Zoomasculinities: At the Intersection Between Animals,Animality,and Masculinity

NONE were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. And the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to feel or rub or caress one another’s scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another’s blood or flesh, keep one another warm—that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food.

—Ursula K. Le Guin, “She Unnames Them”

In her alluringly poetic and mystifying parable of an alternative Genesis in which animals and Eve part with the names that Adam gave them, Ursula Le Guin fleshed into fiction the emergence of ecofeminist perspectives. Published in 1985 in the New Yorker, the story not only attested to a growing understanding of the feminist associations with the animal rights and liberation causes but also suggested, through its subject matter, a much needed task of revisionism in order to do so. It was in the biblical creation myth, the place where The Word rises and becomes (through the mouth of a man) the instrument through which to other-ize, where Le Guin sets the story of the silenced ones—animal and woman. And it is in the newfound silence of their names that they rise as fuller and organically interconnected subjects.

To the gender studies scholar, opening an introductory note of an issue on masculinities through references to womanhood and feminism will not necessarily come as a surprise. Such type of scholar has been duly trained in the craft of understanding gender identities through their oppositional value. At a fundamental, basic level, masculinity makes sense because it discursively defines itself within all sorts of different social and cultural fabrics through what it is not: feminine. Notwithstanding the fact that Gender Studies has come a long way and that the male/female antinomy has produced other gender identities that resist their containment within such structure, it make sense to call upon its binary, skeletal essence here because it mirrors the man/animal dichotomy that so occupies animal studies scholars in their revisionism of the anthropocentrism and androcentrism upon which humanity operates. The question of “the animal” is one that has occupied philosophers, scientists, artists, and writers since the dawning of classical times, and it has, in accordance with the spirit of each historical period, sparked theoretical debates as to what it is that makes animality a distinctive feature from which man may be separated. Whether on the grounds of logos (Aristotle), reason (Descartes), “face-lessness” (Levinas), “hand-lessness” (Heidegger), or “literarity” and “subjectivization” (Rancière), to name just a few features, the animal (a solid ontological category that, as Derrida argues, conveniently groups together the hundreds of thousands—and potentially millions—of species that are nonhuman) has proven to be an exceling instrument through which to explore the nature of humanity. Thus, Western thought is strongly erected upon paradigms of what is decisively, by our standards, non-animal: we celebrate ethical models that match the supremeness of our intellectual capacity, we pride ourselves on our diversity of cultures, religions and traditions versus the time-lessness of animal social behaviors, and we empower ourselves through linguistic and discursive complexities that render self-reflectiveness possible, whilst animals appear incapable of self-recognition. In short, human anagnorisis (or shall we say, our shared narcissism as a species) exists and has meaning precisely because of the “inferior” qualities of those that co-inhabit our world.

But the human/animal dichotomy is only the greater antinomy encapsulating further subdivisions through which to conceptualize and structure other patterns of social and political order. We have also looked upon “the animal” for answers to our own idiosyncratic hierarchical binarisms. Racial and religious bigotry, as is well-documented, holds a strong tradition of evoking the closeness between those that are ethnically different and undesirable (but strongly connotative) animals, a tendency that has led to an abundance of metaphors, metonymies and other rhetorical devices that have time and again regurgitated and reinforced denigrating stereotypes, the purpose of which ultimately becomes to justify a system of unequal rights and consideration.

To get back to the gender debate, these types of dichotomies have, needless to say, also become functional within the wider spectrum of the human/animal divide. Paralleling the reason/emotion antinomy, women have for long been envisioned as the half that is closer to the whims of nature, subjected to its cycles and its capriciousness. As ecofeminist Carolyn Merchant famously argued in her classic study The Death of Nature (1990), the feminine image of a benevolent, ever-regenerating nature that made up organicist conceptions of time and space was to be destroyed in favor of the male-centered, mechanist vision of the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution. As nature ceased to be treated as a live, holistic entity provisioned with restorative powers, its image as a cornucopia of resources to be exploited and consumed solely for the benefit of man was fortified. Such historical shift went hand in hand with the increasing sociopolitical disregard of women as secondary citizens, as their attachment to allegedly “emotional” sensibilities emanating from their connections with nature was viewed as a disturbance to the principles of progress and civilization based on reason.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the relevance of the concepts of nature and animals within the gender rights debate was, as Merchant’s centrality in the discussion evinces, fundamentally brought on by ecofeminists. This is not to say that there was to be a single ecofeminist perspective on the matter—rather, the diversity of educated positions on the connections between women and animals exhibited just how central and urgent a revision of our understanding of nature, animals, and animality was. The exploitation of animals that culminated with the colonialist and imperialist ideologies of the Victorian period and the better part of the twentieth century was to be questioned and re-examined by the new philosophical approaches attempting to respond to post-1950s anxieties. The alleged resemblance between certain animal species and certain human races and women had originally emerged as a method of “othering” (and therefore of building a case for white male-centered supremacy). The general reaction from these groups, who looked upon such stereotypes with contempt, was to assert their humanity by further objectifying animals, negating their possibilities as conscious, sentient creatures in order to prove their superiority over them and, therefore, defend their capabilities as reasoning, political subjects. In general terms and at least as far as the gender debate goes, what ecofeminists from the 1970s onwards now contended was that women could indeed be regarded as subjects more attuned with nature, and that their widespread plight for animals stemmed from an acknowledgement of their suffering within institutionalized forms of oppression.

