Greg Mankiw, the well-known Harvard economist, mentioned in passing in a post today that as a freshman at Princeton more than thirty years ago he had the good fortune of taking an introductory philosophy course taught by Richard Rorty. The lessons learned have stuck with him. In a post honoring Rorty’s recent death, Mankiw recounted almost two years ago one of the more difficult assignments, this one concerning animal life.
I recall one paper for the course that affected my eating habits, at least temporarily. The assigned topic was something like this:
“Aliens from another planet, with vastly superior intelligence to humans, land on earth in order to consume humans as food. What argument could you make to convince the aliens not to eat us that would not also apply to our consumption of beef?”
I can’t remember what I said in the paper, but I remember becoming a vegetarian for several weeks thereafter. My carnivorous ways eventually resumed not because I figured out a good response, but because I ignobly put the question out of mind.
The question is a trick, of course, meant to shore-up the full gamut of post hoc rationalizations for killing and eating animals, and for that reason vegetarians (like myself) will never tire of putting it on the table, even if just to watch the fancy footwork that follows. But in the end, as detractors like to point out, it’s a hypothetical scenario; aliens have not shown up and we are not in danger of becoming dinner. For these reasons perhaps, Ingrid Newkirk, cofounder of PETA, has found a more direct means of making the point. According to her recently publicized last will and testament, upon her death she requests
a. That the “meat” of my body, or a portion thereof, be used for a human barbecue, to remind the world that the meat of a corpse is all flesh, regardless of whether it comes from a human being or another animal, and that flesh foods are not needed;
b. That my skin, or a portion thereof, be removed and made into leather products, such as purses, to remind the world that human skin and the skin of other animals is the same and that neither is “fabric” nor needed, and that some skin be tacked up outside the Indian Leather Fair each year to serve as a reminder of the government’s need to abate the suffering of Indian bullocks who, after a life of extreme and involuntary servitude, as I have seen firsthand, are exported all over the world in this form;
c. That in remembrance of the elephant-foot umbrella stands and tiger rugs I saw, as a child, offered for sale by merchants at Connaught Place in Delhi, my feet be removed and umbrella stands or other ornamentation be made from them, as a reminder of the depravity of killing innocent animals, such as elephants, in order that we might use their body parts for household items and decorations;
She goes on, however, to make of her corpse much more than an imitation of industrialized ‘animal products’. Engaging in a bit of Surrealist agitprop theater, she requests that her body be parceled out, piece by piece it would seem, for purely symbolic purposes. An eye to the EPA, a finger to Barnum & Bailey, an ear to the Canadian Parliament.
d. That one of my eyes be removed, mounted, and delivered to the administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency as a reminder that PETA will continue to be watching the agency until it stops poisoning and torturing animals in useless and cruel experiments; that the other is to be used as PETA sees fit;
e. That my pointing finger be delivered to Kenneth Feld, owner of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, or to a circus museum to stand as the “Greatest Accusation on Earth” on behalf of the countless elephants, lions, tigers, bears, and other animals who have been kidnapped from their families and removed from their homelands in India, Thailand, Africa, and South America and deprived of all that is natural and pleasant to them, abused, and forced into involuntary servitude for the sake of cheap entertainment;
g. That one of my ears be removed, mounted, and sent to the Canadian Parliament to assist them in hearing, for the first time perhaps, the screams of the seals, bears, raccoons, foxes, and minks bludgeoned, trapped, and sometimes skinned alive for their pelts; that the other ear be removed, preserved, and displayed outside the Deonar abattoir in Mumbai to remind all who do business there that the screams of the cattle who are slaughtered within its walls are heard around the world;
Say what you will of PETA (–the ads they run are often gratuitously sexist, their tactics overly-spectacular), this publicity stunt appears to be also, quite literally, real. Though the will itself is, for the moment, little more than a press release, Newkirk’s eye may very well one day end up on the grounds of the EPA. Surely a provocation such as this counts for something.
As a work of art and of politics — a concept we’ve otherwise grown tired of seeing fail — Newkirk’s will succeeds in turning herself and her body, the very thing at stake in animal rights, into a final, definitive statement. And yet, when so many works of art insist on representing the ‘inscription’ of culture onto ‘the body’, the one instance where this is actually, dramatically the case can be easily overlooked.
