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Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
Interspecies Etiquette: An Ethics of
Paying Attention to Animals
This paper examines a philosophical praxis of paying attention, and the importance of
bodily comportment, in human-animal interactions. It traces some of the beginnings of
the notion of attentiveness as it has arisen in contemporary Western environmental
and animal ethics, and its further development into both a philosophical approach and
actual practice as a kind of interspecies etiquette. It is informed by the kinds of
comportments of openness and responsivity found in diverse examples of practical
phenomenology. Through an interdisciplinary discussion, I suggest that a praxis of
attentiveness can inspire practical applications of ethical interactions between species.
Actually to respond to the cat's response to his presence would have required his joining
that flawed but rich philosophical canon to the risky project of asking what this cat on
this morning cared about, what these bodily postures and visual entanglements might
mean and might invite, as well as reading what people who study cats have to say and
delving into the developing knowledge of both cat-cat and cat-human behavioral
semiotics when species meet. — Haraway, When Species Meet
Introduction: Why Pay Attention to Animals?
What, if any, is the ethical significance of paying attention to animals? Taking a
cue from Donna Haraway's (2008) provocative new book, When Species Meet, it seems
that there is enough significance to rouse a call for humans, particularly those who
identify as philosophers and scientists, to start attending to the animals with whom so
many of our lives intersect. The time appears ripe for a recognition of animals as
complex, living beings, rather than as two-dimensional symbols, convenient metaphors,
and passive objects of study. While the latter have been employed to generate an
incredible amount of knowledge in the West, there is still so much to learn from the
animals themselves. Arguably, whether by naïve or aggressive ignorance, much has been
overlooked. Haraway provides a poignant example above when she laments that Derrida
missed a privileged opportunity to actually learn something about the cat as an
individual and about cat-human relations when he chose to attend only to his response,
to his own nudity and to abstract philosophical musings (2008, 22).
With this critique, Haraway highlights concerns which have long been pondered
in feminist philosophy regarding environmental issues and human-animal
relationships. Many have addressed ethical and epistemological questions of attending
to animal others and have articulated, in myriad ways, what can generally be termed as
a praxis of attentiveness. In this paper, I trace some of the beginnings of this notion of
attentiveness as it has arisen in contemporary Western environmental and animal
ethics, including the work of Thomas Birch (1993) and Josephine Donovan (1996), to its
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
fairly recent development into both a philosophical approach and actual practice as a
kind of interspecies etiquette. These latter developments are found in Val Plumwood's
(1993, 2002) "intentional stance" and "dialogical interspecies ethics," and in Jim
Cheney and Anthony Weston's (1999) "environmental etiquette" and "ethics-based
epistemology."
What becomes almost immediately evident is that an ethical praxis of paying
attention requires much more than mere politeness or mildly observing. Indeed, such
acts are often precisely what we should not do, particularly when approaching
individuals of another species. Rather, the kind of attentiveness we are concerned with
here involves one's whole bodily comportment and a recognition that embodiment is
always in relation to social others, both animal and human. As such, it can be informed
by the kinds of comportments of openness and responsivity found in diverse examples
of practical phenomenology, such as Kenneth Shapiro's (1985, 1990, 1997)
"phenomenological method of kinesthetic empathy," Thomas Csordas' (1993)"somatic
modes of attention," and Elizabeth Behnke's (1997) "interkinaesthetic comportment."
Together, they strongly suggest that embodiment enables the expression of ethical
comportment toward others, while also providing a kind of empathic approximation of
the experience of others in our midst, which can (and should) inform our responsive
interactions with them. In this discussion, a broad range of disciplines are brought
together through the notion of attentiveness and contribute to its development into
practical applications, such as a kind of interspecies etiquette.
Overcoming the "Problem" of Embodiment
For some time now, feminists have identified a "crisis of reason" in Western
environmental philosophy, which exerts powerful and dangerous forms of denial, such
as a denial of human animality and of ecological embeddedness (Plumwood 2000),
which have, in the most extreme cases, resulted in catastrophic environmental
degradation, mass species extinction, and violently abusive treatments of animals. The
rational, disembodied human subject has become the centre, and gold standard, of
knowing and of moral judgment, which is the basis of a human-centred, or
anthropocentric, ethic. In typically rationalist approaches to animal ethics, ethical
considerations are then incrementally extended out from this established human moral
core to grant moral status to "others," usually based upon a principle of similarity or
sameness. Environmental philosopher, Tom Regan (2003), for example, argues for an
extension of moral rights to animals who fit certain criteria, such as those who have
"desires and beliefs, who perceive, remember, and can act intentionally" (18), insisting
that they be considered "subjects-of-a-life" and be granted status as "moral patients."