Simply put, ecofeminists chose to “subjectify” (as opposed to objectify) nonhuman others, and to adopt the cause of animal liberation as their own. The initiative was in great part inspired by Australian philosopher Peter Singer, whose Animal Liberation equated racism and sexism to “speciesism,” a term coined by Richard Ryder to refer to the assimilation of institutionalized forms of oppression justified through species distinction. The common victimization of nonhuman others and women gravitated towards the center of ecofeminist discourse, and an array of publications exploring their interconnectedness slowly consolidated the theoretical field of ecofeminism. Carol J. Adams’s The Sexual Politics of Meat (1990) and The Pornography of Meat (2004) overtly dismantled the cultural connections between the consumption of both animal and women’s bodies, exposing the patriarchal system that enabled the domination of both. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals, Nature (1993), edited by Greta Gaard, united the voices of scholars advocating a female-centered approach to nature and nonhuman others. The field continued to grow in the twenty-first century: Karen J. Warren’s Ecofeminist Philosophy (2000) deepened into the structures of hierarchical binarisms to propose an alternative morality based on ethics of care, and Emily Gaarder’s Women and the Animal Rights Movement (2011) offered some insight as to the historical involvement of women in animal protection struggles since the Victorian era, as well as a series of observations on the personal reasons behind women’s participation in the movement and their experiences from within.

Beyond more theoretical appreciations of which these are but a selection, women contributed to the re-examination of “the animal” and its associations to gender identities from other fields of research. Louis Leakey’s “trimates” (Jane Goodall, Dian Fossey, and Biruté Galdikas), for instance, reinvented the scientific approach to primatology. Rather than collecting their findings in rigorous, detached data-like fashion that male primatologists had traditionally applied, their scientific research was to be embedded within a discourse surrendering a glimpse into specimens’ consciousness and subjectivity. Hence chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans, respectively, rose as individuals referred to with names and as “he” or “she” (as opposed to “it”); they were individuals with distinct personalities, each charismatic in their own way. The revolution marked by the “trimates” was matched by the message and innovations in the humanities. In literature, Margaret Atwood’s Surfacing (1972), Alice Walker’s The Temple of My Familiar (1989), and Linda Hogan’s poetry, for instance, continued to explore the aesthetic possibilities inherent to the connections between womanhood and animality, and in painting, Remedios Varos’s posthumanist fusions of androgyny and animality became a recurrent object of scholarly interest.

Ecofeminism is convincing in its discourses because, once again, it operates against the combination of masculinity and animality. In order to branch into disparate theoretical frameworks, ecofeminists tended to speak of masculine oppression of animals in somewhat categorical terms: male-centered systems of domination subdued and exploited nonhuman others through the establishment of the meat industry and blood sports. From hunting, whaling and fishing to baiting; and from circus training to rodeos, horseracing, dog and cock fights, men were the “face” of animal exploitation. Even male animal liberationists’ theories have been questioned: Singer’s utilitarianism, which was overtly based on the fundaments of reason (thus rejecting any emotional or sentimental attachment to animals), was often placed under the spotlight for its lack of feminine care-ethics.

In this special issue of Men and Masculinities, we bring together a group of scholars who explore masculinity/manhood/maleness/manliness from a less categorical perspective when it comes to their relationship to animals. This revisionist endeavor is not one aimed at articulating any sort of eco-masculinity to be leveled with ecofeminism: in the same way that history, given its rootedness in patriarchy, supplies us with enough material to negate the possibility of any sort of masculinism, so does entertaining the notion of eco-masculinity/masculinism lack conviction. The ontological experience of otherness that is shared between women and animals is one that distances itself very much from men's historical experience with nonhuman otherness. Different epoch’s expectations surrounding masculinities have brought forth practices, traditions, rituals, and activities that have measured manliness through the victimization of the animal other, glorifying the male body through the violence exercised upon the animal one. Animals cannot avoid living in a human and genderized world—the names bestowed on them by Adam cursed them into giving meaning and purpose to such humanity and to man.

What we propose instead through the series of studies that follow is a means through which to mold zoomasculinities, a term aimed at both overcoming and building upon the possible categorizations with which ecofeminists have now and again described men’s relationship with nonhuman otherness. We do not, therefore (and as some of the studies to follow will evince), deny men’s complicity in systematized animal exploitation and suffering, but we do suggest that the men-animals power relationship is not as easily reduced as it seems, and that in the same way that Masculinity Studies have diversified and problematized ontological and epistemological concerns regarding manhood, so does looking with and through the animal into the masculine condition assist in the development of a discourse that resists the homogenization of manhood. Examinations of the men-animals combination still have to surmount traditional approaches and explore the various ways through which the animal reflects and signifies upon current conceptions of masculinity and its implications within the wider frame of gender identities. And yet although masculinity and gender are still at the center of the discussion, the reader will find that, along the way, the nonhuman other will also fight to diversify and challenge the anthropocentrically constructed meaning of its existence.

