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Article Excerpt
Ajoutez a cela l'orgueil insupportable des humains, qui
leur persuade que la nature n'a ete faite que pour eux. --Cyrano de Bergerac, Voyage dans la lune
The first "meditation" on the condition of fish in Raymond Queneau's Saint Glinglin introduces, either ironically or not, a series of attitudes towards animals that have become paradigmatic in Western cultures: that the "human" and the "animal" belong to different realms; that the "animal" is mechanical, and hence devoid of sentience; and that the animal is therefore impenetrable. The assumptions behind such attitudes are steeped in a theological culture derived from Judeo-Christian axioms and from various other philosophical traditions that sometimes share these same theological assumptions. In the case of Queneau's fish, the first person narrator, always unreliable due to the author's ironic subversions, thinks or associates within the residual theological estrangement (which I will call "biblical" for shorthand) and the equally simplified Cartesian assumption of the animal-machine.
One example in which both stances occur finds the narrator at the city aquarium, observing the fish:
Comme ces betes ne dorment pas, telle est du moins mon opinion, je suppose done qu'a cette heure tardive a laquelle j'ecris main tenant, mon zebre court toujours de large en long, toujours aussi radicalement inoccupe. Pour manger meme, il n'a pas besoin de s'arreter, non plus que pour se reproduire. Cette derniere activite se passe, dit-on, d'une facon si impersonnelle qu'il n'est evidemment pas besoin pour s'y livrer de cesser de battre de la nageoire. Alors a quoi pense-t-il mon poisson? Bien entendu, je ne lui demande pas de reflechir, de se livrer a une activite rationnelle, de construire des syllogismes et de refuter des sophismes, non, bien entendu, mais mon poisson ne regarde-t-il done jamais ce qui se passe de l'autre cote de la vitre epaisse qui le separe du monde humain? De 1'avis de tous, la reponse est: non, mon poisson ne pense pas, son activite intellectuelle est egale a zero. C'est cela que je trouve atroce. II n'est pas possible d'avoir de rapports humains avec un poisson (Queneau 11-12).
In its radical dissimilarity, the narrator cannot establish any link of continuity between himself and the mechanical fish behind the thick glass separating it from the human world. Essential biological activities like sleeping, eating, and reproducing are deemed to be mechanical and automatic. It is very telling that the narrator uses the rhetorical device of occultatio (apophasis) to emphasise the lack of a "thinking mind" by enumerating what he "doesn't" demand of "his" fish. That it be capable of reflection, rationality, syllogism; that it be capable of refuting sophisms; and that it be capable of being aware of the human world happening on the other side of the glass. From the onset, the narrator is clearly confused (as the author is clearly aware) in his overlap of presuppositions, and a web of provocations is, then, carefully woven. Mimesis notwithstanding--a remarkable stream of consciousness technique--the provocations derive from a deliberate conflation between different concepts: thought, language, mind, and consciousness, among others.
A dominant idea in last century's Saussurean linguistics, which has entered other fields of knowledge, is that language and thought are the same entity. Wittgenstein opposes the idea that language is intimately related to thought. According to him, when we say "I have a headache" we are not reporting it but expressing it, like a groan. "The paradox disappears only if we make a radical break with the idea that language always functions in one way, always serves the same purpose; to convey thoughts--which may be about houses, pains, good and evil, or anything else you please" (304, emph. mine).
Thought may assume the guise of oral language. It can be influenced, sometimes even moulded by it (Whorf), since language plays an important part in shaping perceptions and views, but that does not mean that thought is held prisoner by oral language. Thought is usually processed at a higher speed than our words can convey it. The question of "what is thinking?" remains open. In his later writings, Heidegger pro-poses an inversion of the paradigm. He is interested in what thinking can learn from that which philosophy excludes as foreign to its nature; above all, this means: what can thinking learn from poetry (Dichten)? Heidegger works through this question in his later writings collected in On the Way to Language. Systematic philosophy seeks to bring language, and therefore all that language brings into the open, under the rule of logic and the construction of concepts. With poetry, it is largely otherwise. In an essay entitled "The Word," Heidegger says that "the poet renounces having words under his control" (147). Poetry is the letting go of language. Poetry is release (Gelassenheit). For Heidegger, poetry is no longer a discursive practice governed by a poetics or a kind of speaking that can be compared with other uses of language, but rather a listening that picks up on the speaking that language speaks (Die Sprache spricht).
Before exploring more fully the possibility that literature and poetry are better equipped to deal with these difficult zones concerning thought as the imagining and the projection through this imagination of a true reflection on the question of the "animal," we should consider an observation about fish by Konrad Lorenz. Jewel fish couples congregate their young under the mother fish and descend to their nesting hole, supposedly to sleep or rest. The father usually searches the whole tank for stragglers. As he finds them, he inhales them into his mouth, swims to the nest and blows them out into the hollow. The baby sinks to the bottom and remains there "sleeping" under the mother for hours. Lorenz writes:
I once saw a jewel fish, during such an evening transport of strayed children, perform a deed which absolutely astonished me. I came, late one evening, into the laboratory. It was already dusk and I wished hurriedly to feed a few fisher which had not received anything to eat that day; amongst them was a pair of jewel fishes who were tending their young....
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