Regan differentiates "moral patients" from "moral agents," in that they "cannot do what
1 The terms "empathy" and "sympathy" enjoy much contestation, so it important here to provide my
working definitions as they are used in this essay. When I use the term "empathy" I am referring to a
capacity engaged in an exercise of imaginative embodiment in which one strives to approximate the
experience of another being through a keen attentiveness to their gestures and actions, aided by an
understanding of their sensory capacities. It does not involve a projection of emotion onto the other, nor
does it mean that one can know exactly how or what the other is actually feeling, which tends to be
implied by "sympathy."
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
is right or wrong .... but moral patients can be on the receiving end of the right or wrong
acts of moral agents" (2003, 18).
His criteria are based upon highly valued human qualities and capacities. Regan's
unacknowledged, yet fundamental, assumption, then, is that these same qualities are
what make humans, unquestionably, moral agents who deserve moral rights; so, the
only way for an animal to be "granted" moral status is to be similar to humans in these
specific ways. Rather than challenging the value hierarchy which places humans as
morally superior to animals, in that animals can only be given moral consideration if
they are shown to be human-like, this dualistic logic reinforces the basis of
anthropocentrism, reasoning through what Plumwood (2002) calls an "assimilationist
framework" (167). However, the main problem of "hyper-rationalism" in Western
philosophy, as ecofeminist Josephine Donovan sees it, is a contemptuous and deliberate
denial of the body in ethical decision-making and in the production of knowledge (1996,
2003, 2006, 306). According to Elizabeth Grosz (1993), the "inability of Western
knowledges to conceive their own processes of (material) production, processes that
simultaneously rely on and disavow the role of the body" (187), is a direct "consequence
of the historical privileging of the purely conceptual or mental over the corporeal" (187).
This patriarchal legacy of valuing a masculinized, pure, detached reason over what have
been constructed as "feminized" embodied modes of knowing, such as emotion, has
fostered a diminution of situated and relational knowledge-making.
Recognizing and revaluing this process of knowledge-making has long been a
project of feminist epistemologies and philosophy (Donovan 2006, 306). This involves
acknowledging that a capacity for emotion and an ability to engage in feminist
epistemologies is not exclusive to women. What are termed "feminist epistemologies"
have developed in Western feminist thought, however, as a response to the dominantly
masculinized paradigm of Western knowledge-making, from which women have
historically been excluded (Alaimo 2000, 155). Consequently, Western environmental
ethics and animal ethics have also rejected emotion as epistemologically valid in moral
deliberation (Donovan 1996, 2003, 2006). In response, ecofeminists, such as Donovan,
have drawn upon the work of Carol Gilligan, a pioneer of feminist ethics, to describe an
ethics of care2 in which compassion and relationships are central. Donovan (2006)
explains that, unlike traditional Western rationalist approaches to a moral dilemma,
feminist animal care theory promotes a "narrative, contextually aware form of reasoning
as opposed to the rigid rationalist abstractions of the "one-size-fits-all" rights and
utilitarian approach, emphasizing instead that we heed the individual particularities of
any given care and acknowledge the qualitative heterogeneity of life-forms" (306).
Consistent with feminist theory, Donovan reminds us that a feminist animal care ethics
must always take into consideration the larger political context within which moral
deliberation arises (2006, 311). These elements are indeed exemplary of feminism's
general insistence upon an acknowledgement of non-ranked differences and an
2 Responsive to constructive critiques that care theory could "reinforce certain assumptions about women
and [their] care giving role in Western patriarchal culture" (Adams 1996, 171), ecofeminists Carol Adams
(1996) and Donovan (2006) point out that practices of care and capacities for compassion are not, and
should not be, gender-specific, and that they need to be reclaimed as such rather than rejected because
they have been dominantly feminized.
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
honoring of first-person narratives which situate diverse individual voices and
experiences, while allowing for alliances based upon common beliefs (Plumwood 1993,
Warren 1998, Gaard 1991). Concomitantly, emphasis on the situated embodiment of
individuals is integral to feminist ethics and epistemologies (Harding 1993, Haraway
1991, Code 1987, 1991), as is a practice of attentiveness (Donovan 1996, Warren 1998,
Plumwood 20 0 2).
