Chapter 1
1.2.b Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism has been used as a way of relating to all forms of art and language since the earliest traces of human activities. Converting more-than-human subjects and experiences into human language and expression has played a key role in the development of human culture. David Abram shows us in The Spell of the Sensuous the extent to which our language and alphabet may have formed around images of animals, and experience of the land:
Writing, like human language, is engendered not only within the human community but between the human community and the animate landscape, born of the interplay and contact between the human and the more-than-human (Abram, 1996: p. 95)
Equally, jumping forward to the modern period, Caroline Van Eck reminds us that:
In mediaeval and Renaissance architecture, it provided formal patterns for design and metaphors to understand architectural form. In the nineteenth century, a new variety of anthropomorphism arose in the aesthetics of empathy, or Einfühlung, which explained the artworks' effects on the mind by relating those effects to human shapes and to the physical or psychological processes they expressed. (Van Eck in King et al. 2012: 16-17)
In an exploration of the historical and cultural significance of anthropomorphism, Dario Gamboni references the social anthropologist Pascal Boyer and his description of anthropomorphism as the various different human domains (e.g. physical, intellectual, social etc.) projected onto another body (King et al., 2012: 20-22). Siân Ede also makes use of this definition of projection in her text Art and Science (2005) when describing how anthropomorphism may have given evolutionary benefits by supplying the hunter gatherer with a way to predict the behaviours of their prey and competitors. Yet when describing the history of anthropomorphism through the cave paintings of god-like half-human, half-animal figures, she fails to consider that these imagined creatures show both the animal being anthropomorphised and the human being zoomorphised. Gamboni does go on to reject this projection-based definition as old-fashioned, expressing the importance of interpretation over projection in the act of perception. He makes the clear point that the perceived anthropomorphised identity of any subject must include values both from the human characteristics assigned to it and the characteristics of the subject itself, making this a two-way dialogue between the anthropo- and the subject. Despite this he is in agreement with Stewart Elliott Guthrie’s account of anthropomorphism which Gamboni describes as:
an effect of the cognitive dimension of perception and 'our need to find whatever pattern is most important' (2012: 20)
This view of Guthrie’s is highly anthropocentric, positing that anthropomorphism has been a way to endow other subjects with the most intelligent and “important” patterns that pertain to human behaviour.
It is this view of anthropomorphism as something which only works to elevate the human, and blinds us from the reality of the subject, that has been argued against by scholars such as Karen Barad (2007) and Jane Bennett (2010). Lisa Woynarski expands on her own definition of 'ecological anthropomorphism' as such writing that ‘is one way to recognize the similar agencies and vibrancy of the human and the more-than-human’. (2015, 32)
Through analysis of recent films and installation art she suggests that anthropomorphism can help us to see both the similarities and differences we hold with the more-than-human. Woynarski goes on to describe how Karen Barad argues directly against Pascal Boyer stating that Barad’s 'anthropomorphic moment” (Barad, 2012) has the ability to not entrench our narcissistic “habits of projection' but to actually 'decent[er] the human by problematizing the binary distributions between human and more-than-human.' (Woynarski, 2015: 27). In addition to this Bruno Latour has argued that the etymology of the term itself implies a two-way relationship:
anthropos and morphos together mean either that which has human shape or that which gives shape to humans. (2009: 160)
This gives agency to the subject to shape the human perception of it during the process of anthropomorphisation. It becomes an “actor”4 and is no longer a passive agent. If we are aware of the pitfall present in Guthrie’s definition, we can mindfully ensure we shine a light on comparative differences between us and the non-human, and do not glorify the similarities, or give greater value to whatever seems most human out of the non-human world. In this seemingly paradoxical approach I am seeking those qualities and narratives within human stories and archetypes that will most reflect the superficially non-human characteristics of my subjects. In this act I am not only turning the non-human to human, but I am also converting the performers and audience into the non-human subject.
Jane Bennett believes in the importance of anthropomorphism saying that:
We need to cultivate a bit of anthropomorphism – the idea that human agency has some echoes in non-human nature – to counter the narcissism of humans in charge of the world. (2010: xvi)
There is clearly a manner in which the use of anthropomorphism can become a disruptive force, reframing the way we see objects and our relationships to them. In my research anthropomorphism makes use of ideas of the collective unconscious and archetype, linking the audience to the transpersonal experiences of classic narratives and characters which have been encountered throughout civilisations in mythology and folk tales. I do this in order to pre-empt the initial shock and confusion at having to deal with concepts or objects which are normally distant and removed from our daily lives. Presenting them anthropomorphically in a classically defined and traditional format gives a structure through which the audience can receive and experience the subjects. Through a methodology involving a detailed process of engaging with the subject myself, I attempt to allow it to speak, through this human lens, directly to the audience. In creating a relationship through which the audience can start to empathise with the subject, it has a broadened field of existence within the audience’s experience as well as those on stage. This occurs, in a return to Latour’s definition, as the audience also become anthropomorphised by the subject. They can allow their human selves to be shaped as much as I and the other creative participants have humanly shaped the subject. Perhaps through these experiences we can really decentre the human experience away from the self, as suggested by Woynarski. So long as we are able to see everything through this lens, and find the archetypal human traits in all subjects, we are protecting against the glorification of the most obviously human-like systems, as we come to realise that all systems are human-like when seen through the human gaze. In fact, the similarities work to create an interface through which we can start to allow the existence of those more-than-human subjects to leak more permanently into our collective conscious and unconscious thoughts.
The present project takes science – a human pursuit of knowledge – as a basis for the dramaturgical structure of the operas developed, alongside other human representations of the natural world, such as mythology and psychology. This may encompass the laws and systems of scientific topic, the approaches taken to research by scientists, and even how our environments and upbringings shape the way we understand the natural world and phenomena around us. This engages with the way the subject is perceived via the human lens, self-consciously anthropomorphising to better understand our relationship with it, and enable greater self-awareness in how it impacts our realities, and how we also impact it.