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the abyss which separates them [humans and animals] today…[is] the
one that permits us to send beasts, in our place, to respond to the
terrifying universes of space [monkeys in rockets] and laboratories, the
one that permits the liquidation of species even as they are archived as
specimens in the African reserves or in the hell of zoos.
He suggests that this process has recently been accompanied by humans
seeking to get animals to disclose their experiences of this negation:
Animals…have followed this uninterrupted process of annexation
through extermination, which consists of liquidation, then of making
the extinct species speak, of making them present the confession of
their disappearance. Making animals speak, as one has made the insane,
children, sex (Foucault) speak.
(Baudrillard 1994:136)
All sorts of human tactics, from forms of animal psychology to various
sentimental accounts, hence try to make animals 'speak' to us, in which case
'the psychic life of the animal' (Baudrillard 1994:132) emerges as a source of
great fascination (paralleling the invention of 'the unconscious' as a device for
effectively forcing 'the mad' to reveal their truths). Baudrillard strenuously
objects to this development, reiterating over and again that animals cannot
speak and that they do not have an unconscious, and instead his point is that
we (humans) should confront the fundamental questions prompted by the
silence of animals: about their quite 'other' ways of being, but also about what
we (humans) are really attempting to be and to do in a world where so much,
after all,
does
'escape the empire of meaning, the sharing of meaning'
(Baudrillard 1994:137). His claims comprise a possible criticism of some
elements present in our own arguments, although we too are seeking
strategies which will enable humans and animals to coexist (to share
territories, spaces and places) in a fashion somehow better than is often
currently the case, and which does not do this by forcing animals to talk to us
or, indeed, in any simple way to be like us.
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Such a statement might be unexpected here, since it appears to signal our acceptance of
animals being killed by humans, particularly (but certainly not exclusively) for meat.
This is not quite our position, but we do want to make positive suggestions about how
all humans (most of whom are meat-eaters) might rethink their relations to animals
(even ones that they end up eating). Hence, insofar that countless animals will
continue to go to their deaths at the hands of humans in slaughterhouses, laboratories,
zoos and elsewhere, there is a warrant for ensuring that our final claims here are more
sophisticated than the simple plea 'humans should not kill animals' (much as we
might wish to end on such a note).