Attentive Consideration: Toward Embodied Ethics in Practice
As such, compelling intersections with feminist environmental ethics and
epistemologies are found in Tom Birch's (1993) work involving "attentive
consideration." Likewise , in his article titled "Universal Consideration," Tom Birch
(1993) presents an approach that differs significantly from Western rationalist
approaches to environmental ethics. Breaking it down to three main points, Birch: 1)
rejects the use of, and need for, criteria for moral consideration; 2) proposes
attentiveness and openness to others as a necessary practice in environmental ethics;
and, 3) asserts the contextual and relational nature of ethical obligation (or practical
necessity) (1993). Birch believes that the presupposition that humans can and should
attempt to define criteria for the moral consideration of the more-than-human world is
not only misguided, but, in effect, "imperial power mongering" because it is based upon
the assumption that domination can be legitimate (1993, 381). He states:
moral considerability is one of the credentials for membership in the elite club of
those humans and nonhumans, like national parks, who are to benefit from the
ultimately violent suppression and exploitation of the rest, of the Others (i.e., the
objects that are taken as fit for domination and control). (Birch 1993, 381)
Rejecting what he sees as systemic oppression in Western rationalist environmental
ethics, he is left with the conclusion that moral consideration must be given to anyone
and everyone up front and proposes that humans adopt a perspective of "universal
consideration" (Birch, 1993).3 Thus, by eliminating the need for criteria of inclusion (or
exclusion), every entity becomes a potential subject of moral consideration. Birch (1993)
then redefines 'consideration' as "thoughtful, reflective, meditative attentiveness" (384)
and so describes a practice of "attentive consideration" that humans should engage in
when making an ethical decision (384). Attentive consideration then becomes a basis
upon which to determine the "practical necessity" that is demanded by each specific
occasion of moral conflict, particularly when conflict arises between humans and other
animals (Birch 1993, 384).
It is important to stress that to give this kind of ethical consideration to any
subject or situation does not assume that it already has positive value. It means that
"giving attentive consideration should involve an initial generosity of spirit [italics
3 John Livingston's environmental work has interesting convergences and divergences with Birch's. While
they follow similar paths through the quagmire of Western environmental philosophy, Birch (1993) ends
up with ethics as "universal consideration," and Livingston (1994) ends up with ethics as "prosthetic
devices." See: Livingston, John. Rogue Primate: An Exploration of Human Domestication. Toronto: Key
Porter Books, 1994.
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
added] toward all others in terms of their value potential, the possibility that they might
have positive value of the usual sort" (Birch 1993, 385) even though "the obligation, or
practical necessity, may turn out to be to destroy the item considered, or to despise it, or
to give it negative value" (Birch 1993, 185). For example, Birch states that the "need to
eradicate AIDS, or perhaps a killer grizzly bear, does not, however, preclude, and
actually requires, respecting them" (1993, 385). In his discussion of practical necessity,
Birch refers to an ethics of duties, explaining that "deontic experience is the experience,
in response to something or someone, that one must do something, that one is called
upon to do something" (1993, 382). Generally, in deontic experience, duty is prior to
value (Lacey 1986, 67). Unlike Kantian deontological ethics however, in which humans
can only have duties to other humans, Birch's "deontic experience can be generated out
of a relationship with any kind of entity: persons, things, systems, ecosystems, other
sorts of abstractions, even numbers," (1993, 383). Also in contrast with traditional
Kantian ethics, Birch emphasizes the contextual and relational nature of deontic
experience, stressing that moral obligation (practical necessity) arises in response to
"each particular entity, being or person, and at particular times and in specific places"
(1993, 384). Here again, we see strong resonances between Birch's ethical praxis and the
feminist care ethics described earlier by Donovan.
Attentiveness and Nonverbal Communication
However, Donovan's (1996) application of attentiveness diverges sharply when
she links it to sympathetic response. Building her case for animal rights, she insists that
the human capacity to sympathize with animal suffering and pain is what should move
humans to grant moral status to those animals. However, she then, ironically, employs a
similar extentionist strategy as Regan to grant moral status to animals based upon their
similarity to humans, stating that:
if one sees the other as a creature who suffers in a manner like oneself, then one
can imagine oneself in that creature's situation and can thus imaginatively
experience his pain. One thereby implicitly grants him moral status comparable
to one's own. (Donovan 2006, 315)
Donovan's statement reveals several problematic assumptions. One assumption, also
underlying rationalist ethics, is that humans already have the right to "grant" moral
status to others, which implies that humans have both the ability and authority to prejudge who counts morally and who does not. Another, more complicated, and I would
add contentious, assumption is that humans can experience and know how other
individual animals feel. Problematically, Donovan asserts that the body language of
nearly all animals, including humans is "homologous," and therefore humans can
understand nonverbal animal communication (2006, 315).
