Glen Mazis

This essay details wolves’ sense of their surround in terms of how wolves’ perceptual acuities, motor abilities, daily habits, overriding concerns, network of intimate social bonds and relationship to prey gives them a unique sense of space, time, belonging with other wolves, memorial sense, imaginative capacities, dominant emotions (of affection, play, loyalty, hunger, etc.), communicative avenues, partnership with other creatures, and key role in ecological thriving. Wolves are seen to live within a vast sense of aroundness and closeness to aspects of their surround (compared to humans), a highly charged intimacy and cooperation with other wolves, and a caring and non-aggressive attitude that goes beyond the pack, despite their loyalty and defense of territory. The cultural myths and history that absurdly demonize the wolf are explored in their self-righteous attempts to exterminate wolves, which I call “speciocide” and probe for projections of human viciousness. The supposed rapaciousness of wolves is re-examined by expanding Barry Lopez’s sense of the silent dialogue of death with other creatures to be reconsidered as a kind of respect, assertion of vitality, recognition or mortality and cooperation.

The original Gallimard edition of Merleau-Ponty’s last-published essay, "Eye and Mind," which was printed as a slim, separate volume containing only this essay, includes a visual preface of seven artworks, chosen by Merleau-Ponty. This essay takes the key assertion of "Eye and Mind"—that rather than seeing depth as the “third dimension,” as seen traditionally, “if [depth] were a dimension, it would be the first one” (180)—and applies it to the reading of these artworks preceding the text. There is an analysis of how and why depth is the first rank in not only rethinking art, but also in rethinking Being itself. The development of the idea of depth as the going together of incompossibles in time and in space is explored by turning to Merleau-Ponty’s texts, beginning with the Phenomenology of Perception through to his last works. The last section of the essay carefully analyses six of the seven visual works of art (omitting Cézanne about whom so much has been written) to see the ways in which they instantiate this new notion of depth as the motive force of art and the heart of the flesh of the world

Cyborgs are ongoing becomings of a doubly “in-between” temporality of humans and machines. Materially made from components of both sorts of beings, cyborgs gain increasing function through an interweaving in which each alters the other, from the level of “neural plasticity” to software updates to emotional breakthroughs of which both are a part. One sort of temporal in-between is of the progressive unfolding of a deepening becoming as “not-one-not-two” and the other is a “doubling back” of time into itself in which moments that were once disparate are conjoined or enjambed. Tracing the experience of Michael Chorost during a four year period of coming to terms with his cochlear implant, related in Rebuilt: How Becoming Part Computer Made Me More Human, the essay pinpoints shifts in awareness, perceptual belief, and being-with others that unfold within the in-between of person and machine.

Looking at the finding of several archeoastronomers, who examine the relationship of built cultures to celestial bodies, this essay speculates on the unique relationship of the inhabitants of Chaco Canyon in New Mexico to the earth and sky. The Anasazi who populated this region suddenly disappeared around 1000 A.D. and little is known about their culture, religion, and world except by studying the structures they left behind. This essay looks at their kivas, dwellings, the puzzling “Sun dagger” monument, and the petroglyphs throughout the canyon to understand the many ways that each structure through use of light andspace marked the occurrence of a surprising number of celestial events. There is good evidence that the Anasazi dwelled within the sky and felt a continuity between earth and sky in a way to which postmodern cultures have little access. The unity of body and surround, especially as ascending into the sky from the earth, is linked to a spirituality at odds with the legacy of Plato and others, who oppose the celestial to the earthly, as an inferior realm.