Each of the papers corresponds to a different field of research; and each of them proposes a fresh take on a type of zoomasculinity, even though the term itself may be absent. From biblical myths to narrative, from theater to music, and from national symbolism to the exercise of violence, all these subject matters emerge as spaces where the masculine and the animal encounter each other. Often enough, such encounter will also involve facing the genderized and racial other, proving that ontologically and epistemologically, all such categories are interconnected and dissolve into one another.

Opening the issue and exemplifying the significance of zoomasculinity is Ignacio Ramos-Gay’s exegetical revision of biblical masculinities through no less of a significant figure than Moses. Analyzing the underlying implications of his connections with the golden calf in Exodus 32, the study closes in on the dissolution, ramification, and subsequent reinvention of the prophet’s gender identity—an identity that becomes meaningful precisely because of its amalgamation with animal form and ontology. Such an approach that welcomes the semiotics of animality allows for an examination of alternative perceptions of gender (and particularly masculinity) within the field of Biblical studies, thus paving the way for new scholarly conceptions of the animal lore that is so much a part of religious imagery but that has had, so far, little contact with gender-based perspectives themselves.

In Josep María Armengol’s study, animality is of particular relevance because of the spaces for predatory contestation that its existence enables within a man’s world. Following the evolution of Hemingway towards a more “relaxed” performance of masculinity in his late writings, Armengol challenges existing scholarship on the author by revisiting his attitudes towards femininity, racial otherness and animality within the context of hunting. That Hemingway was passionate about hunting and fishing is a well-known biographical fact that lends weight to the mystique surrounding his adventurous life as a risk-taker. What Armengol does is use such material to illustrate how Hemingway’s sensibilities towards women, Africans, and animals are interconnected—while in his earlier work such connections were based on more extreme power relations emanating from his profoundly assertive sense of self as a white man, in his later work there are indications of a less aggressive or destructive understanding of the woman-African-animal triad.

Claudia Alonso-Recarte also tackles on the centrality of race as she explores the meaning and implications behind the pit bull and dogfighting imagery in as male-centered (and often enough misogynist) a discourse as gangsta rap and hip hop. The study picks up on the recent scholarship on the pit bull and status dog phenomenon to offer further thoughts on how the breed is aestheticized through hip hop culture as a cryptogram in which black masculinity is inscribed through associations with violence, bloodshed, intimidation, and toughness. The pit bull represents artistic and social capital for the hip hop artist that glorifies dogfighting, but it also emblematizes the racist stereotypes and myths that black manhood has been stigmatized with in America. In this manner, the pit bull is maneuvered into the same type of performativity that male rappers and hip hop artists employ to ritualize their craft.

Continuing with the exegetical possibilities beneath performance and performativity is Marta Segarra’s analysis of Bartabas and Ko Murobushi’s groundbreaking The Centaur and the Animal (2012). Through an in-depth examination of the dancer’s appearance and physical gestures, and of the choreographic idiosyncrasies of the piece, Segarra explains Bartabas’s deconstruction of several sets of binary oppositions, such as masculinity/femininity, human/animal, reason/instinct, verticality/horizontality, etc. It is through such dissolution of the dichotomies that have historically reinstated man as the dominant force that a new manner to relate to nonhuman otherness is envisaged, one that draws from the posthuman and postanimal discourses that attempt to overcome categorical, ontological antinomies.

The issue of gender and species-based hierarchical binarisms is also at the heart of Enrique Alonso García’s article on national and nation-state animal symbols. The study focuses on the problematic issues raised by the sexual monomorphic and dimorphic natures of animal iconography (which he additionally connects to linguistic structures), and it interrogates their implications within modern nation-states aiming at social equality, democracy, and constitutionalism. By analyzing the semiotic structures of the symbol as a sign, Alonso García describes the sociocultural investment of national sentiment upon the animal body, and theorizes about what animal representations of communities should aspire towards in the near future in order to comply with (and satisfy) more democratic principles that risk the debasement of androcentrism.

Closing this special issue is Angus Nurse’s sociological approach to the notion of “masculinities crime” and to the types of offenders linked to animal harm. His article explores how crimes of this kind are deeply associated with cultural constructions of manhood and masculinity, and through a critical use of interviews and surveys with UK wildlife NGOs, court cases, and scholarly material, he examines the sociological causes that may lie at the heart of animal abuse. Nurse emphasizes the abuser’s tendency to manipulate and control the most vulnerable people around him through the harmful objectification of an animal of significance to such people, and identifies the technique of neutralization through which animal abuse is rationalized and justified on the basis of tradition or community-building, thus precluding any possibility for empathy to develop.

The zoomasculinities that are identified and deconstructed through these interrelated studies emerge as part of an overall effort to further the symbiosis between Animal Studies and Masculinity Studies, proving that the scholar’s quest may be one of “re-naming” the animal, beyond the objectification implicit in Adam’s qualities as a wordsmith and the feminist affirmation in Eve’s unnaming, finding a new terrain in which to develop new interdisciplinary discourses.