The Wild Animal’s Story: Nonhuman Protagonists in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature through the Lens of Practical Zoocriticism
Download 3.36 Mb. Pdf ko'rish
|
Allmark-KentC
|
CHAPTER THREE
PRACTICAL ZOOCRITICISM: CONTEXTUALIZING THE WILD ANIMAL STORY Critical Responses Having defined practical zoocriticism in Chapter One, I will now demonstrate how this new model can help us to re-evaluate and re- contextualize the wild animal story and Nature Fakers controversy. In the same introductory chapter, I argued that there has been very little research intersecting the two fields of ‘literary animal studies’ and ‘studies in literature and science. ’ It is my position that both of these emerging fields would benefit from the kind of cross-fertilization that practical zoocriticism could provide. Both literature and scientific research seem to hold a broadly anthropocentric focus and yet have shown little interest in the relationship between literature and the animal sciences. Likewise, the majority of literary animal studies work remains bound to the conventional practices of cultural studies, embodied by the ‘animal-sceptical’ position. In the previous chapter, I argued that many Canadian authors writing about the ‘failure of knowing’ and the ‘acceptance of not- knowing’ the animal reinforce this sceptical approach. To most of these authors and critics, the ‘fantasy of knowing’ the animal indicates human arrogance or naivety, but I maintain that the sacrifice of the literary animal’s ‘unknowability’ and resistance to signification is acceptable if it can be beneficial to the living animal. Such ‘animal-endorsing’ positions are more likely to be associated with advocating animal protection and engaging with the animal sciences. It is difficult for animal-sceptical literature and criticism to facilitate similar practical interactions. I propose that if the field of literary animal studies Allmark-Kent 64 is to demonstrate a committed engagement with the radical, cross-disciplinary progress of the broader human-animal studies project then it must learn to prioritize the living animal over the literary animal. In other words, it must reconcile its embarrassment with the fantasy of knowing the animal. Practical zoocriticism’s three-point model—examining interactions between literary representations of animals, scientific studies of animal minds, and advocacy for animal protection —offers a prototype of what engaged literary animal studies might look like. I suggest that the wild animal story operates at an intersection between these three factors and can, therefore, serve as an appropriate case for the application of this framework. In this chapter I will use it to re-evaluate and re-contextualize the wild animal story, as t he genre’s reputation as an ‘embarrassment’ has meant that its aims have rarely been taken seriously. As discussed in the previous chapter, this view stemmed from arguments produced during the nature fakers controversy, and later perpetuated by James Polk’s description of the wild animal story as an “outdated, scarcely respectable branch of our literature” (51). When properly re- contextualised, however, this marginalization seems undeserved. We can see that it is based on overlapping anthropocentric discourses and assumptions that were compounded by changes to the sciences developing over Seton ’s and Roberts’ lifetimes. I propose that using the practical zoocriticism framework, we can re-evaluate the wild animal story and recognize that it is not a literary embarrassment, but a valid literary innovation. This novel approach necessitates pursuing the relevant contexts in depth and with care but, perhaps due to the disciplinary biases I have outlined previously, it has remained overlooked. Allmark-Kent 65 Decades after Polk’s exclusion of the wild animal story from the “respectable” works of Canadian literature, the genre’s reputation has improved very little. Again, however, I assert that this is not due to the inherent foolishness of Seton ’s and Roberts’ endeavour, nor the validity of Polk’s position. In fact, only seven years previously, Joseph Gold had described Roberts’ animal stories as “literature worthy of our attention,” constituting “an important body of Canadian writing” (22). He even called for Roberts’ work to be brought back into print and placed “in the forefront of Canadian letters, where he rightfully belongs” (32). I suggest, then, that continued dismissal of the wild animal story with “barely a wave of the debonair critical hand,” (22)—as Gold puts it —has been exacerbated by the repetition and reinforcement of Polk’s original interpretation. Margaret Atwood’s appropriation of his work in Survival (described in the previous chapter) may have been instrumental in this preservation. As an interpretation that is both beguilingly simple and satisfyingly broad, Atwood’s chapter on “Animal Victims” is the most frequently cited analysis of Seton ’s and Roberts’ work. Moreover, it is often used as a shorthand method of discussing the wild animal story in arguments that have little to do with the texts themselves. For instance, in States of Nature Tina Loo relies entirely on Atwood and Polk while discussing the ways in which Canada’s wildlife has been “saddled with the burden of national identity” (2). In her account, Seton ’s and Roberts’ animal protagonists are little more than “statements of Canadian identity [...] allegories for Canada’s precarious position in the world” (2). Despite their efforts to represent animals realistically as animals —not to mention their work to spread the message of wildlife preservation across North America —Seton’s and Roberts’ stories are dismissed as yet more fiction that reduces animals to anthropocentric symbols. Loo ’s use Allmark-Kent 66 of Polk’s quasi-humorous description of Canada’s “suspicion that a fanged America lurks in the bushes, poised for the kill” (Loo 2, Polk 58) adds a sense of the absurd to their work. With this vision of the two nineteenth-century Canadians writing stories about tragic animal victims while cowering from a fanged America, it is indeed difficult to see their work as ‘respectable.’ Such shorthand use of Polk and Atwood has resulted in this widespread perception of Seton ’s and Roberts’ work as anxious allegory, anthropomorphic sentimentality, and misguided national embarrassment. Yet those who do not subscribe to Polk and Atwood’s victim theory can still be hesitant to take seriously the aims of the wild animal story. Despite his celebration of Roberts’ stories, even Gold does not engage with the genre’s scientific aspirations. In fact, he uses Roberts’ statements about the relationship between animal stories and animal psychology as a way of separating his work from the rest: “Roberts clearly does not see himself as writing this kind of story at all” (Gold 24). This is a curious interpretation, particularly in light of Roberts’ frequent reiteration of this relationship when introducing his own books: “I have dared to hope that I might be contributing something of value to the final disputed question of animal psychology” (Haunters of the Silences, vi). Nonetheless, Gold makes this claim in order to justify his own anthropocentric reading: “Roberts’ animal stories constitute, as far as I can ascertain, the only sustained attempt to use the materials of the Canadian Wilderness for the purpose of expressing a coherent view of the world that man inhabits ” (23, emphasis added). By claiming that Rober ts is creating a “Canadian mythology” with “animals, rather than gods,” (23) Gold demonstrates the validity of Glen Love’s observation that anthropocentric approaches to literature are usually based on the belief that “nature is dull and uninteresting, while society is Allmark-Kent 67 sophis ticated and interesting” (Love 23). By reading Roberts’ interest in ‘dull’ and ‘uninteresting’ nature as allegorical, and really about humans, Gold makes it ‘sophisticated’ and ‘interesting’ and, therefore, “worthy of our attention” (Gold 22). Due to the anthropocentric biases and prejudices that I have already mentioned, this strategy is quite common. For instance, although their value- judgements might be different, it is clear that Polk, Atwood, and Gold are all sidestepping the wil d animal story’s stated aims in order to re-centre the human. As indicated here, this approach tends to sever the wild animal story’s connections to science and advocacy, weakening Seton ’s and Roberts’ attempts to prioritize the imagined, nonhuman presence. Whilst details of the arguments may differ, all seem to express the same discomfort or embarrassment at this fantasy of knowing the animal. In “The Revolt Against Instinct ” (1980), for example, Robert H. MacDonald claims to “take Roberts at his word, and to examine his and Seton’s stories in the light of his crucial distinction between insti nct and reason” (18). Rather than pursuing the implications for animal representation, he takes a distinctly anthropocentric position: The animal story, I shall show, is part of a popular revolt against Darwinian determinism, and is an affirmation of man’s need for moral and spiritual values. The animal world provides models of virtue, and exemplifies the order of nature [...] This theme, inspired as it is by a vision of a better world, provides a mythic structure of what is at first sight, realistic fiction. (18) Moreover, by focusing on this supposed post-Darwinian anxiety, MacDonald — like Gold —undermines the wild animal story’s engagement with science. As will become clear later in this chapter, however, a more accurate contextualization of the genre cannot sustain the idea that Seton and Roberts were part of a “popular revolt” against Darwin’s work. Indeed, Thomas R. Dunlap’s “The Reali stic Animal Story” (1992) emphasizes the genre’s relationship with animal Allmark-Kent 68 psychology and provides a thorough consideration of scientific context. Thus, it positions Seton and Roberts accordingly: They presented their vision of an ordered, but Darwinian, nature [...] The stories allowed people to accept evolution and struggle without losing the vision of nature as an ordered realm. Seton and Roberts made an apparently hostile theory the vehicle for emotional identification with nature. (56) Although occasionally anthropocentric, Dunlap’s analysis of Seton’s and Roberts’ different approaches to the Darwinian depiction of animal life is insightful. Despite an ostensibly similar approach in “Looking at Animals, Encountering Mystery” (2010), however, Janice Fiamengo’s argument places less emphasis on scientific context and, ultimately, less emphasis on the animal : “focus on the animals per se has obscured the extent to which Seton and Roberts were also speculating, in Darwin’s wake, about the moral nature of the cosmos [...] the mysteries of the natural order and the human place within it ” (36, 37). Alternativel y, in “Political Science” (1996) Misao Dean acknowledges the scientific aspirations of the wild animal story, but views it as little more than a political masquerade (14). She suggests that “[f]ar from ‘reflecting’ reality, Roberts’s stories create as reality a natural world which is inflected with assumptions about human personality and masculinity as norm which are endemic to his historical period” (1). Of course, I agree with Dean’s readings to an extent but I do not believe that this issue warrants a wholesale rejection of Seton ’s and Roberts’ work. For instance, Dean’s position is strengthened by the fact that she overlooks the animal advocacy function of these stories. Since Seton was more outspoken about animal rights and conservation, and Roberts more vocal about science and animal psychology, it is easy for critics who study the authors in isolation to separate their stories from one or both of these Allmark-Kent 69 factors. Like Dean, Marian Scholtmeijer is dismissive of the wild animal story and its aims in Animal Victims (1993), yet rather than disconnect Seton and Roberts from each other, she cuts them off from their twentieth-century successors. Drawing a line between these different iterations of the genre, she does not position Seton and Roberts on the side of animal protection : “A willingness to denounce the exploitation of wild animals is a pivotal distinction between the narrative approaches to animal victims of the early tales and those of the late r works” (95). Instead, she reads considerable anthropocentrism in their work: “The feelings they seek to elicit in readers serve human rather than animal ends. These writers persist in trying to draw messages to humankind out of a wilderness that is equally determined to remain silent ” (101). This interpretation is less surprising, however, when we consider the fact that Scholtmeijer frames it using MacDonald, Atwood, and Polk. John Sandlos responds to these critics in “From Within Fur and Feathers” (2000) by suggesting that there is “something missing” in interpretations that “attempt to impose contemporary critical concerns on the animal stories” (75). Indeed, as Dean herself notes, the problems she identifies are endemic to the h istorical period, and however much “nationalistic and masculinist discourse might be inferred from their work, it is clear from their writings that Seton and Roberts were more concerned about writing accurate natural history” than creating “political allegories [...] out of the basic material of animal lives” (Sandlos 75). I would also add that Dean and Scholtmeijer’s positions suffer from the same insufficient historicization as others; whilst they underestimated the complexity of Seton ’s and Roberts’ scientific context, these two fail to take into consideration the rudimentary state of wild animal protection in Canada at the time. As I mentioned in another chapter, the nation’s wealth Allmark-Kent 70 was built on the exploitation of wild animals, and as Seton and Roberts were writing, much of the population (both rural and urban) were still reliant on that continued exploitation. It is unsurprising, then, that efforts to protect wild animals were negligible. This chapter will go on to demonstrate the vital roles that Seton, Roberts, and their wild animal stories played in the promotion of both conservation and animal protection. As I have demonstrated, critics have tended to underestimate, overlook, or directly undermine the wild animal story’s complex interactions with the scientific study of animals and the work advocating their protection. Yet Seton and Roberts were clear and direct about their wishes to engage and educate the public on both these fronts. For instance, Seton dedicated Lives of the Download 3.36 Mb. Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: 
|