everyday world that the basic social institutions take for granted the apartness of humans and, implicitly, their power over the other species; in this sense Agamben calls to exemplify the increasingly mechanized industry of animal products. This anthropological machine is also held accountable for the existence of the open space between man and animal, one that is ever increasing and harder to bridge.

What Agamben pleads for is an inhabitation of this space by human beings who, by having changed their intentions towards animals, will have transformed themselves into a new species that is capable of bridging between the two. The attitude that would make this possible is, in his view, and sustained by the writings of Heidegger, one of allowing life to exist naturally, without imposing upon it: “In what way can man let the animal, upon whose suspension the world is held open, be?35_” Walter Benjamin is the one who, in the end of the book, helps Agamben find the solution within the very source of the problem: letting go of the constructed order of things, returning to a stage where

31_{Linnaeus, via Agamben (2002), p. 24.} 32_{Ibidem, p. 26.}

33_{Agamben (2002), p. 15.} 34_{Ibidem, p. 28.}

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hierarchies do not exist. And since man is, as argued by Linnaeus, the one who constructs his humanity by believing in it and making representations in accordance, stepping into the open is as easy, or maybe as difficult as thinking there is such thing as a humanity that we are to accomplish at any cost. Agamben`s book thus encourages critical reflection not just on human nature, but on relationship with the other, whatever be its form.

2.3 White God – Reactionary anti-racism with dogs

Fehér Isten, internationally known as White God, is a Hungarian movie by Kornél Mundruczó. The

simplest way to sum it up would be calling it a remake of the infamous Birds by Alfred Hitchcock featuring dogs instead of birds. It features 250 dogs that were trained especially for the movie, as the director did not want to use special effects which he felt would undermine the emotions he was trying to convey. All dogs came from asylums and found an owner after the movie was shot.

The plotline features a crossbred dog called Hagen who is put out on the streets because the father of the girl owning the dog does not want to pay the high tax that you have to pay for owning a crossbreed dog. On the streets, Hagen falls in the hands of Turkish immigrants who use dogs for fighting and when he escapes from them he is quickly caught by the government and placed in a dog asylum. It is foreshadowed in the opening sequence that Hagen will not put up with the treatment there, and indeed he manages to escape from the dog asylum, together with the other 250 dogs, starting on a revenge rampage, killing every human being that has harmed them. The movie ends with a melodramatic scene in which the girl who used to own and love Hagen plays the trumpet to the army of dogs who all seem to find solace in the sound of the trumpet and fall asleep, finally finding some peace and quiet after having been hunted down through the streets of Budapest.

The idea of the film is based on an actual taxation system that the right-wing Hungarian party tried to introduce: very high taxes for crossbreeds, lesser for purebreds and no taxation for dogs of Hungarian breed. Though this did not pass, it certainly rang an alarm bell concerning how categorization reflects in opinions and in legislation, concerning not just quadrupeds, but also fellow humans. The dogs also stand for the migrants who fall between the cracks in Europe at the moment. According to most western European cinema reviews the movie was supposed to symbolize the rise of fascism in Hungary and the threats that come along, but apparently this was not the case as can be deduced from the following interview extract with the director:

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“Talking about freedom. The third party of Hungary is a neo-nazi party. Was the rise of the extreme right in Hungary a reason to make this movie?”

“Not really. How countries deal with groups that they consider as ‘different’ in not only a Hungarian problem. I think that the revolution that occurs in the movie is far more likely to occur in Western Europe with its huge masses of second-tier citizens36_.”

It is interesting to realize that western cinema reviews want to portray the dog revolution as a metaphor for Hungarian problems with migration and right wing politics extremist, while the director clearly states that the problem is pan-European, and probably has even deeper roots in Western Europe where the income and rights gap between poor migrants and the rest of the population is indeed a huge problem. One strength of the movie is that it focuses on the persecution of dogs that are considered crossbreeds and, as an anthropologist would have it, out of place. It is those who fall outside the easy categorization based on origin of a state and species who will be persecuted most vehemently, and this goes for both humans and dogs. In that sense we have still not fully outgrown the century of eugenics for the movie still implies our total control over dogs. This is not demonstrated in the plotline, where dogs resist human hegemony successfully and kill the bad guys (perpetrators), but in how the movie was made. Dog trainers applied there pavlovian expertise for six months before shooting the movie, installing set responses in 250 dogs. The movie is meant as an allegory of freedom, but it had to use opposite techniques to achieve this representation. On all levels, humans still rule the dog asylum.

