INTRODUCTION
This research exposition concerns a case study in non-human phenomenology. Initially, it constituted my contribution to the "Through Phenomena Themselves" Research Cell at the Venice Research Pavillion #3, in June 2019. In the given context, it was also inspired by Tuula Närhinen´s simultaneous Research Pavilion project "Insects among us" within the "Traces of the Anthropocene" Cell. (See: https://www.researchcatalogue.net/view/474888/514952 & Närhinen 2016)
The idea of “non-human phenomenology” is not as paradoxical as it may seem. Founding figures in the field of phenomenology such as Husserl, Scheler, Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty quite seriously considered the possibility of studying the experience of non-human human beings from a phenomenological perspective (see Lotz & Painter 2007). The new millennium, and the post-humanist perspectives it has opened up, have given the issue a new topicality (Bogost 2012, de Castro 2014).
I have attempted in some of my earlier writings to approach this difficult topic from the perspective of the performing arts (Kirkkopelto 2004, 2013, 2015, 2017). I have not been alone in this endeavour (cf. for instance Broglio 2011, Cull Ó Maoilearca 2013, Lavery 2018). My own reflections are based mainly on a particular artistic practice I have been developing since 2004 in Helsinki, with a group called Other Spaces (“Toisissa tiloissa”). The aim is to develop collective corporeal “exercises” that alienate the practitioner´s experience of her body, allowing her to be in contact with different kinds of non-human phenomena. (https://toisissatiloissa.net/en/) In my opinion, the performing arts, and especially the bodily techniques they imply, constitute a potential but still a relatively unexploited methodological source of research concerning corporeal encounters and interaction among human or non-human beings, agents or actors.
The topic of this case study derives from Jakob von Uexküll´s (1864–1944) classic ecological studies on the “lifeworld” (Umwelt) of animals. In order to help his readers to understand what he meant by that notion the author used a tick (ixodes ricinus), a tiny eight-legged insect that nourishes itself with the blood of mammals. Indeed, the tick has a central role in his argument: “The fundamental aspects of the structure of the environments that are valid for all animals can be derived from the example of the tick.” (Uexküll 2010, 51)
Uexküll´s “tick” paradigm is well known and has attracted comment from many scholars, including those from outside biological and ecological research. One of the first non-scientific commentators was Martin Heidegger in his 1929–1930 seminar (Heidegger 2001). Although the tick is not mentioned by the German philosopher, his remarks concerning animals' “poverty in world” (Weltarmut) obviously originates from Uexküll´s analysis in which he refers to the “poverty” of the tick´s lifeworld (ibid.). Since then, several philosophical commentators have returned to Heidegger´s argument, and therefore also to Uexküll, including Giorgio Agamben and Jacques Derrida (Agamben 2004; Derrida 2008). In the context of non-human phenomenology, the (dis)connection Heidegger builds between human and non-human experience still constitutes a relevant problem.
My primary aim in this artistic research project was to test Uexküll´s and his interpreters´ conclusions in practice. According to his initial argument, the poverty of the tick´s life-world (the author does not refer to “World” as Heidegger does) derives from a very limited number of environmental elements, which he calls “carriers of meaning” (Bedeutungsträger). In the tick´s case, there are basically only three: the smell of the mammal, its warmth, and tactile contact with its skin. However, according to my hypothesis, these three semantically meaningful factors do not exhaust the experience of the tick. Interspersed among them are areas that are ambiguous in how they appear but are no less real to the one who conceives of them, regardless of whether it is a human or a tick. My reason for supposing this is the following: if the tick has a world, that world, in order to be a world, has to be as integral as any other world. In other words, coming back to Umwelt, the question remains of what the “Um“ consists. This study is devoted to the study of this surrounding element, which complements the significant aspects on which an animal´s experience is based.
In order to test the hypothesis I created a series of “phenomenotechnical” arrangements (Rheinberger 2005) that were first accomplished in Venice at the Sala del Camino, on Saturday 15 June 2019. The arrangements that I call “Tick variations” were inspired by, but not based on, my earlier artistic practice. They were designed for this particular purpose, the aim being to transpose something of the tick´s corporeal existence to the human corporeal experience. Each arrangement focuses on one particular aspect of the tick´s behaviour, the way it encounters its “environment” (Umgebung) and deals with the related “carriers of meaning”. What happens between these focus points is as important as what happens within them. To get in contact with the given lifeworld – the significant moments as well as the space and time between them – I tested my arrangements on voluntary human participants, in the first stage with the other members of the research cell. I gathered feedback from the volunteers in one-to-one interviews based on a simple questionnaire, and in collective, open discussion with the participants. My hope was that I would be able to estimate the epistemic and methodological output of the arrangements on the basis of these discussions.
REFERENCES:
Agamben, Giorgio. 2004. The Open. Man and Animal. Stanford (CAL): Stanford University Press.
Bogost, Ian 2012. Alien Phenomenology, Or What It is Like To be a Thing, Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
Broglio, Ron. 2011. Surfance Encouters: Thinking with Animals and Art. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
de Castro, Eduardo Viveiros. 2014. Cannibal Metaphysics. For a Post-Structural Anthropology. Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
Cull Ó Maoilearca, Laura. 2013. Theatres of Immanence. Deleuze and the Ethics of Performance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Derrida, Jacques. 2008. Séminaire La Bête et le souverain (2002–2003). Vol 1. Paris: Galilée.
Heidegger, Martin. 2001. The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Kirkkopelto, Esa 2017. “Species-Beings, Human Animals and New Neighbours. Non-human and inhuman in contemporary performance”, Performance Research, vol. 22, number 2, 87–96.
Kirkkopelto, Esa. 2015. “The Ethics of the Gastropods. Analysis of a Trans-Human Practice”, Eurozine: https://www.eurozine.com/the-ethics-of-gastropods/
Kirkkopelto, Esa. 2013. “Provisional Absolutes. The Second Manifesto for Generalized Anthropomorphism”, Manifesto Now! Instructions for Performance, Philosophy, Politics, Laura Cull & Will Daddario (eds.). Bristol, UK & Chicago, US: Intellect, 196-210.
Kirkkopelto, Esa. 2004. A Manifesto for Generalized Anthropomorphism, Eurozine:
Lavery, Carl. 2018 (ed.). Performance and Ecology. What can Theatre Do? Routledge.
Lotz, Christian & Painter, Corinne. 2007. Phenomenology and Non-Human Animal. Springer.
Närhinen, Tuula. 2016. Kuvataide ja luonnontaide. Tutkielma luonnonilmiöiden kuvallisuudesta. Taideyliopiston Kuvataideakatemia.
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 2005. “Bachelard and the Notion of Phenomenotechnique”. Perspectives on Science. The MIT Press, vol 13, number 3, 313–328.
Uexküll, Jacob von. A Foray into the World of Animals and Humans with A Theory of Meaning. Joseph D. O´Neil (trans.). Minneapolis & London: University of Minnesota Press.
