Cologne, 8 September 1996
Hi Steven (Slap),
You have taught me a new word: zoosemiotics: the signs of animals. If I
understand you rightly, an example of this would be a he-dog pissing all over
his territory to tell the other dogs to keep off?
An animal does something specific, and another animal of the same species reacts
to it in some regular way. We humans observe this and interpret the first act as
a sign that is responded to by the other animal. That's the way we make sense of
it. But is a dog pissing writing? That's an enormous question -- and I'm not
being ironical.
Writing is inscription in material, engraving material, whether it be stone,
papyrus, paper. For humans, this can be extended today to inscription in any
sort of medium and ultimately, any digital inscription in an magnetic/electronic
medium. A dog pissing on the tree -- is the dog inscribing it? With
smell-writing?
I see my neighbour coming and say "Hi"; a greeting in language. The dog sees
another dog on the street and starts barking. Is the dog talking to the other
dog? My neigbour's dog sees me coming and starts wagging its tail. Is the dog
speaking to me with a friendly gesture? Does my neigbour's dog see me coming at
all? That seems incontrovertible, since when a stranger comes along, it starts
growling and barking instead. It can obviously distinguish between me (or a
familiar person) and a stranger. Probably does it by smell.
Does the dog see me, does it smell me? What or who am I for the dog? Am I a what
or who for the dog? Does a dog see or smell any-what, any-whom? It seems that we
could only find this out by asking it and receiving a clear answer that shows it
behaves itself within an understanding of whatness and whoness.
How do we know that we ourselves see some-what? Merely posing the question
already proves that we 'see' some-what, for we must already understand some-what
(whatness) to use the word. Understanding on this deep level comes before any
language. Language, e.g. saying "something", is always already a response to a
prior understanding of what-ness. (Priorness here not in a temporal sense, but
the order in which it can be thought.)
The understanding of whatness is what we 'see' before we see anything at all.
The seeing here is nothing 'physical' that can be established by observation.
Observation always comes too late with its observations. The understanding of
whatness also does not come into 'operation' only once we start speaking or
writing. It is there in every moment of our being there, awake or asleep.
By contrast, my stomach does not see the rotten oyster that is about to give me
food poisoning, even when it is lying as a gooey sludge in my abdomen. Nor does
a dog see bad food when it turns its nose up at some putrid meat. But we seem to
be tapping around in the dark when we make assertions about what a dog sees or
does not see/understand.
It seems to me that zoosemiotics will have trouble getting off the ground, but
perhaps that could be interesting: not getting off the ground, but instead
trying to think what a sign, what an animal IS. We humans pose these questions,
animals do not (as far as I am aware) - not yet, anyway. How could we do an
experiment to 'see' if animals 'see' what-ness? (It's not like Steven Dedalus
walking with eyes shut on Sandymount Beach and then deciding to open his eyes to
"see if I can see" (Ulysses, Penguin p.43).)
Heidegger makes a valiant attempt to think animal-being in GA29/30 'Basic
Concepts of Metaphysics: World - Finitude - Solitude'. Krell says this attempt
is a "colossal failure", but Krell himself dismisses far too much far too
quickly. (I've recently written a brief critical note on D.F. Krell's "Daimon
Life".) I find Heidegger's attempt fascinating, but all such attempts run up
against or rather into the darkness of animal being for us. The "ring of
disinhibitions" that Heidegger introduces to grasp the animal's world in its
"poorness" is worth thinking through carefully.
Greetings,
Michael
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