Here I tread very carefully with my discussion of Donovan's provocative claims,
because while I disagree for significant reasons, I appreciate the direction she takes by
focusing on contextual situations between humans and animals and the need to pay
careful attention to animals as communicative beings. I find aspects of Donovan's
(2006) proposal for a dialogical approach to feminist care ethics inspiring and
particularly her argument in favor of an alternative epistemology which includes
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
embodied, emotional modes of knowing as being vital to moral deliberation. However,
other key theoretical points are in almost direct opposition to my own. While I concur
that it is important to attend to the actions and nonverbal communication of animals, I
do not think humans can thereby know what animals are 'saying,' per se, or how they
actually feel. And, while I do think there are corporeal grounds for interacting with
animals in ways that enable us to understand each other to a certain, limited degree, I
am not comfortable with calling our embodiments "homologous" and assuming that it
gives us access to the emotional experience of other animals. For example, Donovan
states that "in the case of snakes and spiders, ... we can see by their body language
(which is homologous to ours) that they experience terror and anxiety, that they shrink
away from sources of pain, that they want to live" (2006, 315). I do agree that the body
language and actions of the snakes and spiders, say fleeing from an approaching human,
while not homologous, can still indicate that what is happening is meaningful to them in
some way, and that it expresses an avoidance of that human. However, I do not think I
can assume that I know how they actually feel in the situation, or that I can know that
simply by their actions they are avoiding pain and "want to live." The latter assumptions
would result from my interpretation of their actions based upon my reflections on
human emotions and experiences, and on my imagination of what such actions and
gestures could mean if I performed them myself.
It is crucial to the development of Western animal ethics to find a fine balance in
our understandings of continuity and difference across species (Aaltola 2002).
Plumwood negotiates tensions between continuity, or similarities across species, and
difference, or radical otherness, with her notion of intentionality (1993, 134).
Celebrating a radical diversity of "mindlike qualities," Plumwood proposes that
"intentionality provides a way to realize continuity without assimilation, to represent the
staggering and exuberant complexity and heterogeneity of nature" (1993, 134), while at
the same time accommodating "an overall ground of continuity, and a way to reject any
absolute, cosmic division or break between the human and natural spheres based on the
possession of mind" (1993, 134). Indeed, as I will show later through examples of
practical phenomenology, embodiment itself provides a basic dimension of continuity
through which embodied attentiveness can be engaged to reveal significant differences
and individual uniqueness. Sameness and homology are not necessary conditions;
rather they are in need of contestation.
Even Donovan wavers somewhat on her assertion of homology when she both
agrees and disagrees with Thomas Nagel (1974). On the one hand, she admits that
humans probably cannot know what it is like for a bat to be a bat, because she thinks
humans are "limited by our mental apparatus" (Donovan 2006, 321). On the other hand,
Donovan argues that "more effort can be made to decipher animal communications and
that while we may never fully understand what it feels like to be a bat, we can
understand certain pertinent basics [italics added] of his or her experience, sufficient
for the formulation of an ethical response" (2006, 321). Regarding her first point, as I
argue elsewhere4, limitations to human understanding may have more to do with
differences across species and individuals in phenomenological, sensory experience
4 Please see my doctoral dissertation: "Captive Imaginations: Affordances for Ethics, Agency and
Knowledge-Making in Whale-Human Encounters," York University, Toronto, ON, 2008.
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics & the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
more broadly defined, and with the relative limitations of human perception compared
with the physiology and abilities of other animals, than with human "mental apparatus."
Regarding her second point, I think she is quite right that humans can, with careful
attention, understand some basic qualities of gestures and behaviors to the extent that
attentiveness to nonverbal communication can inform an ethical response, particularly
in moments of direct human-animal interactions. For support, and to illustrate this
embodied potential, I turn to scholars of practical phenomenology.
Practical Phenomenology for Human-Animal Interactions
Bodies, however physically and physiologically different, can be grounds for
nonverbal communication and for interpreting behavior through attending to the
embodied movements of others. Cultural anthropologist Thomas Csordas (1993)
purposefully adopts such a practice in his research on charismatic healing in Catholic
and Navajo rituals, describing it as an engagement in: "somatic modes of attention."
Csordas' term refers deliberately to multiple modes of sensory engagement rather than
just visual attention, which is predominant in methods of observation. It also means
that one engages their own body not only as a way of sensing the embodiments of others
but as a way of grasping the meaning expressed in those embodiments. Attentiveness to
one's own body in the process of attending to others, Csordas states, "allows us more
immediately to grasp or recognize a set of socially salient bodily dispositions of posture,
bearing, and physique" (1999, 148). Similarly, psychologist Kenneth Shapiro has devised
an "empirical phenomenological method" of "kinesthetic empathy," but it differs
significantly because it is specifically developed to be exercised between beings of
different species (1997, 294).5 He describes the method as "an investigatory posture of
bodily sensibility adopted to promote empathic access to the meaning implicit in an
animal's postures, gestures, and behavior" (Shapiro 1997, 292). Shapiro developed and
used this method in phenomenological studies of his dog, Sabaka. He asserts that this
method has uses and application beyond just himself and Sabaka, explaining that there
is a visceral basis for his ability to empathize with Sabaka and that it is one that all
embodied beings share to some extent. Because of this,
we have the capacity to approximate the shape of another being's experience,
including that of other species. When we critically apply this empathic ability, the
product is not anthropomorphic error. We do not project our own shape,
although we can. Rather, as we have described under the rubric of kinesthetic
empathy, we can assume the shape of another being's experience and thereby
gain in understanding of that experience. (Shapiro 1 997, 294)
Shapiro's phenomenological method starts from a standpoint that respects and seeks to
engage the individual subjectivity of other-than-human animals (1997, 295). Most
importantly, Shapiro's empirical phenomenological method offers an irruption of
embodiment and empathy as a verb, as active. Consequently, Shapiro's method
converges with Csordas' cultural phenomenology, which is a method of inquiry
"concerned with synthesizing the immediacy of embodied experience with the
multiplicity of cultural meaning in which we are always and inevitably immersed"
5 Interestingly, Donovan (1996) also takes up the work of Kenneth Shapiro to explore the possibilities of
attentiveness and interspecies understanding in her discussion of sympathy.
