Telling animals’ stories
By Debra Durham • May 27th, 2008 • Category: Essays
So I have just discovered “Weekly Geeks” over at The hidden side of a leaf and have decided to give it a try. So here it is, my first Weekly Geeks post!
The general concept of Weekly Geeks is for a group of people to blog on a central theme or question each week. Contributors (geeks?) bring their own, unique interpretation to the theme and add the resultant post to a collective. Since The hidden side of a leaf happens to be a (very, very enjoyable) book blog, all the better for ReadingAnimals.com.
Here was the starter for this week:
I thought it would be cool to ask people to talk about other forms of story-telling.”
The first thing I thought of when I saw this question was the challenges of listening to and the telling of animals’ stories - both as an ethologist or as an animal advocate. [By coincidence, this seemed to overlap with the topic from week 4 as well, which was to write about a social issue that one cares about. ]
Introduction
I think it may help to have some idea of where I am coming from with this whole business of “telling animals’ stories.” I am an ethologist - a scientist who studies the behaviour of animals. I am also an animal advocate, that is to say that I work on behalf of animals who are or have been exploited, harmed or otherwise traumatized. I listen to and tell animals’ stories in both spheres of my work, but this is most challenging where the two roles intersect. I take my queue for how to approach this uncharted and unruly aspect of my work from Judith Herman. In writing about her work with human trauma survivors in the seminal Trauma and Recovery, Herman explains that she aimed to communicate
“…in a language that preserves connections, a language that is faithful to the dispassionate, reasoned traditions of my profession and to the passionate claims of [those] who have been violated and outraged.
Books mentioned in this section:
Ethics
The field of ethics has greatly influenced how I approach my work in telling animals’ stories. When we tell our own stories, we have a duty to self and perhaps a duty to our audience, when there is one. When we tell stories that are not our own, we also have a duty to the other parties involved - especially when they cannot or do not take part in the telling. Ethics influence how I listen to animals, how I attempt to translate animals’ stories and whether and how I tell these stories.
Caring about individuals
There are many books about Care Ethics or even feminist ethics of care, but my favorite for this subject is The Feminist Care Tradition and Animal Ethics. Telling an animal’s story requires that I go beyond the generic category of “dog” or “injured monkey” or definitely the generic, faceless “animal” to know the individuals or groups involved.
Standpoint Theory
Advocacy is a tricky business regardless of who needs and advocates or who does the advocating. In part that is because there is usually asymmetry in power between the various parties involved. How can I be sure that I faithfully represent the stories of these individuals? Standpoint theory reminds us that oppressed groups have access to and an understanding of their oppressors and the experience of oppression than members of other groups do not have.
By paying careful attention to the ways of being of a specific animal (say a tortoise living as a tortoise) and even how that way of being shapes individual experiences, I attempt to enter into an empathetic exchange with another animal. (Never forgetting that I am a human animal!) Standpoint theory affects how I listen to an animal’s story. Josephine Donovan, who has written extensively about standpoint theory emphasizes that people can listen to animals’ stories by attending to their lives and behaviours. To listen isn’t transcribing the words coming out of their mouths, rather it is
“…paying emotional attention, taking seriously - caring about - what they are telling us.”
An excellent resource on the topic is The Feminist Standpoint Theory Reader by Harding. (notably, this is on my TBR list)
Nature Ethics
Telling the stories of nature and telling the stories of animals per se share many of the same inherent challenges and duties. In Nature ethics: An ecofeminist perspective Marti Kheel does a beautiful job of examining how prominent ethicists have framed nature - and thus how the tell the stories of nature (and describe our ethical responsibilities to nature). She finds many of the traditional approaches unsatisfactory and suggests a different approach, one of holist ecofeminist philosophy that resonates with me:
“It is an invitation to dissolve the dualistic thinking that separates reason from emotion, the conscious from the unconscious, the “domestic” from the “wild,” and animal advocacy from nature ethics. It welcomes larger scientific stories of evolutionary and ecological processes*, but never loses sight of the individual beings who exist within these larger narratives. Ecofeminist philosophy never transcends or denies our capacity for empathy and care, our most important human connection with the natural world.”
*I’d add ethological and perhaps even ethnographic here, too.
Books mentioned in this section:
 |
 |
 |
Conclusions
In the end, I come back to Judith Herman who emphasizes the importance of witnessing, i.e. giving visibility to and honoring the experiences of others, and ensuring that they and their stories are not silenced. I suppose it is fitting that she uses a story - the parable of the three monkeys - in her explanation of why these tasks can be so difficult:
“To study psychological trauma means bearing witness to horrible events. When the events are natural disasters or ‘acts of God,’ those who bear witness empathize readily with the victim. But then the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between the victim and the perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides.
It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement and remembering.”
For me, listening to an animal’s story is an act of witnessing and remembering, both vital steps in the recovery process. Interpreting and telling these stories are part of my attempt to honor individuals as fellow travelers and an intrinsic part of my efforts to make the world a safer and more compassionate place for all animals including humans.
