Apes, Humans, and Other Animals

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Notes

¹ Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, trans. Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 137.

³ Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, ed. and trans. Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 232–233n, quoted in Derrida, “But as for Me, Who Am I (Following)?,” pp. 98–99.

² Jacques Derrida, “But as for Me, Who Am I (Following)?,” in Jacques Derrida, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet, trans. David Wills (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), p. 98.

⁴ Immanuel Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, ed. and trans. Robert B. Louden (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 232–233n, quoted in Derrida, “But as for Me, Who Am I (Following)?,” pp. 98–99

⁵ Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York and London: Routledge, 1989), p. 5. Thanks to Minelle Mahtani for reminding me of Haraway's analyses of primate studies.

⁶ Giorgio Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal, trans. Kevin Attell (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 24–25.

⁷ Other commentators have raised these questions in relation to these movies. See Nicolas Rapold, “An Experiment that Evolved into a Tragedy,” The New York Times, Arts and Leisure, Sunday, July 3, 2011, p. 7; Peter Singer, “The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky,” The New York Review of Books 58 (October 13, 2011), pp. 13–14.

⁸ Elizabeth Hess, Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human, Project Nim (New York: Bantam, 2008).

⁹ Donna Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness (Chicago, IL: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003).

¹⁰ Ludwig Wittgenstein addressed this issue indirectly in his Philosophical Investigations. He wrote, “if a lion could talk, we could not understand him.” Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, trans. G.E.M. Anscombe, 2nd edition (New York: Macmillan, 1958), p. 223. Duncan Richter explains, “We might realize that ‘roar’ meant zebra, or that ‘roar, roar’ meant lame zebra … [But we] could not honestly say ‘I know what you mean’ to a lion.” See Duncan J. Richter, “Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951),” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (IEP), August 30, 2004, < http://www.iep.utm.edu/wittgens/>.

¹¹ David Edelstein, “‘Project Nim’: Monkeying around with a Chimp,” NPR, Fresh Air, July 7, 2011, < http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137672140/project-nim-monkeying-around-with-a-chimp>.

¹² Bob Ingersoll, quoted in “‘Project Nim’: A Chimp's Very Human, Very Sad Life,” NPR, Fresh Air, July 20, 2011, < http://www.npr.org/2011/07/20/138467156/project-nim-a-chimps-very-human-very-sad-life>.

¹³ Quoted in Margot Adler, “The Chimp that Learned Sign Language,” NPR, Day to Day, May 28, 2008, < http://www.npr.org/2008/05/28/90516132/the-chimp-that-learned-sign-language>.

¹⁴ The first movie was based on Pierre Boulle's 1963 novel Planet of the Apes (New York: Del Rey Books, 2001), and there were four immediate sequels to it: Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970; Twentieth Century Fox, directed by Ted Post), Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971; Twentieth Century Fox, directed by Don Taylor), Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972; Twentieth Century Fox, directed by J. Lee Thompson), and Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973; Twentieth Century Fox, directed by J. Lee Thompson). Escape was a prior “prequel” to the first movie, a remake of which was released by Twentieth Century Fox in 2001, directed by Tim Burton.

¹⁵ Agamben, The Open, p. 77.

¹⁶ As Heather Ann Thompson notes regarding the 1971 Attica uprising by largely African American and Puerto Rican prisoners, which left 29 inmates and 10 hostages dead, “The portrayal of prisoners as incorrigible animals contributed to a distrust of them; the erosion of hard-won prison reforms; and the modern era of mass incarceration.” Heather Ann Thompson, “The Lingering Injustice of Attica,” The New York Times, September 9, 2011, p. A31.

¹⁷ Haraway, Primate Visions, pp. 160–162.

¹⁸ See Bruce Baum, “Hollywood on Race in the Age of Obama: Invictus, Precious, and Avatar,” New Political Science 32:4 (2010), pp. 627–636.

¹⁹ Rapold, “An Experiment that Evolved into a Tragedy,” p. 7.

²⁰ Rapold, “An Experiment that Evolved Into a Tragedy,” p. 7

²¹ Singer, “The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky,” pp. 13–14.

²² Singer, “The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky,” pp. 13–14

²³ Singer, “The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky,” pp. 13–14, 14. Summarizing related research, Elizabeth Kolbert notes that non-human apes are “capable of making inferences, of solving complex puzzles, and of understanding what others are (and are not) likely to know.” Elizabeth Kolbert, “Sleeping with the Enemy: What Happened between the Neanderthals and Us?,” The New Yorker, August 15 and 22, 2011, p. 71.

²⁴ Singer, “The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky,” p. 14.

²⁵ Singer, “The Troubled Life of Nim Chimpsky,” As Derrida says, we are dealing with “what the human calls the animal.” Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, p. 24.

²⁶ Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, pp. 31, 29, emphasis in the original.

²⁷ Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, 31.

²⁸ Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, 89, 110, 95.

²⁹ John C. Mitani, “Fearing a Planet without Apes,” Sunday Review, August 20, 2011, < http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/opinion/sunday/fearing-a-planet-without-apes.html?scp = 2&sq = Apes&st = cse>. Mitani himself makes reference to Rise of the Planet of the Apes.

³⁰ Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, p. 88.

³¹ Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, p. 88

³² Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, p. 88, 32, 95, 111–140.

³³ Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, p. 88, 107, 160. Regarding Project Nim, the film's director James Marsh suggests that its chief lesson is “the nature of our responsibility to animals that we put under our control.” See Joy Dietrich (producer), “Interview: James Marsh,” Video, The New York Times, < http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/07/07/movies/100000000898930/interview-james-marsh.html?scp = 1&sq = James%20Marsh&st = cse>.

³⁴ David Denby, “Noble Creatures: ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’ and ‘Chasing Madoff,’” The New Yorker, September 5, 2011, p. 85.

³⁵ Of course, there is no consensus among the people of the earth on this, and knowledge and understanding of the issue is quite uneven among us.

³⁶ Mitani, “Fearing a Planet without Apes.”

³⁷ Mitani, “Fearing a Planet without Apes.”

³⁸ Mitani, “Fearing a Planet without Apes.”

³⁹ On the current status of H.R. 1760: Great Ape Conservation Reauthorization Amendments Act of 2011, see govtrack.us, < http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill = h112-1760>(last updated July 29, 2011).

⁴⁰ American Museum of Natural History, Hall of Biodiversity, Transformation of the Biosphere, < http://www.amnh.org/exhibitions/permanent/biodiversity/biosphere/>.

⁴¹ See < http://movieclips.com/Y72BL-planet-of-the-apes-movie-the-statue-of-liberty/>. Heston's acting is unconvincing, but the idea is clear.

⁴² Hannah Arendt, “What is Freedom?,” in Hannah Arendt, Between Past and Future: Eight Exercises in Political Thought, introduction by Jerome Kohn (New York: Penguin Books, 2006), pp. 162–163; Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 4–11, 245–247.

⁴³ Latour, We Have Never Been Modern, pp. 136–145.

⁴⁴ Derrida, The Animal that Therefore I Am, pp. 24–25.

⁴⁵ Elizabeth Rosenthal, “Where Did Global Warming Go?,” The New York Times, Sunday Review, October 16, 2011, pp. 1, 7.

⁴⁶ Thanks to Chad Lavin for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this review.