Lecture 16: "if separate species we be"

Lecture 16: “if separate species we be”*
English 165EW
Winter 2013
6 March 2013
“‘Practical’ behavior is not ‘atheoretical’ in the sense of
‘sightlessness’. The way it differs from theoretical behavior does
not lie simply in the fact that in theoretical behavior one observes,
while in practical behavior one acts, and that action must employ
theoretical cognition if it is not to remain blind; for the fact that
observation is a kind of concern is just as primordial as the fact
that action has its own kind of sight. Theoretical behavior is just
looking, without circumspection.”
— Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, 99 / 69
* Lovecraft 73

Howard Phillips Lovecraft (1890–1937)
● Best known for his stories of
“cosmic horror,” particularly
those associated with the
fictional deity Cthulhu.
● Work – primarily short
stories – was primarily
published in pulp
magazines, especially Weird
Tales.
● Has been greatly influential
on later 20th-century horror,
science-fiction, and fantasy
writers. Lovecraft in 1915.

“Cosmic horror” or “cosmicism”
● Lovecraft’s work takes the position that humanity
is insignificant to the universe as a whole (and the
universe may in fact contain powerful entities that
are hostile to humans).
● Common themes in his work that are implications
of this position:
– Knowledge and understanding lead to madness.
● Truth (the universe, its structure, its scale) is, in the final
analysis, incomprehensible.
– Humanity is influenced by non-human forces.
– Guilt and other effects of one’s decisions are heritable.

Sir Wade Jermyn"a Portuguese woman"
Sir Philip Jermyna gypsy
2 deformed children Sir Nevil Jermyn"a vulgar dancer"
Sir Robert Jermyna Viscount's daughter
Sir Alfred Jermyna singer
Sir Arthur Jermyn
(“her disposition
had been violent”)
(explorer; went mad)
“densely stupid and given to brief periods of
uncontrollable violence”; “a kind of reputation
for feats of strength and climbing”
(anthropologist; strangled an explorer)
“a singularly repellent person”
“with this gorilla Alfred Jermyn was
singularly fascinated”
“something was amiss, though
Arthur was the worst”
(all quotes are from
pp. 74-75)

The hybrid apes
“Especially it was unwise [of Sir Wade] to rave
of the living things that might haunt such a
place; of creatures half of the jungle and half
of the impiously aged city.” (74)
“Sir Wade’s wild tales of a lost city peopled by
strange hybrid creatures. […] certain legends
of white apes ruled by a white god” (75)
“a nameless, unsuspected race of jungle
hybrids” (76)

Arthur’s heritage
“Some of the neighboring families who had
heard tales of old Sir Wade Jermyn’s unseen
Portuguese wife declared that her Latin blood
must be showing itself.” (76)
“The ape-princess, it was said, became the
consort of a great white god who had come out
of the West. For a long time they had reigned
over the city together, but when they had a son,
all three went away.” (76)
“of poetic rather than scientific temperament”
(76)

The hybrid Jermyns
“his second son, Nevil, a singularly repellent
person who seemed to combine the surliness
of Philip Jermyn with the hauteur of the
Brightholmes, ran away with a vulgar dancer.”
(75)
“With this gorilla Alfred Jermyn was singularly
fascinated, and on many occasions the two
would eye each other for long periods through
the intervening bars.” (75)
“They did not expect to hear Sir Alfred Jermyn
emit a shrill, inhuman scream.” (75)

Offhand (and direct) racism
“The stuffed goddess was a nauseous sight, withered
and eaten away, but it was clearly a mummified white
ape of some unknown species, less hairy than any
recorded variety, and infinitely nearer mankind—quite
shockingly so.” (78)
● In addition to the concerns about “hybridism,” you
might consider other statements explicitly about race:
– “he [Sir Wade] would permit no one to care for his young
son save a loathsome black woman from Guinea.” (74)
– “it remained for a European to improve on the data offered
by old Mwanu.” (77)

“Horror, in this way, shows us our inherent
skepticism about absolute progress. […]
Dracula, The Call of Cthulu [sic], or The Island
of Dr. Moreau present a dark-regressive
shadow image of the bright and progressive
veneer of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
optimism. The origins of modern horror provide
a vivid presentation of the inherent moral
weaknesses and often-present darkness in the
human imagination.”
– Philip Tallon, “Through a Mirror, Darkly” (2010)