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
(Csordas 1999, 143). Both methods involve somatic modes of attention for attending
with the body as a situated researcher and attending to the bodies of humans and other
animals.
There are important qualities of intentionality and intersubjectivity to this kind of
attentiveness. Attending with one's body goes far beyond just looking toward or gazing
at; it means turning a full bodily engagement toward others, it means that our very own
bodies can actually tell us something about others and about the world if we are
attentive to it and them (Csordas 1993, 138-9). Taking up an uncannily similar
perspective on embodiment, in yet another disciplinary field, philosopher and practical
phenomenologist Elizabeth Behnke (1997) has explored "interkinaesthetic
comportment," the ongoing adjustments of postures, gestures, actions made in relation
to others, in human-human and human-animal interactions. Like Csordas and Shapiro,
beyond the immediate interplay between two beings, she is also interested in how
external factors, both social and physical, further influence these situated exchanges.
The contention is that in particular places and social situations, we tend to adopt certain
patterns of movement and habits of posture and gesture, some of which may, over time
and through repetition, become sedimented into a repertoire of micromovements that
Behnke calls "ghost gestures." She finds the "tacit choreography of everyday life" and
"micromovements witness to our sociality insofar as they are not only socially shaped,
but perpetuate certain styles of intercorporeal interaction and sustain certain modes of
responsivity" (Behnke 1997, 181). There is a tendency to embody, in the form of
recognizable postures and gestures, certain social and cultural expectations. Behnke
gives the example of a child who, when repeatedly urged to concentrate harder on her
homework, merely displayed "a kinaesthetic pattern that is visibly expressive of
"trying" (1997, 190). That is, she "hunched over her work, frowning and staring at the
page, clenching her teeth and gripping her pencil tightly" (Behnke 1997, 190).
Kinaesthetic patterns, Behnke suggests, can become sedimented in our bodies,
but not in a rigidly fixed sense, rather as a repertoire of interkinaesthic comportments.
Ghost gestures related to controlling the body, like "bracing" and "holding back," are
likely some of the most commonly shared (Behnke 1997, 192). Many people will be able
to identify with holding back "in, for instance, an educational system that expects people
to sit still and shut up, producing a "schooled body" (Behnke 1997, 192). Past and
present commingle in our embodied responses to situations. As Behnke reminds us,
embodiments of ghost gestures are not merely hangovers from past experiences, "but
may be an all too appropriate response to networks of power relations operating here
and now" (1997, 193). Similarly, ghost gestures are not "merely the manifestation of
individual "psychological problems" that have been "somatized" in "holding patterns."
Rather, they may be clues to the way(s) bodies and bodily movements in general are
ongoingly shaped in a particular social milieu" (Behnke 1997, 193). For these reasons,
Behnke reminds us that careful attention must be brought to "ghost gestures," to our
own involuntary, interkinaesthetic comportments. She warns that we tend to embody
ghost gestures and a "toxic intercorporeity" (Behnke 1997, 196) which, if left unattended
to, can be particularly counterproductive to interspecies interactions, which depend
entirely on nonverbal communication and body language. She explains that toxic
intercorporeity often takes the forms of "bracing and numbing oneself and then
"vacating the area" (Behnke 1997, 195).
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
Fortunately, Behnke offers a method for becoming aware of and negotiating
ghost gestures from within (1997, 195), and even proposes a way for transformative
embodiments by actively re-inhabiting them and then consciously altering the pattern
(Behnke 1997, 198). She provides a compelling example, which Behnke herself has
exercised, in her "interspecies practice of peace" (1999). Ultimately, Behnke (1997)
constructively suggests that her method of phenomenological investigation "can be a
kind of "action research" that not only calls us to ethical self-responsibility, but can
eventually lead to the development of an embodied ethics, in both theory and practice"
(198). In practice, such an embodied ethics would strive to avoid what Behnke refers to
as a contagion of toxic intercorporeity: "for example, if one walks into a room full of
tense, angry, frustrated, or anxious people, one may well find — if one has the
appropriate sensibility to discern it — that one's own ambient bodily tonus has also
increased" (1997, 196). Imagine, then, if a researcher embodies a toxic intercorporeity,
how might it affect the research subjects and the whole relational space? According to a
rationalist method of research, particularly in many forms of animal studies, an
investigator is meant to uninhabit their own body and actively refrain from
intercorporeity of any sort, in an attempt to be a neutral and detached observer.
Researchers are schooled to adopt these postures in their scientific training which
eventually become routine and involuntary ghost gestures in their practices. It begs the
question of how these micromovements of vacancy and numbness or freezing of bodies
might affect the research space, and thus the results?
In reality, actual disembodiment is not possible. Feminists know this rationalist
practice to be the "illusion of unobtrusive intrusion" (Desmond 1999, 191) and feminist
epistemologies reclaim the role of embodiment in situated research. Acknowledging
embodiment as Behnke does, then, corresponds nicely with methods for a feminist,
ethics-based epistemology. The project remains however, for working out how to inhabit
bodies in ethically appropriate ways for interspecies research, as well as in everyday
social interactions. It leads Behnke to ask: "What, for instance, are the interkinaesthetics
of genuine mutual responsivity? .... And what sorts of practices swing into play and
reinforce the style of bodily micromovements that further healthy intercorporeity?"
(1997, 196). Fortunately, these questions find the generative beginnings of answers in
Cheney and Weston's (1999) ethics-based epistemology.
Attentiveness and Invitation: Toward Interspecies Etiquette
In their development of an environmental etiquette and ethics-based
epistemology, Cheney and Weston (1999) were strongly inspired by the praxis of
attentiveness and generosity of spirit underlying Birch's universal consideration (265).
Like Birch, Cheney and Weston's (1999) approach is also sharply distinct from
traditional Western philosophy and rationalist moral considerations of animals. They
explain that,
on the usual view, ...we must first know what animals are capable of, then decide
on that basis whether and how we are to consider them ethically. On the
alternative view, we will have no idea of what other animals are actually capable
— we will not readily understand them — until we already have approached them
ethically — that is, until we have offered them the space and time, the occasion,
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics & the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
and the acknowledgement necessary to enter into relationship. Ethics must come
first. (Cheney and Weston 1999, 118)
Cheney and Weston (1999) highlight four problematic assumptions foundational to
traditional Western environmental ethics. They are that: a) "ethical action is a response
to our knowledge of the world" (Cheney and Weston 1999, 116); b) "the world is readily
knowable" (Cheney and Weston 1999, 116); c) changes in ethical theory only occurs
through marginal extensions of the established central models; and, d) "the task of
ethics is to sort the world ethically" (Cheney and Weston 1999, 117). As Weston further
points out, the third assumption is distinctly evident in a "Singerian moral
extensionism" (2004, 28), which remains stuck in the realm of "concentrisms," which
are ultimately bound to a human-centred moral core (2004, 27). By contrast, Weston
and Cheney present alternative assumptions that insist upon an approach of open
wonder and respect for mystery, and an acceptance that some things may be
unknowable and that others can come to be known only if they are first approached
ethically (1999, 118).
Furthermore, they propose that human and other animal beings are best
approached through a process of "practical etiquette" in which "the task is to create the
space within which a response can emerge or an exchange coevolve" (Cheney and
Weston 1999, 126). Such etiquette could be expressed in an enactment of bodily
invitation (Cheney and Weston 1999). For, "if our very mode of approach shapes that
world in turn, then ethics itself must be a form of invitation or welcoming, sometimes of
ritual invocation and sometimes of literally creating the settings in which new
possibilities might emerge" (Weston 2004, 32). In other words, to bear an open
"invitation" in this way is to embody a kind of non-anthropocentric, or posthumanist,
ethics. Intent and attitude can be communicated through the body and cannot be easily
masked. An example of the telltale nature of bearing is found in Vicki Hearne's account
of observing people in a chimpanzee laboratory (Cheney and Weston 1999, 127). She
readily distinguishes between three types of demeanor belonging to three particular
types of people: animal trainers and handlers, Hollywood types, and academics. To her
surprise, Hearne finds that she can discern each of them from a distance, just by the way
they hold themselves as they approach and move through the compound: the handlers
and trainers move with an acute awareness and receptiveness of the animals that
surrounded them, the Hollywood types move with complete indifference and the
academics with an air of distanced observation that is nonetheless intrusive (Cheney
and Weston 1999, 128).
In the way humans approach other animals, Plumwood also ponders "is it to be a
posture of openness, of welcoming, of invitation, towards earth others, or is it to be a
stance of prejudged superiority, of deafness, of closure" (2002, 175-176). As with Cheney
and Weston's etiquette of invitation, a comportment of openness is also a key element of
Plumwood's ethical praxis. Indeed, Plumwood has long promoted embodiments of
"intentional stance" in animal-human encounters (1993, 137). Plumwood explains: "we
can encounter the earth other as a potential intentional subject, as one who can alter us
as well as we it, and thus can begin to conceive a potential for a mutual and sustaining
interchange with nature" (1993, 137). Positing moral responsibility as emerging within
these kinds of interchanges between human and animal intentional subjects reveals the
10
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
specific and situational qualities of ethical moments. "Thus," in Plumwood's (1993)
words, "the intentional stance makes possible the conception of our relationships to
earth others in ethical and political terms, where ethics is defined as the domain of
response to the other's needs, ends, directions, or meaning" (138). This ethics is highly
contextual and specific.
To illustrate, Plumwood (2002) poses two scenarios in which a potential conflict
arises between a human and a) a poisonous snake or b) a difficult human stranger, who
has taken up residence on the veranda (170). In some cases, the original human
occupant may have some reason to accommodate either of the two strangers. Perhaps,
as Plumwood suggests, they may be accommodating if they "have some responsibility
for their homelessness, or it is an emergency and temporary situation, a flood, for
example" (2002, 170-171). However, in other cases, the original human occupant may
reason that if the situation poses danger or is likely to result in conflict, it may be
appropriate to encourage the stranger, snake or human, to move on. But Plumwood is
careful to clarify that there are further considerations inherent in this potential course of
action, such that:
different methods of encouragement and different levels of responsibility for
finding other accommodation may apply, depending on the context. But in
neither case, as a matter of justice, are you entitled to initiate unnecessary and
disproportionate violence, shooting the snake, or the difficult human, for
example, just on the grounds that they may become a problem, and without
trying less punitive solutions. (2002, 171)
Plumwood's hypothetical scenario exemplifies many key contours of feminist,
posthumanist environmental ethics. Reasoning through a narrative situation involves
detailed consideration of a highly specific context in which varying degrees of
responsibility may arise through the snake-human and human-human relationships.
There can be no prior assumptions of moral value according to dualistic ontology to
provide a one-size-fits-all solution. Plumwood argues, in her recent book,
Environmental Culture, for a "dialogical interspecies ethic" (2002, 189), in which the
role of nonverbal communication between beings is fundamental to the generation of
knowledge leading to an ethical relationship. Such an ethic fundamentally involves
"reconstructing human identity in ways that acknowledge our animality, decentre
rationality and abandon exclusionary concepts of rationality" (Plumwood 2002, 194).
Furthermore, it requires an "openness to the non-human other as potentially an
intentional and communicative being" (Plumwood 2002, 194), and an "active invitation
to communicative interaction" (Plumwood 2002, 194).
Plumwood asserts that when the category and identity of 'rational human' is no
longer ranked as superior to all other experiences of being, there is then potential for
humans to encounter and approach animals as intentional and communicable beings
(2002, 194). With rationalist and humanist assumptions so disrupted, communication is
no longer restricted to a verbal exchange between humans, and can be redefined as a
greater range of nonverbal, embodied expressiveness (Plumwood 2002, 192). Moreover,
this ethic and its intentional stance enable a recognition of animal agency and
communication, which "is in turn central to any kind of negotiation or mutual
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
adjustment process" (Plumwood, 2002, 178). For instance, Plumwood recounts the
scenario in which a venomous tiger snake appeared repeatedly to bask in the sun on her
veranda. In response, Plumwood was "able to convey [her] own counter claims to the
space effectively by throwing some sandshoes to land within a foot or so of the sleepy
reptile, who slithered off promptly and never returned" (2002, 178). Her example
reinforces that the process of embodying a practical environmental etiquette in getting
to know an animal other requires a more conscious embrace and enactment of an ethical
position, one that strives to be approachable and receptive to animal others. Simply
encountering other beings without an immediate awareness of comportment may do
little to enable meaningful and informative interaction. As Weston explains, performing
etiquette:
requires us to move with caution, attentiveness, circumspection. Ethics is no
longer constituted by a merely abstract respect, but demands something far more
embodied: a willingness and ability to make the space, not just conceptually, but
in one's own person [italics added] and in the design and structure of personal
and human spaces, for the emergence of more-than-human others into
relationship. (2004, 31)
With this quote, Weston further draws attention to the visceral and active qualities of
etiquette, to how we gesture and move our bodies in relation to others. It is not enough
for one to simply adopt an attitude of politeness or to merely engage in abstract
considerations. To these ends, Elizabeth Behnke provides a cogent example in her
"interspecies practice of peace" (1999).
