Looking for continuities, on the other hand, precisely because it
goes against our age-old quest for fire, can force us to go tiny
steps beyond seeing other species in our own image, and perhaps
get us to rethink ourselves as being made more in their image.
The question ought to be, I think, not What is the essential
difference between men and monkeys? (gendered stereotypes
intended), but What kind of monkeys exactly are we?
I wonder if I misread a reference to our interspecies
_contiguities_ as indeed _not_ phylogenetic continuities, nor
categorial similarities, but our nose-to-snout interactions. Our
species coexist in evolutionary time, and in our ecosystems, and
long have. We interact in our laboratories and field studies (and
home studies). We are ecological partners in socio-cultural
interaction with one another (if they don't have 'culture' we
need a better definition of culture). We tell stories about them
from our point of view (and they do whatever seems appropriately
the converse, or complement in the interaction). We manufacture
'primates' for our convenience (cf. D Haraway on patriarchal
primatology and its human cultural functions), but if we applied
the canons of the best contemporary ethnology to primate
ethology, perhaps we ought to be trying to figure out what they
make of us (literally as well as figuratively) rather than just
what we make of each other through the mediation of our
representations about them.
JAY.
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JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
BITNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM
INTERNET: JLLBC who-is-at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU