Deleuze and the Non/Human Edited by jon Roffe U11iversity o(New South Wales, Australia and Hannah Stark U11iversity o(Tasma11ia, Australia pal grave macmillan * Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Jon Roffe and Hannah Stark 2015 Remaining chapters© Respective authors 2015 Contents All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC 1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. 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Acknowledgments vii Notes on Contributors viii Intro duction: Deleuze and the Non/ Human 1 Jon Roffe and Hannah Stark 1 Deleuze and the Nonhuman Turn: An Interview with 17 Elizabeth Grosz Jon Roffe and Hannah Stark 25 2 Nonhuman Life Ashley Woodward 3 Objectal Hum an: On the Place o f Psychic Systems in Difference and Repetition Jon Roffe 42 4 Human and Nonhuman Agency in Deieuze Sean Bowden 60 s 81 Beyond the Human Condition: Bergson and Deleuze Keith Ansell-Pearson 6 Insects and Oth er Minute Perception s in the 103 Baroque House Undine Sellbach and Stephen Loo 7 Iqbal's Becoming-Woman in The Rape o{ Sita Simone Bigna/1 122 8 Becoming-Animal Is a Trap for Humans: Deleuze and Guattari in Madagascar Timothy Laurie 142 9 The Companion Cyborg: Technics and Domestication 163 Ronald Bogue v 13ecoming-Animnl ls a Tmp for Humans 8 Becoming-Animal Is a Trap for Humans: Deleuze and Guattari in Madagascar Timothy Laurie If you were introducing Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari 's A Thousand Plateaus (1980) to a seven-year-old who found Anti-Oedipus (1972) boring, you might say that the sequ el has more animals. Deleuze and Guattari make o nly few, scathing references to pets, but they do make frequent mentio n of horses (81 times, to be exact), as well as ticks, birds, rats, Moby Dick and groups marked by animal names: leopard-men, crocodile-men, and - borrowing fro m Sigmund Freud - the Wolf Man and his wolf packs. Unlike Guattari's later publicatio n, The Three Ecologies (Guattari 2005 [1989]), A Thousand Plateaus does no t advance any arguments abo ut contemporary environmental issues o r the treatm ent of no nhuman ani mals. There are no demands for the recognition, recovery, o r recuperation of Nature, and the book conti n ues to extend the formulas outlined in Anti-Oedipus: 'Nature=lndustry, Nature=History' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1 972): 26). Our token seven-year-old wo uld n ot easily confuse Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus with th e second gro up of texts considered in this essay, Dream Works Animations' Madagascar (2005) and its two sequels. The Madagascar trilogy is not about nonhuman animals. It does no t take an interest in lions or zebras or giraffes or hippopotamuses. Dream Wo rks' nonhumans are situation comed y archetypes, lightly sprin kled with hooves, stripes and whiskers. Furthermore, setting aside the abundance of lemurs, no thing in Madagascar indicates an interest in Madagascar. Nevertheless, this essay argues th at Deleuze and Guattari's concept of 'becoming-a nimal' offers a sup ple framewo rk fo r reading the nonhumans in Madagascar outside the templates provided by psychoanalysis and structuralism. At the same time, I argue that 'becoming-a nimal' 142 143 entraps the reader at the very moment that it acquires any n ormative fo rce, because the will to 'become-animal' pre-supposes a m odality of narcissistic ego-formati on th at Deleuze and Guattari criticize elsewhere. The essay begins by exploring the implications of anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism fo r animated fea tu re film s, focusing on j ack Halberstam's q ueer critica l com mentary on Pixa r Studios. A reciprocal exchange is then staged between Deleuze and Gua ttari and the Madagascar trilogy, in order to interroga te three kinds of investment in the no nhuman . First, I fo llow Deleuze and Guattari in questioning narcissistic investments in personhood that turn some nonhumans into 'pets'. Secondly, I questio n geo-po litical investments in both the 'human' and 'nonhuman' as structural articulations of community and belo nging, taking as an example the racial logics of the Madagascar fra nchise. Thirdly, the essay examines Deleuze and Guattari's concept of 'becoming-animal', and the attendant notion of the 'anom alous', in relation to King Julien, a lemur who becomes the focal point for the various racial and sexual anxieties played out in Madagascar. The essay concludes by arguing that distinctions are needed between arguments for or against humanism as an ideological system, and the pragmatics of humanism as a d ialogic structure, which involves hailing a reader as always-already invested in a project of improving human beliefs and practices. Two humans Humanism fabricates the human as much as it fabricates the n onhuman animal. Although the term 'humanist' has enj oyed a variety of usages since its inception in the nineteenth century (see McNei1 2005: 166), its 'modern' o r 'post-Kantian ' articul ations broadly conform to Jan Hunter's following definition : 'It proposes that human attributes and d ispositions, together with the forms of social and political life, have a single no rma tive fo undation' (Hunter 1992: 480). The human is split in two: on the o ne hand, there is the species called Homo sapiens that exists on a continuum with a va ri ety of o ther organisms, some with greater o r fewer anatomical resemblances; o n the o ther hand, there is the moral subj ect defined as possessing 'th e ability to reason, self-awareness, possessing a sense of justice, language, autonomy, and so on ' (Si nger 2006: 4). Th e 'human' becomes a placeho lder for a range of attributes that have been considered most virtuo us among humans (e.g. rationality, altruism), rather than m ost commo nplace (e.g. h unger, anger) (Singer 2006: 4). This m oral humanism can have direct po litical consequences. The 'single normative foundation' of humanism can be used to disqu alify 144 Timothy Lattrie som e human beings as less qualified to self-governance than o thers, based o n cultura lly specific criteria for virtuo us human behav ior. For exa mp le, the development of li beral human ism in European political discourses during the seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries can be linked to the po pular no tio n of the 'civilizing missio n' used to legiti mate colonial expa nsio n (see Gilroy 2000). Humanism requires a narcissistic self-versio ning o f th e human: if humans are rational, how do we know that we are being rational? If humans communicate, how do we know that we are communicating? If the human is mora l, do we have proof that we have o urselves been moral? The splitting of the 'human' and its attendant narcissisms come into sharp relief in d iscussions of nonhuman an imals. Peter Singer defines 'speciesism' as ' the idea that it is justifiable to give preference to beings simply on the grounds that they are members of the species Homo sapiens' (Singer 2006: 3; see also Lamarre 2008). An indirect articulation o f 'speciesism' is 'ethical an thropocentrism', which allows for the provisiona l inclusion of non humans as moral persons, but where 'mere images of o ther anima ls' and domesticated animals 'remain th e principle focus, because they are, misleadingly, held out as representative o r the paradig m of all non human lives' (Wa ldau 2006: 78, emphasis in original). Con temporary blockbuster animations that foreground sympathetic and charismatic nonhumans provide important oppo rtunities to think through humanism as a narrative about humans, one that has implications for nonhumans also. Since the resurgence of Disney feature films with The Little Mermaid (1989), high -budget animation s have become part of the Hollywood box office furnit ure, with phenomenal successes from Pixar Studios, DreamWorks Animations and more recently, Blue Sky Studios. This family film industry has been buoyed by high-grossing releases like The Lion King (1994, Disney), Toy Story (1995, Pixar), Shrek (2001, Dream Works), Ice Age (2002, Blue Sky), Wall-E (2008, Pixar) and Frozen (2013, Disney). In each case, a visual staple has been the inclusion of no nhuman characters with human traits: toys, mammoths, dragons, monkeys, snowmen, monsters, and so o n. Such narratives are conspicuously 'anthropocentric'. Recent Pixar films, such as Cars (2011), Planes (2013) and Planes: Fire & Reswe (2014), not to mention the unwieldy Transformers franchise (2007- present), permit hulking machines to acquire 'humanizing' facial traits by delimiting a field 'that neutralizes in advance any expressions or connections unamenable to the appropriate significatio ns' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 186). Bold facial features- big eyes, yawning laughs, diminutive o r obese noses- reorient Becoming-Anima/Is a Trap for Httmans 145 surround ing surfaces, li mbs, attach ments and gestures back towards the reciproca ted human gaze. Thro ugh th e face things abandon their thingness and becom e human, but the process is hardly a secret; indeed, it forms a major plot point in many contemporary an imated fea tu res. Madagascar (2005; 2008; 2012) extracts serial laughs from the d iscovery tha t th e Central Park Zoo is populated by New Yorkers; in Toy St01y (1995), the commercial standardization of children's toys is resisted by plastic heroes who prove their human worth as mora l individuals; Cars and Planes suggest to open-minded viewers tha t cars or planes may turn o ut to be young male heterosexuals. The issue here is not simply misrepresenting nonhumans. Anthropocen trism, and its sibling, anthropomorp hism, imply an 'anthro' to which a given representatio n wo uld be 'centric' or 'morphic'. We know that a laughing hi ppopotamus is an thropomorphic because its laugh is human. But not all humans laugh -some may never laugh. Fo r no nhuman animals to resemble huma n animals, t he human itself must undergo a tra nsformation. 'Laug hter' signifies someth ing about the hippo but also something abou t desirable qualities in humans. It's a trivia l example, of co urse. Anthropomorphic representations of heterosex ual romance can be more troubli ng. The t rans-species appea l to heterosexua li ty as a humanizing quality is what enables Disney films li ke The Lion King (1994) o r The Princess and the Frog (2009) to absorb any ambiguities around sexuality that could be raised when, say, a male meerkat and a male warthog become life-pa rtners, or when two exhumans resign themselves to shared inti macy as frogs. In The Queer Art of Failure (2011), j ack Halberstam criticizes 'gross and crude forms of anthropocentrism' (33) where the h uman 'projects all o f his or her uninspired and unexa mined conceptions about life and living onto animals, who may actually foster far more creative or at least more surprising mo des of living and sharing spaces' (Halbersta m 2011: 34). In particular, 1-Ialberstam notes that the function o f transsexual, hermaphroditic, non-mo nogamo us and homosexual animals 'has been mostly misunderstood and folded into rigid and unimaginative hetero-familial schemes of reproductive zeal and the su rvival of the fi ttest' (I-Ialberstam 201 1: 39). The zealous gendering of the Pixar and Dream Works universes also conforms to cliches well-documented in Jive-action cinema. Simply consider the middling narrative contributions of Little Bo-peep in Toy Story (1995, 1998, 2010), the female secretary in Monster's Inc. (2001), Gloria the hippopotamus in Madagascar (2005), the undervalued co-chef in Ratatouille (2007), Kitty Softpaws in Puss In Boots (201 1), and the Lois Lane-inspired reporters in Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (2009) and 146 Timothy Laurie Megamind (201 0). The inclusion of female characters in these studios' narratives is mostly dependent on their function s within romantic subplots, and these storylines are themselves the objects of casual ridicule. However, by making the labor of 'humanizing' the human more visible, films otherwise guil ty of anthromorphism ca n produce unexpected openings. This may be exactly what children wa nt. Halberstam suggests that ' [animated] films are for children who believe that "things" (toys, nonhuman anima ls, rocks, sponges) are as lively as humans', and that to 'captivate the child audience, an animated film cannot deal o nly in the realms of success and triumph and perfection' (27). Responding to the specificity of childhood experiences, Pi xar Studios' successful run of animated films 'question and shift the locatio n, th e terms, and the meanings of th e artificial boundaries between humans, animals, machines, states of life and dea th, animation and reanimatio n, living, evolving, becoming and transforming' (Halberstam 2011: 33). From an aesthetic v iewpoint, an 'animated self allows fo r the deconstruction of a timeless and natural humanity', and from a narrative viewpoint, the Pixar films 'connect individualism to selfishness, to untrammelled co nsumption, and th ey oppose it with a collective mentality' (47). Furthermore, insofar as this 'collective mentality' involves preferences for 'diverse communities' over families or 'extraordinary individuals', Halberstam argues for queer readings of significant animated texts (47). These include Chicken Run (2000), featuring a collective of proletarian hens escaping captivity (32); Monster's Inc. (2001), in which the 'humanmonster bond is queer in its reorganization of family and affinity' (44); and Robots (2005), where the 'labour of producing the baby is queer in that it is shared and improvised, of culture rather than nature, an act of construction rather than reproduction' (45). The Queer Arto(Failure tends to assume that multiple transgressions will coincide through a snowbaling effect. Crossing the line between human and nonhuman will denaturalize familial sentiments; these in turn will dismantle binary gender-norms and heteronormativity; and finally, having removed the obstacle of coupledom, these transgressions will contribute to collectivist ideals amenable to revolutionary praxis. Unfortunately, these transgressions are criss-crossed with fault lines. To take familiar examples, proletarian collectivism has long (albei t m ixed) histories of homophobia and xenophobia (Roediger 2005), while the dramatization of cultural 'improvization' and 'construction rather than reproduction' is a genre staple of romantic comedies like Love Actually (2003) or even Knocked Up (2007), where heteronormativity thrives through ad hoc solutions to profound failings in the nuclear famil y form. Becoming-Animnlls n Trnp for Htunmls 147 Furthermore, Halberstam seems to suggest that distinctly 'childish' attachments to an imals wi ll em anate directly from a given period of human biological maturation. From a historical perspective, the quality and duration of childhood is more likely shaped by social policy, political opportunism, pedagogical institutio ns, and youth-specific market segmentation (see Driscoll 2002). The Queer Art o( Failure assumes that the ideal viewer of animated films, The Child, will sift through the clutter of bombastic gestures, songs, and jokes, and discover enduring human va lues: 'collectivity', 'diversity', 'sharing'. These pedagogical norms have been tirelessly heaped o nto children's media well before Pixar's mid-1990s debut. What m akes these new animated films so curious is that the 'human' is now able to become a site of amoral disturbance, rath er than - or at least, in addition to- being a model of exemplary behaviour for junior aud iences. Three films not about Madagascar There is a film called 'Madagasca r' that is n ot about Madagascar or Madagasca ns, and that continues to be called Madagascar in two sequels that do no t take place in Madagascar. I will briefly describe the skeletal plots of Drea mWorks Animations' Madagascar (2005), Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa (2008) and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted (2012), then spend some time hovering over the flesh. Madagascar introduces four animals living in New York's Central Park Zoo: Alex the lio n, Marty the zebra, Glo ria the hippopotamus and Melman the giraffe. Approaching his birthday, Marty is anxio us about the prospect of interminable captivity. Through a series of mishaps, Marty, Alex, Gloria and Melman find themselves in Madagascar. The local lemur inhabitants, led by Ki ng julien, are threatened by fossas, who are 'always annoying us by trespassing, interrupting our parties, and ripping our limbs off'. As possible fans of Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954), the lemurs recruit the New York 'freaks' as protectors. At the same time, Alex the lio n becomes delirious and desperate for New York steaks, so much so that friends are mistaken for walking and talking steaks, making Alex a danger to the Americans and lemu rs alike. In keeping with the genre form o f the family film, the resolution of both narratives provides opportunities to recapitulate the values of friendship, trust and social harmony. Madagascar d erives its lion's share o f humor from the followi ng question: how will four New Yorkers solve problems introduced by an exotic 148 Timothy Laurie non-Western locale, where tacit social ru les and ro utines are no longer available? After leaving Madagascar and a crash land ing in any-African-natio nwhatsoever, Escape 2 Africa finds the Central Park Zoo ensemble, together with King julien, wandering onto a bustling wildlife reserve. With giddy con venience, the reserve is Alex's fo rmer homeland. However, through the exploitatio n of a local custom, Alex's uncle usurps the king, and forces Alex and his parents into exile. An ecological crisis caused by human tourists is subsequently averted by Alex and Marty, thus restoring the lion's hereditary 'entitlement' to his homeland. The franchise's third feature, Europe's Most Wanted, thrusts the mammals into the Monte Carlo Casino. A chase en sues with a French Animal Contro l Officer, Captain Chantel Dubo is, who follows the New Yorkers to the end of the film . Along the way, they join and purchase a traveling circus, populated by a 'United Nation s of funny-accented talking crea tures', as on e Guardian commentator put it (Rose 2014). The escape from Dubois is coupled with the challenge of rejuvenating the circus, a task that is met wit h large servings o f personal growth and side dishes of overcooked romance. The Madagascar franchise is proudly anthropocentric. The Cent ral Park Zoo travelers are voiced by humans, ani mated for optimal facial legibility, and pursue goals familiar to human viewers. The nonhuman protagonists in Madagascar conform to genre-based social types found in slapstick comedies and children's television programming. The nonhumans are semantically 'human' because they know the New York subway system; because they sing along to the 'Theme from New York, New York' (1977); and because zebras, like 'us', have birthdays filled with mixed feelings. I want to sugges t, though, that the difference between the human and no nhuman still performs sig nificant narrative fu nctions in each film, even if these are not narratives t hat tell us much new about nonhumans. To do this, I want to pass by way of three versio ns of the 'animal' o utlined by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. The first: celluloid pets In the tenth plateau of A Thousand Plateaus, '1730: Becoming-Intense, Becoming-Animal, Becoming- Imperceptible ... ', Deleuze and Guattari distinguish between three kinds of animals. The first animals belong to Freud: First, individuated animals, family pets, sentimental, Oedipal animals each with its own petty histo ry, 'my' cat, 'my' dog. These animals Becoming-A11imnl i s n Tmp for 1-fttmmts 149 invite us to regress, draw us into a narcissistic contemplation, and they are the on ly kind of animal psychoa nalysis understands, the better to discover a daddy, a mommy, a little brother behind them (when psychoanalysis talks about animals, animals learn to laugh): anyone who likes cats or dogs is a fool. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 (1 980] : 265, emphasis in o riginal) Deleuze and Gua ttari don't li ke pets. But what - or who - is a pet? A pet certai nly cannot be defined in terms o f character traits. Pets occupy positions that can only be defined in relation to the non-pet (the Homo sapien) with varyi ng degrees of domesticatio n, obedience and interdependency. Sentimental investmen ts in clogs, cats, rabbits, and o ther household 'com panions' ca n trap th e nonhuman in an Oedipal loop, for which the human ego still provides the signifying center: 'There is always the danger of finding yourself "playing" the animal, the domestic Oedipal animal, [Henry] Miller going bowwow and taking a bone ... ' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1 980]: 287). Of course, humans can be objects of narcissistic self-gratification for o ther hu ma ns. Nevertheless, nonhuman s p rovide a m alleable resource for th e fantasy of an Other unmediated by th e Self. Lions make easy examples. Madagascar calls into question the superficial signifiers of identity, only to reaffirm the primacy of interpersonal bonds under the patriarch al sign of the male feline. Throughout each film, the viewer is encou raged to identify wi th Alex as the natu ral center of power and enjoyment, a gross patriarchal entitlement softened by the consonance of the cat as a reliable domestic friend. In the first film, stea k is Alex's object of enjoyment. A g listening red steak is first introduced as Alex's object-cho ice when sleep-talking in New York: 'Com e o n now baby, my little fillet'. Later on in Madagascar, Marty is misrecognized by Alex as a stea k, and receives a midnight bite on the buttocks. The drama of misrecognition open s up possibilities of non-Oedipal relations- transpecies ho moerotic fo ndling, for example- on ly to foreclose them as transgressions recuperated by the film's sanguine conclusions. Alex will now eat sushi, he and Ma rty recalibrate their friendship, and the lion is offered King Julien's crown . Form erly castrated as a compliant perform er at the Cen tral Park Zoo, Alex gains control over his adolescent desires - red steak, the homosexual slip - and assumes his proper place as king and protector of the lemurs and the New Yorkers. These themes are revisited in the sequels, albeit with the unsuccessful intrusion o f rival patriarchs. The centra l conflict in Escape 2 Africa is o rga nized around an exchange of power between Alex, h is father and his uncle, wh ile Becomillg-AIIimalls a Tmp (or Huma11s 1SO Timothy Laurie in Europe's Most Wanted, Alex flexes his superior leadersh ip skills over and against Vitaly, a moody Siberian tiger. Throughout, the vio lence of the intruder - Alex in Madagascar, on th e Afri can continent, in the European circus - is ameliorated by the naturaliza tion of a dominant male identity wit hin a fam iliar and trustworth y feline form. The symbolic o rga nization of gender and power in Madagnscnr sho uld not distract us from the imaginary componen t that sustains the narrative. While these plo t devices provide clear evidence of an anthropocentric worldview, the most slippery moment is the corollary inversion, wherein viewers come to believe that the 'real' story of lions- or zebras o r lemurs- is being withheld and still wai ting to be to ld . The des ire fo r real stories about real lions is no t disrupted by, but rather culti va ted th rough, the abundance of fictio nalized na rratives about wildca t adventures. Whether digitally animated in three dimensio ns or pursued by a HandyCa m on the back of a truck, the on-screen animal cannot refuse what we ask of it. And sometimes we ask a Jot. Lion and zebra can always become predator and victim, the communi ty and its vul nerable o utsider, o r th e father and his unloved son . That Madagnscar is open to Oed ipal rea dings should not sur prise us. We might be more surprised by Deleuze and Guattari's other animals. The second: myth-animals Deleuze and Guattari introduce a second animal that I will call 'mythanimals' . These include 'animals with characteristics o r attributes; genus, classificatio n, o r State animals; animals as they are treated in the great divin e myth s, in such a way as to extract from them series or structures' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980] : 265). Myth-animals do n ot require d irect in terperso nal identificatio n . Instead, 'n atural' classifications are o rganized in oppositio nal structures h omo logous to 'cultural' classifications, in such a way that a 'theoretically infin ite n umber of slates will be generated, each o ne slightly di ffe rent from the others' (Levi-Strauss 1955: 443). Deleuze and Guattari provide a con cise summary: When analysing the institution of the to tem, we do not say that this gro up of people identifies with that ani mal species A ma n can never say: ' I am a bull, a wolf 000 ' But he can say: 'I am to a woman what the bull is to a cow, I am to anoth er man what the wolf is to the sheep.' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 260) 000. 151 For Claude Levi-Strauss, myth-animals belong to the shared social logic of the myth, the purpose of which 'is to provide a logical model capable of overcoming a contradiction (an im possible achievement if, as it happens, the contradiction is rea l)' (Levi-Strauss 1955: 443). Operations embedded wi thin animal myths provide o pportunities to resolve collective problems of classi fi cation and h ierarchy, marking the li nes between the inside and the o utside, the Law and its exceptions, those who belong and those who do not. Examples include US propaganda represen ting the j apanese as 'gorillas', 'apes' or 'vermin' du ring World War II, or the quotidian use of speciest words like 'bitch', 'chick' or 'cow' to insult and infantilize women (see Lamarre 2008: 75; Dunayer 1995). In each case, social d ifferences based on conflic t and contradiction are n aturalized and made less 'contestable' th rough the classifica tory matrix of h uman and non human relatio ns. The Mndagnscar trilogy produces more subtle examples of conflict and contrad iction mediated by the mixed significations of the nonhu man. The scenario of the lion eating the zebra can be revisited in this context. On Madagascar, Alex is both the force of the Law (pro tection from the fossa) and the object of a prohibition (imprisoned fo r trying to eat everyone). His ' natural' role as a lion is undermined by the 'unnatura l' effects of travel: the good colonialist is turned bad by impoverishmen ts here, lack of steaks - that provincial locals cannot understand. This contradiction is articulated, but not resolved, th rough a ritual of cultu ral re-emplacement. In the midst of Alex's delirium, Marty sings the 'Theme from New York, New York' (1977), a song introduced in Cen tral Park Zoo. Alex shortly springs to action as a restored member of the moral comm unity. Madagascar provides a lesson about the invio lable laws of social reciprocity that are presumed to underpin the urban cosmopolitan modernity of 'New York' with w hich the film begins. Altho ugh 'Madagascar' is the elusive and fantastical brand for the DreamWorks franchise, the myth ical locality that anchors Madngascar and its sequels is actually New York. There are constant in-jokes about New York as the 'other scene' to the action o n-screen. Alex turns off ambient music in his enclosure because he prefers police sirens; when the an imals look up at the stars in the sky, they remark 'It's like billio ns and billions of helicopters'; and o n Madagascar, a Statue of Liberty is reconstru cted on the beach and succumbs to fire, o pening onto a Planet of the Apes (1968) pastiche that wryly aligns Madngascar with a long line of melancholic narratives about a lost New York. The film can easily be read a story about animals fro m New York discovering that they are, indeed, from New York. I 52 Timotlly Laurie This is no t a stable narrative premise. What could make New York unique, if not its history as a colonial and migrant city that has lo ng been part African? The Madagascar trilogy is founded o n a structural contrad iction. Fo r DreamWorks Animations, New York and Madagasca r are different because New York is urban and d ominated by ' human' culture, and Madagascar is not urban and is dominated by nonhuman (lemur) culture. Excep t that the real Madagascar con tains human culture and urban spaces, and the United States' urbanism cannot be separated from the forced labor and cultura l influences of its African d iaspora, includ ing ongoing links with Madagascar (see Feagin 2004; Zeleza 2005). The same histories that have produced 'Madagascar' as a cognizable, if mysterious and seductive, object for many Anglo-American viewers, have already produced a relationship between Madagascar and the United States that does not confo rm to nea t cultural taxonomies. The problem is partly that Madagascar is being presented from an American perspective, bu t the language of perspectivism is already m isleading. 