A Practice of Peace and the Possibilities Beyond
As a practicing phenomenologist, Behnke (1999) has developed a form of
interkinasethetic comportment which shares many qualities with Plumwood's
intentional stance and Cheney and Weston's etiquette, as well as with Csordas' somatic
modes of attention and Shapiro's kinesthetic empathy. She created it in relation with
two cats, Jo Jo and B.C. (Bad Cat), who often came into confrontation with each other
(Behnke 1999, 102). It was not intentional at first, but after repeatedly rushing out to
intervene in a situation that she anticipated would result in a cat fight, Behnke realized
that her fear and tension were contributing to an already tense situation in the way toxic
ghost gestures can be intercorporeally contagious. She then purposefully uninhabited
embodiments of tension, fear and anticipation of the fight and instead cultivated a calm
and calming way of bodily being.
She describes her practice of peace as a process of: "letting my weight settle;
experientially "inhabiting" the kinaesthesia of my own gaze; opening my heart; and notknowing what is going to happen next" (Behnke 1999, 102). This series of embodiments
enabled her to uninhabit threatening postures and gestures. For example, letting her
weight settle reconfigured her initial posture of readiness for a fight, like being ready to
pounce on the cats to break things up, and by softening her gaze, she no longer stared
pointedly at each of the cats. Behnke found that inhabiting these nonconfrontational
postures and micromovements indeed helped to diffuse the situation, and at the very
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
least, did not serve to escalate the aggressive tone within the interkinaesthetic field
(1997, 105).
Behnke's phenomenological practice holds much promise for etiquette in
interspecies encounters, but it is important to recognize that her interactions took place
in a relatively unrestricted, relational environment. The context in which one might
engage in something like Behnke's practice of peace matters greatly and may
dramatically affect the process. As Ralph Acampora asserts, ideally, encounters should
take place between free-living animals and humans, in "that "living room" which
permits genuine confrontation complete with all its motile possibilities of adversity,
avoidance, and free association" (1999, 127). Also interested in what phenomenological
insights and practices have to offer to posthumanist, ethical human-animal
relationships, Acampora (1999) is working "toward a somatology of cross-species
community." Like Behnke, he is optimistic that "live bodiment can function as a conduit
for interspecific conviviality" (Acampora 1999, 122). Along these lines, Behnke ponders
the potential applications of her practices of bodily awareness and conscious
embodiments of peace and openness, such as a "readiness for improvisation" (1999,
107) for encounters with free-living animals in the wild (1999, in).
Ultimately, we have seen how a praxis of attentiveness inspires many practical
applications of ethical interactions between species. We are encouraged to ponder what
the further possibilities might be for animal studies and animal ethics, and for animal
research which could employ dramatically different and less obtrusive approaches and
technologies. There is so much potential for new developments of interspecies etiquette
in fieldwork, which could engage in an ethics-based epistemology (Cheney & Weston,
1999), and recognize research as truly "collaborative ventures" (Plumwood 2002, 195)
between humans and animals. Collaboration is possible, and likely even unavoidable to
a certain extent. Attentiveness to the reciprocal influences of social interactions further
recognizes the agency of the animals involved. Respect for that agency must also be
embodied and given "up front" as an ethical stance. Just as by Cheney and Weston's
(1999) ethics-based epistemological model one would 'get to know' other animals as
independent subjects, without using coercion, and would , ideally, opt to engage in
voluntary participatory encounters rather than forcing them into a human realm,
literally and figuratively, for interaction and observation. One would, at the very least,
attempt to meet animals halfway. This is the crux of the embodied interspecies etiquette
illustrated by Jim Nollman when he invites wild orcas to jam with him: "using musical
media which all cetaceans seem to prefer, paddling out to them in his floating rhythm
section, thus in a way that allows them to decline the encounter entirely or to break it off
whenever they wish" (Cheney and Weston 1999, 129).
In sum, the bodily enactments of openness and responsivity in interspecies
interactions matters as much as where and how the meeting takes place. As Behnke
reflects, her practice of peace does not function to suddenly unify atomistic bodies,
rather, it works because beings are "always already interkinaesthetically linked, and
what the practice [she is] describing does is to lift this connectivity from blind
anonymity to lucidly lived awareness" (1999, p. 109). Such an awareness of one's active
embodiment corresponds with ethics as a conscious way of being in the world. As Lyon
and Barbalet (1994) assert, "the body is intercommunicative and active. In a significant
Warkentin, Traci. "Interspecies etiquette: An ethics of paying attention to animals."
Ethics Et the Environment, 15 (Forthcoming).
social sense the body referred to here is not simply the body we have but the body we
are [italics added]" (56). All of the interdisciplinary contours touched upon in this
paper, then, mingle to form an interspecies etiquette through ethical ways of being and
of approaching others. These require the cultivation of a keen awareness of
embodiment, our own and the bodiments of other animals, to grasp continuities and
negotiate key differences. On the way to interspecies etiquette, then, a praxis of
attentiveness is a promising start.
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