The enclosure of this film in the current research is not just due to its innovative inclusion of dogs in a quite successful contemporary cultural product, but due to the subtle way in which it merges representation and political allegory. As mentioned before and confirmed by the director, the film touches upon xenophobic attitudes which are on the rise overall in Europe. Nevertheless, and here lies the achievement, it does not stop being a picture about dogs; they are not converted into a metaphor for the human other. It problematizes it to a similar extent as it questions the equity of human-dog relationships, as well as the level of autonomy and respect that animals are entitled to in the current circumstances. These layers, which are all significant pillars in the construction of this

36_{Rovers. A dog day afternoon. Retrieved from the filmkrant, January 5}th_. http://www.filmkrant.nl/TS_december_2014/11384 (My translation).

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research coexist in a way which is both persuasive and thought-provoking. Hence, White God does, to a certain extent, set a standard of discursiveness that will serve in the scrutiny of the case studies from the realm of theater.

2.4 Animals in Art, Dogs in Art

In an attempt to analyze what are the implications of the act of gazing between human and non-humans, John Berger (artist and novelist) wrote: “The first subject matter for painting was ani-mal. Probably the first paint was animal blood37_{.” Thus he pinpoints that art, from the earliest times,} has been concerned with animals. As results from his chapter called Why look at animals, Berger pleads for an engaged practice of looking at animals, one which is not based on taking for granted the animal, but which contains reflection on the nature of animals and their relation to humans. Writing in the late 1990s, Berger observes the practices of his time and encourages them to take an open stance, problematizing the assumptions of human superiority. Nonetheless, he acknowledges the long tradition of representations which reinforced the separation, and which therefore ought to be dis-cussed before moving further in the direction wished by Berger.

While dogs were not the subject of cave murals, they caught up as soon as their relation to people developed, to such an extent that in 1981, the first dog museum was founded in St. Louis, Mis-souri. The museum`s mission is “to enhance the appreciation for and knowledge of the significance of the dog and the human-canine relationship38_{”. Let us now pay a closer look to some of their exhibits} from different periods. The oldest piece is an undated ceramic sculpture found in an antique Mexican grave (Appendix 1), where its role was to ward off evil spirits. It can be derived that the guarding role of dog extends far back and is not limited to the household, but even to the afterworld. Taking quite a temporary jump, we find a 14th_{century painting by a European artist named Granger which presents} the grooming process of seven hunting dogs (Appendix 2). This is a procedure which involves many people who seem to be quite knowledgeable about what they are doing, although they are probably not the owners and beneficiaries of the dogs` services. This painting not only illustrates the social stratification, in which some servants were employed to care mainly for the dogs, but also shows

37_{Berger, Steve. Why look at animals? New York: Pantheon, 1997. p. 12.} 38_{Core purpose of the museum as described at www.mueumofthedog.org.}

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what qualities were most important in a dog: teeth, fur, legs, but also a properly submissive relation to humans.

While images of dogs next to hunting trophies continue to abound through the coming times, the 17th_{and 18}th_{century start to feature dogs in domestic settings, moving into the owner`s house.} These are, without exception, small and quite furry dogs that the painters do not hesitate to present in their irresistible cuteness, such as Renoir`s dog portrait (Appendix 3). Other imagery includes por-traits of aristocrats with their mascot-dog, but also sleeping dogs in household settings, a clear sign that the quadruped has made its way within the comfort of the house, turning into a sign of wealth. No longer kept exclusively for utility purposes, dogs become a delight due to their playfulness and a great past-time for children. As Berger would have it, we are entering a new phase of “keeping ani-mals regardless of their usefulness, the keeping exactly of pets - a modern innovation39_{.” The breed} becomes increasingly important not in the sense of ability, but esthetically, while grooming practices continue. A humorous sculpture realized by Johann Valentin Sonnenschein in 1775 (Appendix 4) criti-cizes the exploitation of a dog by an aristocratic monkey who overburdens and shamelessly rides it. Later on, the development of photography constituted a new challenge to house dogs, who would be forced to sit through excruciatingly long exposure times.

What this brief and shallow history shows with respect to outlooks on dogs is a gradual pas-sage from fetishization for their presumed spiritual abilities (this was the case for many animals in pre-anthropocentric religions) to assistance in men`s daily chores and hunting practices and back to fetishization in the context of the household, where they become object of attention for women and children as well. At a quick glance it becomes clear that the general attitude, whether it be respectful or endearing, is governed by affect. The works are mostly representational and mediated. It is against this sort of representations that Berger warns us about, the looking at animals without allowing them to glance back. The look dominated by human affect and knowledge is one that intrinsically seeks to create distance between species.

The one most notable work on how the understanding and representing of animals changed with the passing into postmodernism is Steve Baker`s Postmodern Animal. Postmodernity, he argues, brings a refreshing view on animals, which had been overlooked throughout the nineteenth century. Baker distinguishes two main directions regarding the ways in which the animal is represented, each

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with its own implications as to how the human ideas concerning the animal are shaped. On the one hand, there is animal endorsing, which tends to represent the animal as such and is usually the work of conservationists or animal advocates. On the other hand, there is animal-skeptical art, which tries to challenge the connotations attached to the animal by culture and the very process of constructing the concept of animal in a way that is relevant to humans. Postmodernism thus proposes an approach to animal whose “ambiguity or irony or sheer brute presence serves to resist or to displace fixed meanings40_{.”The following pages will analyze a number of art projects from contemporary artists} dealing with dogs and their relationship to humans.

One example of pastiche are the works of Belgian Thierry Poncelet, an art restaurateur who got the idea of replacing the face of an aristocrat in the painting he was working on with the face of his own dog, thus starting the project he calls Aristochien (Appendix 5). The result is not merely hu-morous, it can also be read as a critique to anthropomorphism of pets, chiefly dogs, of dog clothing, dog beauty salons and obsession with breeding. Dog ownership reinforces social hierarchies, discard-ing what falls below. Austrian artist Deborah Sengl41_{goes one step further with commenting on the} way in which people deal with breeds, assigning to them human traits, mostly negative ones. She overexposes how dogs have become not just coded, but also expected to fit within pre-determined stereotypical images society has of them.

Another centuries-long way of forcing an interspecies relation into the common imagination is through astrology. Taiwanese artist Daniel Lee (Appendix 6) has made a twist-off on the Chinese zodi-ac assigning an animal symbol to people zodi-according to their year of birth, which is supposed to deter-mine their character and serve as spiritual guidance. With these morphed figures, he points to the ab-surdity of such analogy, while also stressing the inevitable presence of animality lingering within every individual. That is why his images, although clear fusions, are not monstrously exaggerated, but quite aesthetically acceptable. Nonetheless, people`s fear of hybrid man-animal forms, especially in the light of bio-scientific advances, is genuine. Patricia Picciny beautifully played on this fear by realizing a sculpture bearing features of the female human and dog body feeding its cubs and launched on the internet as proof of a successful scientific experiment carried out by a fictional Chinese team. She ob-tained the expected results and more, as her work went viral, thousands of people bought into it,

40_{Baker, Steve. The Postmodern Animal. London, Reacktion Books, 2000. p. 20.} 41_{http://www.deborahsengl.com/tag/dogs/}

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ploring the advanced state of social and human degradation. The grotesque family wonderfully blends the characteristics of both species and it cannot be said that they are either human or canine. Though repulsive because of their unfamiliar looks, the feeding scene does carry some candor. As the artist declares, her intention was to pull the alarm on practices of growing organs on animal bodies for transplanting them onto humans. Whatever the direction in which such practices would go, she calls to taking responsibility and respect for life, noting that man-made life is, not life in a lesser way, but also worthy of respect and consideration.