'Perspective' implies a relativist model that begins with unmixed cultural essences, rather than with really-existing mixtures and hybridit ies. The contradiction is that, li ke any modern mythology abo ut the 'pre-modern', Madagascar presents evidence of contact between different cultural groups, while simultaneously denying any such contact in its construction of the following o ppositions: New York and Madagascar (Madagascar), America and the African continent (Escape 2 Africa), America and Europe (Europe's Most Wanted) . In the paradox of nativism that generates so much humo r in Madagascar, people belong to fixed cultural locales, but this belonging is only visible in cross-cultural encounters. Migration provides t he proof that culture does not travel. Pan-African mammals with distinctive American accents are used to naturalize this contradiction. Madagascar tropes racia l types already familiar to viewers of American film and television: Marty as a h ysterical black American man; Gloria as a voluptuous and sassy black American woman; Melman as a j ewish hypochondriac ('I can't be transferred, I have an appointment with doctor Goldberg at five'); and Alex as relatively u nmarked protagonist (see Rose 2014). With som e distress, these characters all discover their species kin in Escape 2 Africa. Personality traits previously presen ted as uniquely American are now coded as part of being 'a lion' or 'a zebra' or 'a hippopotamus' . This opens up two opposing readings of the Madagascar my tho logy. On the o ne hand, the rediscovery of American stereotypes on a continental African w ild life reserve transforms these 'racialized' tra its into timeless social archetypes. just as nature produces the hippo and th e giraffe, so too does culture Becoming-Animal Is a Trap for H11111a11s 153 produce the Black American Woma n and t he jewish Hypochondriac. On the other hand, the Central Pa rk mammals learn t hat their cultural identities actu all y belo ng to a global diaspo ra that crosses geographical and political boundaries. Madagascar is simultaneously an American film about discovering th e rest of the world is like America, and a transnatio nal film about American travelers discovering that they have alwaysalready been cosmopolitan. African mammals equipped with 'American' culture solve a contradiction that huma n acto rs would make glaringly visible. The Central Park Zoo animals both signify African 'nature' and American 'culture', without confronting t he histo rical fact of African peoples and cultures as part of American 'cul ture' or American cultures as part of contempo rary African modernities. The separation of black America (Marty, Gloria) as innately urban and modern from 'Africa' as a symbol fo r natu re and the pre-modern would be politicall y untenable ou tside the anthropomorphic strategies employed by Dream Works An imations. There is, however, a remainder in this eq uatio n: King Julien. In the following section, I want to in troduce Deleuze and Guattari's t hird animal, before revisi ting Madagascar by way of the d espotic lemur. The third: becomings-animal The third animal is entirely d ifferent. There are many of them - packs, bands, gaggles, swarms. Deleuze and Guat tari are most interested in the animality of populations and in qualitative ch anges within and between populations. These are 'mo re demonic animals, pack o r affect animals that fo rm a multi plicity, a becom ing, a po pulation, a tale ... ' (De leuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 265). To accou n t for t hese populatio ns, two objects of analysis require re-examination. Firstly, the body changes. Deleuze and Guat tari's body has, according to their particular reading of the Dutch philosopher, become Spinozist: In t he same way that we avoided defining a body by its organs and functions, we will avoid defin ing the body by Species o r Genus cha racteristics; instead we will seek to count its affects. This kind of study is called ethology ... A racehorse is more di fferent fro m a workhorse than a workhorse is fro m an ox. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 283) Bodies are not defined according to genetic o rigins or formal traits, except insofar as these shape the capacities of a bod y, including its 154 Timothy Laurie capacity to differ from itself. For example, the d istincti on between a bl ue whale and a goldfish could be made in terms of blood temperature ('warm-blooded' and 'cold-blooded') o r genus (the balaelloptem lmtsculus is a balaenoptera whale, while the cnrassius aumtus aumtus is a camssius fish). For etho logical purposes, however, it matters more whether or not each can swim. Secondly, movements are now analyzed differently. Deleuze and Guattari define 'becomings' in the following way: Starting from the forms one has, the subject one is, the organ one has, or the functions one fulfils, becoming is to extract particles between which o ne establishes th e relations of movem ent and rest, speed and slowness that are closest to what o ne is becoming, and through which one becomes. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 300-301, emphasis in o rigi nal) 'Becoming' serves as a placeholder for events that appear to involve mu ltiple things - an individual, a eat's paw, garbage, adolescence without it being possible to formalize relations between these things. Dissecting Deleuze's Dif{ere11ce and Repetition (1968) and attaching a loose limb to A Thousand Plateaus, we m ight say that a 'becoming', like an event, possesses 'a secret coherence which exclud es that of the self; that they turn back against the self which has become their equal and smash it to pieces, as tho ugh the bearer of the new world were carried away and dispersed by the shock of the multi plicity to which it gives birth' (Deleuze 2004: 112). A 'becoming' is a way of thinking th ro ugh changes that modify multi ple bodies (orga nic and non-organic) at once, wi tho ut conforming to pregiven structures of identificatio n, representation, resemblance o r contradi ctio n (see Deleuze 2004). Becomings-an imal provide an alternative schema for explaining transformati ons o f the human in relation to nonhuman animals (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 307). Becomings-animal do not begin with the o bjectification of the animal (Freudian pets) or the an imal as a semio tic placeholder (Levi-Straussian myths): the nonhuman is neither a site of iden tification nor an expression of latent social contradictions. Here Deleuze and Guattari toy with the imperative: Do not imitate a dog, but m ake your organism enter into composition with something else in such a way th at the particles emitted from the aggregate thus composed will be canine as a function of the relation of movement and rest, or of mo lecular proximity, into Becoming-Anima/ Is a Trap for Humans lSS which they enter. (Deleuze and Gua ttari 2004 [1980]: 302, emphasis in original) Becomings-animal are intrusions of other ways of being into the habitus of the human, and they produces unexpected movem ents, desires, and transformations (286). With some constern ation, Donna Haraway correctly observes that no concrete knowledge about nonhumans is required for on e to 'become-animal' in Deleuze and Guattari's schema (Haraway 2008: 27-29). This is because becomings-an imal are events with a causali ty exterior to ind ivid ual in tentionality. We cannot say that at the beginning there was a hu man ani mal and a no nhuman animal that the human apprehended and wanted to become the ｮｯｨｵｭ｡ｾ＠ ('dog', 'whale'), and that in the end, there was a becoming-animal ('becoming-dog', 'becoming-whale'). This implies a ready-made structure of recognition linking the human to the nonhuman. The specificity of the other species would still be mediated by the desi re to see o neself as Human and the other as Not-Human. One cannot desire to 'becomeanimal' without over-determining the animal as a means to one's own ends. Becomings-animal happen to us, not us to them. Who is the anomalous? We have not yet encountered any ' becomings-animal' in Madagascar. Our travels so far have produced on ly a sentimental feline patriarch and well-rehearsed postcolonial contradict ions. What can Deleuze and Guattari tell us that we d o not already know? A Thousand Plateaus follows a pattern. For every collective movement there is always an exceptional and radical term: the inhuman face, Robert Sch umann's refrain, the line of flight. The tenth plateau is no exception. Here we have the 'anomalous' position in relation to a collective or pack - it could be a leader, despot, loner or demo n (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 268). Anomalies are neither inside no r o utside a given o rder. Rather, they describe a type of movement that may hold together 'becomings', but also open them onto something else: It is evident that the Anomalous, the Outsider, has several functions: not only does it border each m ultiplicity, of which it determ ines the temporary or local stability ... not only is it the precondition for the alliance necessary to becoming, but it also carri es the transformations of becoming or crossings of multiplicities always farther down the line of flight. (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 275) Becoming-A nima/Is a Tmp (or H11mans I 56 Ti mothy La11rie An example is given: Moby Dick, a sizeable whale with few attractive personal q ualities, sweeps up Captain Ahab in a 'becoming-wha.le' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 268). Moby Dick is an object of deme and revenge, certainly, but also produces ancillary desires, bodily transfo rmations and contiguous assemblages: knee and jawbone, harpoons and lance, trumpet, shoe-nail stub, carcass and oil, the coffin. What individuates Moby Dick is a becoming that encircles, but never collapses into, the pleasure of 'having caught a whale'. King julien in Madagascar is an anom aly worth spending time with. His movements cannot be explained by the Oedipal schema of repressed object-choices, or th e structural schema of ambivalent classifications. King julien's onto logy is gestllral. He is defined less through the Ａｾ ･ ｮﾭ tity he assumes than th rough the events that his actions make poss1ble and the jo urneys that he embarks on . julien plays at being king with pomp and ceremony, regardless of whether he's in Madagascar or the African continent or Europe, and with indifference to th e responses of onlookers. julien readily gifts his crown to Alex, making sure to add: 'That's okay, I've got a bigger crown. It's got a gecko on it'. The mute gecko will later become king. In Escape 2 Africa, julien decides to become a love guru for Melman: King julien: You've got to march right up to this woman. Look her right In the eye. Lean forward. just a little, or almost all the way. Then you let her lean forward a little until you're ... just lips' distance away from each other. Then you tell her how much you hate her. Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa King julien does recognize the difference between love and hate, but he is less attentive to the objects people want than to the elaboratio n of the gestures of wanting. These gestures could serve any function o r no function whatsoever. julien is a superbly performative and opportunistic character, quite unlike any of the 'timeless and natural' souls that continue to dominate recent Disney feat ures like Tangled (2010) and Frozen (2013). In Escape 2 Africa, julien jumps out of a cake with coconuts o n his chest and shouts: 'I'm a lady! Not really! It's m e, King julien! Which of you is attracted to me? Hands up!'. But julien is not tmnsgressive. He makes pacts, he invents rituals, he repeats what he enj oys: julien is motivated by the Law of genre. Or rather, the lemur king undermines the Law o nly insofar as he reworks roles and practices to have contradicto ry or nonsensical 157 meanings. In Escape 2 Africa, julien fabricates a volcano sacrifice to bring water. The King's right-hand lem ur Maurice asks 'Does it work?' and julien shouts 'No!'. He does it an yway and the water comes. In Europe's Most Wanted, julien falls in love with a mute bear called Sonya: Has anyone ever told you that you look like a supermodel? Albeit a fat, hairy on e who sm ells. Whoo-hool Oh, you have a very hairy back. I like that in a woman . Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted There could be allusions here to bears in global gay male cultures. But the joke is never that Julien is secretly gay - these jokes are reserved for j ulien's petit admirer, Mort. What matters is the genre of the utterance (' Has an yone ever told you ... ?', 'I like that in a woman ... ') and the gestures of roma nce. julien's courtship with Sonya winds its way through Rome in vignettes li fted from Roman Holiday (1953). A bear in a ballerina's d ress rides a scooter with a lemur who mines overworked Hollywood cliches about Italian courtship. King Julien follows the rules of heterosexual romance with expert fidelity, but the result is not a clearly heterosexual one. Is King Julien queer? Following Halberstam, we could show that King Julien 'allows for the deconstruction ... of a timeless and natural humanity' (2011: 46). But julien does not deconstruct his own identity. Instead of embodying queerness, he spends time m aking it difficu lt for other characters to be straight. After first m eeting the New Yorkers, King julien dubs th em 'just a bunch of pansies'. The irony is that julien's own hysterical affectations and public embarrassments conform to long enduring stereotypes of the 'pansy' in Hollywood cinema (see Russo 1987). One must choose between being flamboya nt like King julien or being a pansy, but n either option is readable as 'straight'. Later, when Alex bites Marty on the buttocks, King julien queers the transgression: 'What is the simple bite on the buttocks among friends?' Finally, in the Valentines' Day special Madly Madagascar (2013), julien's dispersal of a magical love potion disarms the viewer's confidence in heterosexual courtship: true love is a chemical that Julien sells at a marked-up price. However, while Kingjulien participates in the 'queering' of Madagascar, he is not a queer hero. The anomalous is neither a friend nor an enemy: he may even be a demon . For Deleuze and Guattari, the demon inhabits the pack formation of becomings-a nimal: 'Therefore it is certain that the demon performs local transpo rts of all kinds. The Devil is a transporter; 158 Timothy Laurie he transports humors, affects, or even bodies ... But these transports cross neither the barrier of essential forms nor that of substances or subjects' (279). King julien willingly offers his admirer Mort as a sacrifice to Alex the lion, and in Europe's Most Wanted, throws Mort to Dubois the Animal Control Officer. Julien promptly leaves Madagascar to find 'spoils from the new country', an ambition that is facetious and immediately forgotten . At an odd moment, Maurice the lemur looks pleased that Julien has died, and is disappointed to find that Julien cannot be killed . Two competing readings of King julien are therefore available. We could show that he retains the structural functions of Brutus Jones (played by Paul Robeson) in The Emperor/ones (1933). King Julien is the implausible leader of an implicitly 'non-white' political order perceived to have been utterly compromised by jungle rhythms, with Jones' nightmarish 'tom toms' being replaced by 'I Like To Move It' (1993) by New York duo Reel 2 Real. He then arrives in Monte Carlo on a floating duck complete with fireworks and entrance music: C&C Music Factory's ' Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)' (1990), another 1990s club hit. Borrowing from Homi K. Bhabha, we could say that this stereotype 'is not a simplification because it is a false representation of a given reality', but rather 'because it is an arrested, fixated form of representation' (Bhabha 1994: 75). julien is outside time, outside reason, outside humanity: he is arrested in 1990s pop, in his contrived nobility, in the repetition of anachronism s. But King julien also animates the paradox of cultural locality identified earlier. I have already suggested that while characters are defined in and through their 'native' localities, Madagascar provides ample evidence of cultural mixing. To know that King julien is a stereotype, we wou ld need to know where and who he is. If dancing to C&C Music Factory with fireworks is queer or demonic, then is King julien queer and demonic as a Madagascan lemur, or queer and demonic as a New Yorker? Does the anomaly not call into question the contrasts between America and notAmerica, modernity and tradition, that otherwise center the Madagascar franchise? Both readings could be persuasive. As Homi K. Bhabha notes, an important difference when critiquing racial and cultural stereo types is the 'politics of point of view', especially when, 'at other times and places, the same stereotype may be read in a contradictory way or, indeed, be misread' (Bhabha 1994: 70, emphasis in original). To say that King Julien is a stereotype, we would need to know something about the audience for which he is recognized as such. A Madagascan reading of King Becoming-Animal Is a Trap for Humans 159 Julien may produce an entirely different result, not because Madagascar is culturally 'Oth er' to the West, but because it has a different relationship to the transnatio nal cultural flows that make Madagascar a film entirely about 'New Yorkers' and simultaneously g lobal in scale (see Jayamanne 2001 on cross-cultural film criticism). And to say that King Julien is 'becoming' - becoming-queer, becoming-animal - we would need to know something about where these referents come from: queer from where? 'Animal' in relation to which humans? In the final section, I want to reflect on what Deleuze and Guattari ask of their reader in the concept of 'becoming-animal', and will argue that they cannot be given what they ask for. Playing the Deleuzoguattarian Pets, myths, becomings, anomalies: how do we decide the difference? How can we be sure that King Julien is not just playing the stereotype? Or, for that matter, the pet? For Deleuze and Guattari, becomings-animal cannot be predicted in advance nor exhaustively understood in retrospect. The '1730 ... 'plateau opens by raising two important questions: Are there Oedipal animals with which one can 'play Oedipus', play family, my little dog, my little cat, and then other animals that by contrast draw us into an irresistible becoming? Or another hypothesis: Can the same animal be taken up by two opposing functions and movements, depending on the case? (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 257- 258) The reader anticipates that the second hypothesis will be accepted and the first rejected. But this is not how the plateau reads. Deleuze and Guattari's prose is leading. Their philosophical arguments do not coincide with the precipitous rhetorical mode. As Haraway notes, the discussion of becomings-animal is bluntly gendered: 'Ahab's MobyDick is n ot like the little cat or dog owned by an elderly woman who honors and cherishes it' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 269). On the side of becomings-animal, Deleuze and Guattari cite 'hunting societies, war societies, secret societies, crime societies' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 267); they discover the 'man of war' inside 'Wolf-men, bear-men, wildcat-men, men of every animality, secret brotherhoods' (Deleuze and Guattari 2004 [1980]: 268); and there seems to be something of 'becomings-a nimal' in 'wildmen of all kinds' (Deleuze and 160 Timotlly Laurie Guattari 2004 [1980]: 270). This gendered facet of A Thousand Plateaus has already been discussed at length elsewhere (see Laurie 2012). My suggestion here is simply that the masculini zation of 'becoming-a nimal' adds a heroic di mension that distracts from important ambiguities in the concept of the pet itself. This gendered prose naturali zes what is an otherwise spurio us distinction between that which attracts narcissistic Oedipal investments and that which does not. Deleuze and Guattari have already to ld us that pets 'are the only kind of animal psychoanalysis understands', and then that 'the psychoanalysts ... did not understand, or did no t want to understand .... They saw nothing.' What have Deleuze and Guattari seen that psychoana lysts have not? Once we adop t an ethological understanding of bodies, we realize that o ur own ca pacities to see d ifferences between the 'human' and 'no nhuman' wi ll be entirely relative to o ur own affectations. We may be undergoing 'becomings-animal' that we have no t yet not iced; or, if we notice them too much, they might already be botched. Selfconsciousness is a very Freudian habit. Without the security of the 'pet' as a tacit signal for improper an imals, how would a discourse on 'becomings-animal' select its proper objects, its adequate bodies, its true becomings? Becoming-animal is a trap for humans. The reader must refuse what is given to him or her or else it doesn 't work. Deleuze and Guattari's playful use of im peratives ('Do not imitate a dog' ) signals this fra ught interpellative situatio n . How could 'becoming-ani mal' be anyth ing but an idea destined for o ther humans? As soon as one recognizes oneself as a subj ect in th eir discourse, one may find o neself wanting to 'play' the an imal. This problem has not been invented by Deleuze and Guat tari. Any critiq ue of human ism in the name of the 'nonhuman' assumes a variation of this contradiction. To the person who insists on abandoning the human as a normative category of ethical inquiry, the armchai r logician can simply reply, 'if you really did not believe in th e human, we would not be having this conversation'. And the person in the armchair will be right - humanism has a dialogic structure, and the con cept of 'becoming-ani mal' already presupposes some traction on this dialogue. Writings about humanism, posthumanism, and trans- humanism presuppose, perhaps somewhat optimistically, a reliable anthropocentric conversation within which to persuade others of claims relating to human or the no nhuman. Both humanism and the critique of humanism can participate in the centering of the human as a mo ral subject, w hether 'for' or 'against' human interests. Becoming-Anima/Is a Trap (or Humans 161 To believe that 'becoming-a nimal' is destined for us, that we know how to do it - would not this be another narcissistic versioning of the human? A nonhumanist reading of A Thousand Plateaus would be one that does not assume anything in advance about what its au thors want, and that does not assume oneself as the idea l subject of their discourse. It m ay be that those who never read Deleuze and Guattari are best equipped to 'becom e-animal'. King j ulien has not read them and doesn't need to: he effortlessly ad fibs the situations that Deleuze and Guattari have helped us to unpick. But this does not make j ulien a pedagogue. We are not req uired to sift through his gestures to d iscover collectivi ty or diversity or sharing. The common problem in the Madagascar fra nchise and A Thousand Plateaus is th e distinction between moral figures that insist o n ｾ･ｩｮｧ＠ repea ted and a-moral figures that call into question repeatability Itself. Nobody can become-animal and nobody can become King julien . The merit of Madagascar is not that it provides progressive moral lessons, but that its moral universe is co upled with someone un assimilable- a dancer, a killer, a demo n. The implica tion is never than "humanism " is a bad ideology, but that the one who seeks to repeat hu man gestu res may be the most estranged from moral ity, society or identity. julien is perfectly versed in the generic ri tua ls of human cond uct, and this does more to ex plode the coherence of in tra-species belong ing than a transgressive character ever could. Works cited Bhabha, Ho m i K. (1994), Tile Location o( Culture ( London and New York: Routledge) . Deleuze, Gi lles (2004) Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Pa tton (London, UK: Continuum). Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Felix (2004 [I 972]) Anti-Oedipus: Capitalism and Scllizopllrenia, trans. Robert Hurley, Mark Seem, and Helen R. La ne (London: Contin uum). (2004 [I 980]) A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Scllizopllrenia, tra ns. Brian Massumi (London: Conti nuum). Driscoll, Ca therine (2002) Girls: Feminine Adolescence in Popular Culhlfe and Cultural Theory (New York: Columbia University Press). Dunayer, joan (1995) 'Sexist Words, Speciesist Roots', in Caro l Adams and j osephine Donovan, eels., Animals and Women: Feminist Tll eoretica/ Explorations (Durham, NC: Duke University Press), 11-31. Feagin, j oe R. (2004) 'Document ing the Costs of Slavery, Segregation, ancl Contem porary Racism: Why Repa rations Arc In Order For African Americans' Harvard BlackLetter Law j oumal, 20: 49-81. ' Gilroy, Paul (2000) Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond tile Color Line (Ca mbridge, Massach usetts: The Bel knap Press of Ha rvard University Press). 162 Tlmotlly Laurie Guattarl, Felix (2005) Tile ｔｬｾｲ･＠ Ecologies, trans. Ian Pindar and Paul Sutton (London and New York: Continuum). Halberstam, ].Jack (201 1) 'Animati ng Revolt and Revolting Animation', The Queer Art of Failure (Durham and London: Duke University Press), 27-52. Haraway, Donna (2008) Wilen Species Meet (Mi nneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota) . .. Hunter, ian (1992) 'The Humanities Without Humanism', Meanjin, 51(3): ＴＷＹｾＰ＠ Jayamanne, Laleen (2001) Toward Cinema and Its Double: Cross-Cultural M1111eS1S (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana ｕ ｊ ｾｩ Ｎ ｶ･ｲｳｩ ｴ ｹ＠ .Press). . . Lamarre, Thomas (2008) 'Speciesism, Part 1: I ranslatmg Races Into Animals 111 Wartime Animation', Meclwdemia 3(1): 75- 95. Laurie, Timothy (2012) 'Epistemology as Politics and the Double-bi nd of Border Thinking: Levi -Strauss, Deleuze and Guatta ri, Mignolo', Portal foumal of Multidisciplinary Intemational Studies, Transcultural Mappings Special Issue 9.2. Levi-Strauss, Claude (1955) 'The Structural Study of Myth', Tile foumal ofAmerican Folklore 68(270): 428-444. McNeil, Maureen (2005) 'Human', in To ny Ben nett, Lawrence Grossberg, a.nd Meaghan Morris (eels.), New Keywords: A Revised Vocabulary ofCultllre and Soctely (Ma lden, MA: Blackwell Publishing), 164-167. Roediger, David R. (2005) Working Toward Wlliteness: How America's Immigrants Became Wllite (New York: Basic Books). Rose, Steve (2014) 'Repressed Brits, Evil Mexicans, Arab Villai ns: Why Are Hollywood's Animated Movies Full of Racist Stereotypes?', Tile Guard/all, April 7. Russo, Vito (1987) Tile Celluloid Closet: Homosexuality ill tile Movies (New York: Harper & Row). . Singer, Peter (2006) 'Introduction', in Peter Singer (ed.),lll Defense of Ammals: Tile Seco11d Wave (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing), 1- 10. Waldau, Paul (2006) 'Religion and Ani mals', In Peter Singer, ed., /11 Defense of Animals: Tile Second Wave (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing), 69-83. Zeleza, Paul Tiya mbe (2005) ' Rewriting the African dlaspora: Beyond the lllack Atlantic', Africall Affairs 104(4 14): 35-68. 9 The Companion Cyborg: Technics and Domestication Ronald Bogue Don na Haraway's 'A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Fem inism in the Late Twentieth Century', first published in the Socialist Review in 1985, is by far her best-known work. 1 Her proposal to displace the fe minist myth of the goddess with that of the cybo rg, 'a h ybrid of machine and o rga nism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction' (1991: 149}, signaled her commitment to a socialistfeminism that is neither technophilic nor technophobic but fully engaged with the problematics of the interpenetration of nature and culture in such diverse realms as bio logy, ecology, cybernetics, economics, po litics and ethics. In Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (199 1), which included a revised versio n of 'A Cyborg Man ifesto', and in Modest_Witness@Second_Millenttitlln. FemaleMmt© Meets_OncoMouseTM; Feminism and Technoscience (1997}, Ha raway continued her exploration of these issues in rhetorical terms largely consonant wi th those of the 'Cyborg Manifesto'. In 2003, however, she adopted a new master trope and discursive idiom in The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness, upo n which she expanded in her 2008 study, When Species M eet. In these last two books, her focus is not on cyborgs but on d ogs, and specifically her passionate participation in 'the doghuma n sport called agility' (2008: 26). Haraway claims that there is continuity in her work, saying in her 2003 manifesto, 'I have come to see cyborgs as junior siblings in th e much bigger queer family of companio n species' (2003: 11), but the later work's incessan t doggy-ta lk reports fro m dogland often make it ha rd to retain awa reness of the cyborg connection. My object here is to put Haraway's cyborg and companion species tropes in relation to Deleuze and Guattari's concept of 'becoming', and thereby explore the contours of Deleuze and Guattari 's conception of the nonhuman. 163