Goats, Badgers and Other Beasts

Abstract

In this co-authored paper we propose a comparative investigation of two distinct acts of human to animal transformation involving technology and transposition. Unlike Deleuze and Guattari's well-cited ‘becoming-animal’, these transformations explore more literal becomings that investigate actual lives and behaviours of non-human animals. The article presents a critical exploration of Thomas Twhaites – the Goat Man – a UK based designer who lived for a year in the Swiss Alps as a goat transforming his body into that of the animal with the use of technology. The piece also engages critically with the work of ethologist Charles Foster whose last project has entailed living as a series of different UK indigenous species (badger, deer, fox). The article proposes these two interventions as performative acts that explore and expand the concepts of what it means to be ‘human’ and ‘animal’ in three different contexts: the technological, the personal and the ethological. The two examples offer opportunities to destabilise the human and the animal as distinct categories and engage directly with notions of the post-human and the post-animal. Embedded in a theoretical framework situated at the cross-roads of performance studies, animal studies and posthumanism, the paper also wants to challenge disciplinary boundaries and understands the scientific, performative and the personals spheres as valid and potential vehicles to become –human-animal.

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Erratum

Notes

1 There is a long history of human–animal transformations, including, but not limited to, for example, Horace Ridler (1882–1969), or ‘the Great Omi’, or the ‘Zebra Man’, who transformed himself into a zebra through full body tattooing and body modification. A more recent version of this can be found in Dennis Avner (1958–2012) or ‘Stalking Cat’, who went through a slow process of body modification to increase his resemblance to a tigress. Prosthetics have also led to human–animal transformation such as in the case of Nadya Vessey of New Zealand, who was born with a condition that prevented her legs from developing properly and has had a prosthetic tail fitted for swimming. Additionally, technological transformation allowed British conservationist Sacha Dench to undertake a 4,500-mile bird migration route following a thousand Bewick’s swans in a paraglider that was tracked by satellite.

2 See Thwaites (2016). Actually, the proposal was to turn elephant but this idea was quickly transformed once a bit of anatomical study made him realize that his own anatomy wouldn’t have allowed him to actually eat as an elephant.

3 Thwaites is most recognized for his Toaster Project, where he documented his attempts to build a toaster from scratch.