reading 2 (fear of the familiar) By Jennifer Lee Lin (04/22/10 20:24:56)
This text was a little confusing for me, but the discussion helped a lot.
I believe postmodern artists have a "fear of pets" because they see the pets as not real animals, because they are animals who are in captivity, they are animals that have been domesticated and live and grow with humans. Therefore their lives are just human projections. Pets are in a strange place in the human-animal spectrum. They are not real animals, but they are not human, they are neither nor. Therefore postmodernity favor wild animals because they are not influenced by humans, they live and grow naturally in the wilderness. They are truly themselves. There are some inconsistencies in the foundation of postmodernisms "fear of the familiar" however ( i have trouble with this question, but), i believe because postmodernism is all about the gray area, that there are dualisms, no one truth. some postmodernists are trying to categorize and organize what characterizes them as a movement. the very act of trying to label something is counter-postmodernist. they are trying to find structure even though this movement is all about deconstruction. Therefore, postmodernists and animal advocates are similar not only because they both cherish the wild animal, but also because they both cherish the individual. instead of modernist thinking where everyone is the same and that what defines a species is set in stone, both groups focus on individualism, the individual animal within a species. they both believe that an animal is not defined by its species and have special qualities within them that is utterly untouched by human influence. (I dont know how sexism really plays, and i don't agree with what the article said about sexism) Love has everything to do with knowledge, because one pursues in learning because they have an interest towards it. love is the pursuit of knowledge. One needs love for a subject in order to try to understand it, without sentiment (even though it is looked down on by postmodernists), we cannot connect with animals because we cant relate to them.
| The Postmodern Animal (Book) |
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