Glancing back at Kristevan abjection …
“the abject confronts us, on the one hand, with
those fragile states where man strays on the
territories of animal.” (Kristeva 12)
– The experience of abjection is “in fact recognition of the
want on which any being, meaning, language, or desire
is founded.” (5)
● Among other things, this is an effect of recognizing the relative
scale of the individual life and the vast network of relationships
in which it is entangled.
● “Put another way, it means that there are lives not sustained by
desire, as desire is always for objects. Such lives are based on
exclusion.” (6)
– Abjection results, in part, from partial exclusion of
repressed material from conscious mental activity. (7)

The borders of “the human”
in Oryx and Crake
“The Abominable Snowman – existing and not
existing, flickering at the edges of blizzards, apelike
man or manlike ape, stealthy, elusive, known only
through rumours and through its backward-pointing
footprints. Mountain tribes were said to have chased it
down and killed it when they had the chance. They
were said to have boiled it, held special feats; all the
more exciting, he supposes, for bordering on
cannibalism.” (8; ch. 1)
“What’s his [Snowman’s] life worth anyway, and who
cares? Out, out, brief candle. He’s served his
evolutionary purpose, as fucking Crake knew he
would. He’s saved the children.” (107; ch. 5)

“‘That’s all we need,’ said Jimmy’s mother. ‘More
people with the brains of pigs. Don’t we have enough
of those already?’” (56; ch. 4)
“Monkey brains, had been Crake’s opinion. Monkey
paws, monkey curiosity, the desire to take apart, turn
inside out, smell, fondle, measure, improve, trash,
discard – all hooked up to monkey brains, an
advanced model of monkey brains but monkey brains
all the same.” (98; ch. 5)
“They’ve accepted Snowman’s monstrousness,
they’ve known from the beginning he was a separate
order of being.” (101; ch. 5)
“He [Snowman] can imagine the dismay – as if an
orang-utang had crashed a formal waltzfest and
started groping some sparkly pastel princess.” (169;
ch. 7)

The Crakers
“There’s a distant murmur from the village:
human voices. If you can call them human. As
long as they don’t start singing. Their singing
is unlike anything he ever heard in his
vanished life: it’s beyond the human level, or
below it.” (104; ch. 5)
“Despite their irritating qualities – among
which he counts their naive optimism, their
open friendliness, their calmness, and their
limited vocabularies – he [Snowman] feels
protective towards them.” (153; ch. 7)

“this dissolution of meaning”*
“From nowhere, a word appears: Mesozoic. He can
see the word, he can hear the word, but he can’t reach
the word. He can’t attach anything to it. This is
happening too much lately, this dissolution of meaning,
the entries on his cherished wordlists drifting off into
space.” (39; ch. 2)
“Now let’s all choose a word, a different word, so we
can each have our own special mantra.” (68; ch. 4)
“‘Oryx,’ he says. ‘I know you’re there.’ He repeats the
name. It’s not even her real name, which he’d never
known anyway; it’s only a word. It’s a mantra.” (110;
ch. 5)
* Atwood 39

“Jack had a name for the building where the
movies went on. He called it Pixieland. None
of the children knew what that meant –
Pixieland – because it was an English word
and an English idea, and Jack couldn’t explain
it.” (142; ch. 6)
“What’s happening to his mind? He has a
vision of the top of his neck, opening up into
his head like a bathroom drain. Fragments of
words are swirling down it, in a grey liquid he
realizes is his dissolving brain.” (149; ch. 7)
“I have a daily routine, he thinks. Routines are
good. His entire head is becoming one big
stash of obsolete fridge magnets.” (148; ch. 7)

As you read on …
A suggestion: you should pay attention to the
place that refrigerator magnets play in the rest
of the novel. How do they encapsulate larger
systems of meaning? How are they deployed
as self-contained units of meaning?
Another suggestion: think about the ways in
which the two temporal strands are related to
each other, and the mechanisms by which
Atwood switches between them.

Media credits
The photo of H.P. Lovecraft (slide 2) is in the
public domain because it was first published
before 1923. Source:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/
a/a2/Howard_Phillips_Lovecraft_in_1915.jpg

Lecture 16: "if separate species we be"

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Lecture 16: "if separate species we be"