Outsiders or Insiders? John Berger and the Ethical Reframing of Animals

Abstract

The paper focuses on the changing status of the moral framing of animals in Western visual culture in the last four decades. The author proposes to revise John Berger’s critique of the marginal way of seeing animals in modern museums and zoos. Both institutions presented animals as strangers to urban culture by keeping them isolated in showcases and cages. Mass media that disseminated wildlife documentaries kept on separating animals from human culture by picturing them as representatives of “wild” species. The paper brings attention to a decisive moment in the reframing of the public gaze, which occurred with the birth of two new visual genres. First, investigative documentaries and activist blogs allowed the human right to exploit animals to be criticized. Second, the rise of social networks allowed animals to be pictured as companions. The author argues that both genres caused an inclusive turn of public gaze that visually integrated animals into urban culture.

Keywords:

• Animal
• Frame
• Ethics
• Exclusion
• Inclusion
• John Berger

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This article focuses only on photography. Including other visual genres that are not as dominant on social media (e.g. paintings) might be interesting, but it exceeds the scope of my present research.

2 See John Berger, Ways of Seeing (New York: Penguin Books, 1990).

3 John Berger, “Why Look at Animals?”, in About Looking (New York: Vintage, 1992).

4 All the pictures reproduced in this article were taken by the author.

5 John Berger, About Looking (New York: Vintage, 1992), 21.

6 Berger, About Looking, 26.

7 See the critique of reification in the light of the Holocaust in Axel Honneth, Reification (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 18–19. See also the critique of “speciesism” based on the reification on animals in Matthew Calarco, Thinking Through Animals (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2015), 24–5.

8 Berger, About Looking, 26.

9 I understand visual genre in the sense of a discursive construction that proceeds by metonymical framing, which means illustrating the entire topic by its chosen part. See Michaela Fišerová, “Portrait and Mugshot: Metonymical Foundation of Photographic Genres,” Law & Literature, (2023), https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1535685X.2023.2213578

10 American National Geographic Magazine, founded in 1888, and its younger European counterpart Geo, founded in Germany in 1978, are two examples of popular magazines publishing illustrated articles on animals. Both magazines still exist, both providing special sections dedicated to the visual documentation of animals; see https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals; https://www.geo.fr/animaux.

11 An example of a television documentary made by National Geographic in 1986 on the topic of African wildlife can be seen at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iZ1HCExLplU.

12 See, for example, https://www.humanesociety.org/news/exposed-undercover-investigation-fur-farm-shows-lives-behind-label or https://www.eurogroupforanimals.org/news/fox-farming-europe-investigation-polish-fur-farm-reveals-dark-reality-foxes.

13 A collection of the particularly disturbing treatment of foxes and other animals bred and killed for their luxurious fur can be seen on the webpage https://www.flickr.com/photos/dyrsfrihet/sets/72157621987318377/show/.

14 http://www.vixey.cz/oprojektu.htm.

15 Singer asks his reader to make this mental switch in “attitudes and practices toward a very large group of beings: members of species other than our own. I believe that our present attitudes to these beings are based on a long history of prejudice and arbitrary discrimination. I argue that there can be no reason—except the selfish desire to preserve the privileges of the exploiting group—for refusing to extend the basic principle of equality of consideration to members of other species.” Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Open Road, 2009), 24.

16 Peter Singer, How Are We to Live? Ethics in an Age of Self-Interest (Milsons Point: Random House Australia, 1997).

17 In the last decade, social networks such as Instagram and Facebook helped to form and connect virtual communities of pet lovers worldwide by means of fan groups and thematic hashtags. Specilaized social networks for pet owners, such as Dogster or Catster, were also created. Sociological research on their account is accessible at https://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2859/2765.

18 See Andrea Laurent-Simpson’s mapping of the rise and increasingly important role of companion animals in families in the twenty-first century in her book Just Like Family: How Companion Animals Joined the Household (New York: NYU Press, 2021).

19 Donna Harraway, When Species Meet (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), 278. See also Donna Harraway, Companion Species Manifesto. Dogs, People and Significant Otherness (Cambridge: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003), where Harraway introduces the ethical framing of animals as human companions.