Thanks for the fascinating post. This is what I love so much about Weekly Geeks - each of us really puts our own spin on the topic, which leads to a wide variety of interesting posts. Kudos on doing the essential - but likely often thankless - job of protecting animals.
@ SharingMyStory Thanks for stopping by. I’m enjoying this weeks’ submissions, too. Can’t wait to find out what’s on deck for week #6!
While I love books and animals, I find the latter much more appreciative all the time I invest. A wag or sniff is pay in spades! A nod from a fellow human is also great. Thanks
“When we tell our own stories, we have a duty to self and perhaps a duty to our audience, when there is one. When we tell stories that are not our own, we also have a duty to the other parties involved - especially when they cannot or do not take part in the telling.”
So true! Thank you for writing this post, which made me rethink my definition of storytelling. I had envisioned it entirely in terms of entertainment, but of course storytelling can also be used for advocacy and to give voices to those have none.
First, let me say how happy I am to see standpoint theory applied here. And, of course, Judith Herman’s work is almost always germane in our violent and violated world. I’m loving this blog!
Now, as to the question at hand, I think we maybe need to think differently about the stories animals tell in the course of trauma recovery and the stories we tell in the course of animal advocacy, because the purpose of the storytelling is different. Animals “tell” their stories in the process of their own trauma recovery and it’s our job to listen with empathy and respond appropriately. When we tell what we’ve heard in the course of animal advocacy, we’re trying to heal the traumatic rupture between human and nonhuman animals that both leads to and springs from human exploitation of animals. When we do that, we have to be mindful not only of the need to tell the truth, insofar as we are able, about the animals’ experiences but also of the need to speak in a way that will be heard by people who aren’t in the habit of listening to animals.
As a writer and speaker who lives at a sanctuary, I am often in the position of telling animals’ stories. Sometimes, I try to do so from the perspective of the animal in question but, more often, I find myself telling the story from my own standpoint, reporting what I observed, what I thought and felt, and how I made sense of it. This method has several benefits, not least of which is the recognition that where I stand determine what I am able to see. Also, I don’t actually know what the animal was thinking or feeling, so maybe it’s more accurate to say, e.g., “I saw him do this and that and I thought to myself, ‘he must be very angry’” than to say “he was very mad.” Finally, the fact is that most people identify most closely with other people and thus are better able to connect with stories told from the perspective of a human narrator. When I, e.g., describe myself pressing my forehead against the window and crying as I look out at a grieving rooster, my audience often shares my tears in a way that they maybe would not if I tried to speak that grief from within the rooster.
Don’t know if that makes any sense, but those are my thoughts in response to this post. Thanks for provoking those thoughts, which are useful to me as I work on a book that happens to be mostly chicken stories.
@pattrice
Thanks for your insightful comments. Excellent point about the differences in storytelling in recovery and advocacy. I agree.
I can’t wait to hear more about your book of chickens’ stories. In the mean time, I am going to think about your comment on stories in advocacy. I have often thought that part of my credibility in telling stories comes from my first hand experience. I also think that animals’ stories are compelling (assuming I can do them justice).
Perhaps the opportunity to expand that ability to empathize with a fellow human to the experience of empathizing with another who is not human is worthwhile for the storyteller and the audience in the context of advocacy. To the extent that it is a forgotten or unknown ability, I tend to think the latter since most children are so handy at it, I suspect that both perspectives (animal and advocate) have their place.
Please be sure to let me know when your chicken book will be released so I can add it to the Forthcoming section.
Haha, I Have to finish writing it first!
Speaking of which, it was an animal friendly literary agent & editor who clued me into the importance of letting readers see the birds through my eyes if I want the book to be read by anybody other than people who already have empathy for chickens. But reflecting on this discussion in the context of trauma and recovery, I’m reminded of my training in clinical psychology, in the course of which I learned that talking/writing about one’s own thoughts and feelings, besides offering insights that might otherwise be missed, is often the only honest and accurate way to tell a story that you’ve been told, in part, nonverbally. Since your own standpoint determines how you interpret words and even more strongly how you interpret patterns and nonverbal signals, and since the words and signals transpired in the course of a relationship in which you were a participant, you’ve simply got to bring yourself into the story when you are, for example, writing a case study.
Of course, as you say, there also are times (e.g., when telling the parts of an animal’s story that you did not personally witness anyway), when it’s going to be best to keep yourself out of it.
[...] me direct you particularly to a recent post on telling animals’ stories, which brings both feminist standpoint theory and psychological research on trauma recovery to the [...]
[...] Though I was writing about the stories of animals who have been rescued and are in recovery, I can see how it would apply in this case, too [...]
[...] Commenting on a recent post about telling animals’ stories, reader pattrice from SuperWeed pointed out how important and useful it could be to include the perspective of the story teller as witness / party to the relationship / empathy touchpoint for the audience. Her words really resonated with me and I’ve been keeping track of my own responses to various devices used in the telling of animals’ stories a little more closely since then. [...]