The Animal at Unease with Itself. Isaac M. Alderman
is drawn to our bodies, and their animality, we seek to separate ourselves from other animals through beautification, modification, and adornment. The naked body is shameful (even disgusting) because it is an animal body. The many studies supporting terror management theory and animal reminder disgust allow us to conclude that the animal-human boundary is comforting when we are presented with reminders of our mortality and that animal reminder disgust is a powerful emotion reinforcing the animal-human boundary. Animal reminder disgust and terror management theory are separate, though interrelated and, taken together, call for us to recognize their impact on any reading that involves human death, nakedness, and animals.
While these first two chapters are heavy on the scientific information and light on biblical references, I hope to show that the human experience of death anxiety, and death anxiety’s peculiar interaction with animals, should prompt us to consider the cognitive implications of reading any story that involves the themes of mortality, human creatureliness, and the relationship of humans to animals. The development of Genesis 2–3 was a cognitive process, as is our reading of it. At every stage, any thought of death or animals is a reminder of mortality (a mortality salience prime) which effects cognition and behavior, as terror management theory predicts and studies demonstrate. These features should be accounted for in the reading and can serve as an aid to interpretation.
The third chapter turns to religious responses to problems presented by the corporeality shared by humans and non-human animals. We begin by introducing some of the various religious responses to human evolution, focusing particularly on the situation in the United States of America, followed by a discussion of various religious responses to death, such as views of afterlife, immortality, or other aspects of culture that provide individuals with meaning in the face of death. Of particular importance is how religions have considered personal identity as embodied or disembodied. There are two fundamental questions around which this chapter is organized. The first is posed to us by the unhappy central character of Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, who during the process of dying, wonders, “Is there any meaning in my life that wouldn’t be destroyed by the death that inevitably awaits me?” He seeks a solution in various philosophies and scientific and religious views. However, he is continually confronted by the limitation of his own embodiedness. The second question was posed in the context of the challenge which Darwin’s book proposed to his society: What is the place of humanity within the natural order? The two questions combine in an existential threat: if we humans are not meaningfully separate from the rest of nature, then, in truth, our deaths are not particularly meaningful. Moreover, our lives might not provide for anything that is meaningfully lasting. Insights with regard to mentalizing and the mind-body problem help us to understand the persistent dualistic anthropology in religious thought. This intuitive dualism provides a buffer against death anxiety by allowing us to see ourselves as more than just an animal body. Evolutionary sciences, however, challenge this dualism and erode the animal-human boundary. This has had the result of making for an uneasy relationship between science and religion, particularly in the United States, which has a strong tradition of biblical literalism. Here I use the schema proposed by Ian Barbour, which posits four models for the relationships between science and religion to better understand how religious traditions have navigated the tension between the intuitive or explicit dualism of most religious traditions and the scientific approaches which call that dualism into question.
Staying on the topic of the human body and human death, the fourth chapter turns to these topics in the Hebrew Bible. Intuitive dualism is not simply a contemporary phenomenon but can help to better explain the widespread rejection of the previously held view of a major distinction between Greek and Hebrew worldviews with regard to dualism. While the Hebrew Bible does not have a systematic anthropology, it is a complex presentation of the human being that considers, bundles, and connects various aspects, but does not attempt to separate or unify them. Most often, various Hebrew terms such as bāśār, népeš, and rûaḥ seem to be referring to various perspectives or aspects, rather than components of a human being. Instead of describing what comprises a human, the biblical text presents a normative human that is whole, male, and well. The body which is not whole, male, and well becomes heavily regulated because of the danger it poses to the social body. Social structures are required to regulate and enforce conditions imposed on the non-normal body. The corpse represents the greatest departure from the normative body and is therefore heavily regulated. However, death itself is not an unnatural event: a non-violent death, in old age, and surrounded by family is a good death that is the best one can hope for. Immortality is neither expected nor necessarily even assumed to be possible.
Recognizing that various religions and the Bible itself have responded to the problems of embodiment and mortality in many different ways, chapter 5 will return to the cognitive and psychological responses to human corporeality, which demonstrate that many elements in our lives have the effect of drawing attention to human embodiment and therefore become existentially threatening. In other words, many common elements of human existence are existentially problematic as elicitors of animal reminder disgust and as mortality salience primes and therefore generate thoughts and behaviors that function as death anxiety buffers. As a result, the cognitively integrated concepts regarding our bodies which are united by their relationship to mortality awareness, such as clothing, hair, sex, gender, food, and relationships with animals, are highly regulated by religious and secular cultures. Social structures are required to maintain a system that establishes a normative body, and enforces compliance to that norm, along with the marginalization of those with non-normative bodies. Social control over the body is important because the body, as the site of social interaction, also represents the social body. Terror management theorists also recognize this relationship; but instead of focusing on the threat of unruly bodies to society, they assert that society exists to help us cope with our animal bodies, allowing us to transform them into cultural symbols of beauty and power. The body is a “cultural costume,” which is constantly communicating. Before moving on to a more detailed discussion of the role of clothing, it is useful to see exactly how the body is used to communicate, how it is controlled, and how the lack of control can elicit animal reminder disgust and increase death anxiety. As an example, we can examine the role of hair as communication and the emphasis on hair removal in many societies and across time. It is adherence to the cultural norms and regulations concerning the body, such as the shaping or removal of hair or the wearing of clothes, which help to assuage death anxiety by separating humans from other animals. Because the body itself is the problem, the covering up and manicuring of the body is essential to our identity as humans, and not animals.
Having already examined the existential crisis when confronted with our animal bodies, chapter 6 addresses certain methodological concerns brought to light by contemporary animal studies and the animal turn in the humanities. The bright line dividing humans from other animals is shown to be methodologically problematic because it divides the world’s creatures into an unsustainable human/not-human binary. Although one might think that the sciences and theology have different approaches, one only has to recognize the dichotomy of anthropology and zoology to recognize that the sciences as well implicitly uphold an animal-human boundary, which is sometimes called human-separatism, exceptionalism, or speciesism. Derrida’s The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow), which forms the background (and title) of this project, has been an important catalyst for the animal turn in literary studies and some of its impact will be examined in this chapter. Two changes that have been brought about because of this critique from animal studies is a new emphasis on the shared evolutionary history among all animals and the emerging field of anthrozoology. Humans have a complicated relationship with other animals, whom we eat, keep as pets, protect, hunt, enslave, and observe. These behaviors are both ubiquitous and culture-specific. From domesticated animals to parasites, the modern human animal is one that has been shaped by its interactions with other species. An important development in the study of animal-human interaction is the cognitive impact of these relationships. I am referring specifically to animal reminder disgust and the increase in death thought accessibility. We seek to understand ourselves as something more than animals and often de-humanize (or animalize) those we oppose in the process.
After addressing certain methodological concerns with regard to animal studies, in chapter 7 I turn to the animal-human boundary as found in the ancient Near East and the Bible, with specific regard to clothing. The