RésuméS’agissant de l’oeuvre de Merleau-Ponty on s’aperçoit, si l’on n’en reste pas à la surface, que le beau n’est pas une catégorie du jugement esthétique dans le sensclassique, mais plutôt, selon la formule de Galen A. Johnson dans son Introduction, une dimension du « domaine entier du visible ». Selon Johnson, « le beau est la profondeur, le rythme et le rayonnement de l’Être lui-même ». Or ces dimensions de la chair sont les clés pour mieux comprendre l’ontologie merleau-pontienne. Si donc « le beau n’est ni subjectif ni objectif, mais occupe l’entre-deux qui est l’entre-monde, l’intersubjectif, l’intercorporel » , il prend toute son importance dans une ontologie de la chair. Pour Merleau-Ponty en effet, « la beauté n’est pas du tout une qualité, mais une expérience qui se produit entre la chose et celui qui l’apprécie » . C’est pourquoi, par ses analyses de l’importance du rayonnement, de la profondeur et du rythme, G. A. Johnson nous conduit au coeur de la chair en montrant que la beauté est « une chose élémentaire dans l’élément de la chair vue elle-même comme chiasme » .Dans le chapitre sur Cézanne, l’auteur montre que Merleau-Ponty recherche une « beauté forte » qui ouvre les choses, le monde et le temps par la couleur, d’une manière qui conduit à une tout autre sorte de rencontre avec la monumentalité des choses humbles et avec un « temps d’avant le temps ». Dans les chapitres sur Rodin et Klee, Johnson trouve, chez Rodin, une puissance en tant que beauté qui s’enracine dans le déploiement des contraires, et, chez Klee, une « mortalité de la beauté » qui situe le sens spirituel du monde dans ce monde et non pas dans le domaine transcendant d’un outre-monde – une « transdes-cendance ».Les derniers chapitres du livre articulent la beauté et le sublime au plan ontologique. Plutôt que de chercher la possession d’une qualité, d’un événement ou d’un objet, ledésir en tant qu’ouverture à la profondeur comme telle est, tout à la fois, ce qui produit et ce qui déborde cette profondeur. La puissance productive du désir provient de laforce de la mémoire de l’imagination et de l’inconscient, qui font partie de l’institution d’un « monde intérieur » de la beauté. L’auteur conclut qu’on ne fera pas justice autraitement merleau-pontien de l’art sans envisager « une forme de recherche qui unit le visible et l’invisible, la présence et l’absence, l’activité et la passivité, l’existence etl’essence, le réel et l’imaginaire ».RiassuntoNel lavoro di Merleau-Ponty, se si volesse guardare oltre la superficie, “il bello” non è una categoria del giudizio estetico in senso classico, ma, piuttosto, è una dimensione dell’“intero regno del visibile”, come Johnson sottolinea nell’introduzione. Nel pensiero di Merleau-Ponty “il bello è la profondità, il ritmo e il chiarore dell’Essere stesso”. Tre dimensioni della carne rappresentano la chiave per comprendere più a fondo l’ontologia di Merleau-Ponty. Se “il bello non è né soggettivo né oggettivo ma occupa il fra che è l’intermondo, l’intersoggettivo, l’incorporeo” , allora il bello è di grande importanza per un’ontologia della carne. Per Merleau-Ponty, “il bello non è assolutamente una qualità, ma un’esperienza che accade fra la cosa e colui che la apprezza” . Prendendo in considerazione l’importanza del chiarore, della profondità e del ritmo, Johnson ci porta al cuore della carne e in tal modo la bellezza si rivela come “qualcosa di assolutamente fondamentale nell’elemento della carne stessa in quanto chiasma” .Nel capitolo su Cézanne, quest’ultimo è visto come una artista che persegue un “forte bellezza” che apre la cosa, il mondo e il tempo attraverso il colore, in un modoche permette un altro di incontro con la monumentalità delle cose umili e con “un tempo prima del tempo”. Nel capitolo sull’opera di Rodin e di Klee, Johnson trova nellavoro di Rodin un sorta di potere in quanto bellezza che proviene dall’intreccio degli opposti e in Klee una sorta di “mortalità del bello” che pone il senso spirituale delmondo in questo mondo e non in un qualsiasi regno trascendente e soprannaturale – una “trans-scendenza”.L’ultimo capitolo del libro conduce la bellezza e il sublime a un’articolazioneontologica.Piuttosto che cercare di prendere possesso di una qualità, un evento o un oggetto, il desiderio in quanto apertura a tali profondità è sia qualcosa di produttivo sia qualcosadi eccessivo a tali profondità. Il potere produttivo del desiderio deriva dalla forza della memoria, dell’immaginazione e dell’inconscio che hanno parte nell’istituzionedell’“intermondo” del bello. Non renderemo giustizia alla maniera merleau-pontyana di trattare l’arte, fino a quando non concepiremo “una forma di visione che uniscevisibile e invisibile, presenza e assenza, attività e passività, esistenza e essenza, reale e immaginario”

This essay discusses how our traditional ethics may harbor assumptions that place humans in a position in which overt violence towards animals is an almost inevitable outcome since their formulation involves violence towards ourselves and our animal fellows in our cutting our embodied ties with them. The essay explores Derrida’s Animal that Therefore, I Am, in its detailing of the two discourses within European intellectual history of those who felt they were “above” animals and were not addressed by them versus those who could acknowledge that animals do address us. Derrida also cites the “lyconomy” of this tradition that brandishes the image of the “wolf” within us as a streak of rapacious violence that we can only fight with violence, thus projecting onto the wolf a false identity to justify our own demons of violence. Merleau-Ponty’s notions of embodiment further this idea that we are enmeshed with animals in a basic affective, perceptual and visceral way and that to ignore this interweaving of lives is to do violence to ourselves as well as violence towards them. I then cite ethologists for evidence that wolves are one of the most social, non-violent animals on the planet and detail how two million were slaughtered in the name of eradicating an “evil” being. Such behavior on our part I call “speciocide,” as heinous as genocide. Finally, phenomenology, as one particular philosophical approach, may have a critical edge in helping us to see our animal fellows more clearly, to understand them better, and discern our truer moral obligations to them