20 Judith Butler, Frames of War. When is Life Grievable? (London: Verso, 2009), 70.

21 Butler, Frames of War, 66.

22 Berger, About Looking, 16.

23 This concept was first advanced by Norman Bryson, who defines visuality as a cultural construct that allows us discursively recognize pictures: “Between the subject and the world is inserted the entire sum of discourses which make up visuality, that cultural construct, and make visuality different from vision, the notion of unmediated visual experience. Between retina and world is inserted a screen of signs, a screen consisting of all the multiple discourses on vision built into the social arena.” Norman Bryson, “Gaze in the Expanded Field,” in Vision and Visuality, ed. Hal Foster (Seattle: Bay Press, 1989), 91–92. The concept has since been adopted in political philosophy, visual studies and art history. See, for example, Michaela Fišerová, Partager le visible. Repenser Foucault (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2013) or Nicholas Mirzoeff, The Right to Look. A Counterhistory of Visuality (Durham: Duke University Press, 2011).

24 Mirzoeff, The Right to Look, 3.

25 Mirzoeff, The Right to Look, 1.

26 Eryn J. Newman and Lynn Zhang, “Truthiness: How Non-probative Photos Shape Belief,” in The Psychology of Fake News: Accepting, Sharing, and Correcting Misinformation, ed. Rainer Greifeneder, Mariela Jaffé, Eryn J. Newman, and Norbert Schwarz (London: Routledge, 2020), 90.

27 Among the many YouTubers who share ethological advice to improve human symbiosis with pets, two have gained a considerable reputation worldwide – “Cat Daddy” Jackson Galaxy with his Youtube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCheL-cUqfzUB8dfM_rFOfDQ, and “Dog Whisperer” Cesar Millan with his Youtube online production on https://www.youtube.com/@CesarMillanOfficial.

28 People searching for “real” stories, valuable experiences and good advice concerning life with pets have nowadays the possibility to turn to social network posts shared by vets, breeders and other pet owners, such as these popular YouTubers: https://www.youtube.com/@petcircle; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbUgbAJDPeY; https://www.youtube.com/@GingerCatOfficial.

29 Social networks offer public space to numerous posts documenting animal rescue actions and situations in shelters, as can be seen in the example of TheDodo video production https://www.youtube.com/@TheDodo and greyhound adoption mission https://www.youtube.com/@magnusgreyhound.

30 An alternative vegan subculture, promoting abstinence from all animal-based products, multiplied and evolved in recent decades thanks to the use of blogs and online platforms such as https://www.youtube.com/@LastChanceForAnimalsNonprofit.

31 Contrary to traditional conceptions of human encounters with “wild” animal as a threat, new wildlife admirers prefer to stay calm and unbothered, as can be seen in examples of their online posts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPxrA-9CUPQ; https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bvcWEt9wSv4; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7pJGjLp6cnk.

32 David D. Blouin’s sociological research extensively informs about the nature and amount of social habits of contemporary pet owners, both in their everyday life and on social networks. See his article “Understanding Relations between People and their Pets,” Sociology Compass 6, no. 11 (2012): 856–69. Albert Ferkl published another sociological research work focused on moral insights into the social practices of pet owners. See his article “The Question of Non-Human Animals in Sociology ,” https://www.animalsandsociety.org/research/sloth/sloth-volume-4-no-1-winter-2018/question-non-human-animals-sociology/.

33 This moral treatment of animals may be linked to Pacovská's understanding of a morally “saintly” approach to a villain's wrongdoing. The “saint” approach saves the villain from being seen as not human “enough”. As Pacovská puts it, “What enables saintly characters to treat such people as equals, without superiority or condescension, is a belief in equal human worth that doesn't derive from deserts and a conception of themselves as equals and fellows even of the least deserving.” Kamila Pacovská, “Loving Villains: Virtue in Response to Wrongdoing,” in Love and its Objects, ed. Christian Maurer, Tony Milligan and Kamila Pacovska (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 138. If a morally “saintly” person pardons animals, just like one pardons villains not being human enough, both may be seen as human enough to be accepted and included.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Michaela Fišerová

MICHAELA FIŠEROVÁ is an Associate Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Humanities, Jan Evangelista Purkyne University, Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic. She specializes in ethics, aesthetics, and visual studies. She is the author of the monographs Sharing the Visible: Rethinking Foucault (Paris: L'Harmattan, 2013), Image and Power: Interviews with French Thinkers (Prague: Karolinum, 2015), Deconstruction of Signature (Prague: Togga, 2016), Fragmentary Vision: Rancière, Derrida, Nancy (Prague: Togga, 2019), and Event of Signature. Jacques Derrida and Repeating the Unrepeatable (New York: SUNY Press, 2022). [email protected]