It is at this point interesting to note how people react to the works of artists who involve ani-mals precisely in such a way as to provoke the public. A perfect example of this would be the Dutch artist and activist Tinkebell.42_{Her works attempt to challenge how cruelty towards animals is} accept-ed in some cases and unthinkable in others. Thus, she turnaccept-ed her own cat into a purse, claiming that she wanted to keep it close to her after its death, caused by a long period of depression. In a public performance, she offered people to adopt baby chickens who would otherwise be thrown into a food processor before their eyes. These were very controversial projects, since they touch upon blind spots in a world where the distinction between right and wrong concerning animals is taken for granted. However, what is most fascinating is how people took it forward, inventing gory projects and circulat-ing them on the Internet, assigncirculat-ing them to her. It was claimed that she feeds paint to dogs and then squeezes them to puke it on canvases and that these works are sold for immense amounts of money. What is at play here is, on one side, a tendency to exaggerate while, on the other hand, assigning un-thinkable behavior to other people. This points to a very unsettling combination between sadism and distress in the general public, but also to how things are understood outside of context and blown out of proportion.

One thing which is even more outrageous within common acceptation than genetically engi-neered life forms is close bodily contact between species. This is equally tackled in contemporary art, for instance in Jean-Luc Vilmouth`s photographs which present young women breastfeeding dogs (Appendix 8). Inspired from actual practices in Guinea, Venezuela and Peru, he breaks into taboos of sexuality, but also excessive domestication of dogs, which in many cases are taken to make for a lack of children within families. This work, together with Liv Bugge`s video Agitator, which deals with the

42_{Tinkebell, 2012, Everything is Permitted, at TedxAmsterdam} http://tedx.amsterdam/2012/11/tinkebell-everything-is-permitted/ retrieved on January 3rd_{, 2015.}

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same imagery, bear a disturbing resemblance to Christian images of the virgin with the baby. Beyond the blasphemy and the deviant sexualization of female breast there is an undeniable accepted vulner-ability from both sides. The nature of domestication is based on reciprocity, on renunciation from both sides of inherent privileges: the venerated breasts produce nourishment and care for the dog, while the tame wolf resists its instinctive urge to bite into flesh: it has learned or been taught to choose affection over meat. Whether this kind of affection is to be applauded or condemned is a dif-ferent matter. In either case, Agamben`s open gap is slightly diminished.

Another example, however, declaims the human-dog closeness as illusory, trying to say that dog-keeping, especially in urban settlements is an act of alienating dogs from their nature and con-demning them to the same loneliness humanity has chosen for itself. This melancholy screams from behind Martin Usborne`s photography project The Silence of Dogs in Cars43_{. His photographs reflect} intimacy and thus identification with the subjects, possibly because of his own childhood trauma of being left alone inside the car. In spite of this interpretation, it would be inappropriate to say the dogs are being anthropomorphized. The dogs themselves are alone, trapped and desperate not as an allu-sion to people being in the same situation, but because of them. Nonetheless, the parallel is profound and digs into anyone`s fear of being alone, something that runs against the innate social configuration of most men and animals.

However visceral the images and ideas presented so far have been, the following one might top them all. It also happens to be the last one, as it bridges into the notion of becoming animal. This is the ingenious project of Brazilian artist Rodrigo Braga (Appendix 9), who had a silicone copy of his face made, which looked extremely realistic, then had a surgeon sow onto it the eyes, ears and muz-zle of a euthanized dog. He then uploaded a video of the fake surgery on YouTube and waited for re-actions to pour in before disclosing the truth. This work pokes at the idea of becoming animal and empathy towards animals: what can one do to get involved in the mistreating of animals? Is self-mutilation a way of getting closer to the suffering of the animal other? These are questions to be kept in mind for the coming chapter.

To put it in a nutshell, what all of the examples presented in this part have in common is a strong critical aspect, referring in one way or another to human practices that concern dogs. Even if they touch upon very sensitive situations, they avoid appealing to the emotional side of the onlooker

Representations of Dogs in Contemporary Theater - Embodiment, Becomings and Social Empathy

Representations of Dogs in Contemporary Theater –

Embodiment, Becomings and Social Empathy

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