“Men have forgotten this truth”, said the fox. “But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.” —Antoine de Saint Exupéry, The Little Prince
This seminar will focus on the intersection of human and the animal lives. Taking the example of a chimpanzee who was named "Nim Cimpsky" in order to mock the famous linguist, Noam Chomsky, we'll be looking at the fraught question of experimenting with primates. Why, for example, raise Nim like a child? What effect does this have on the socialization of apes, and how do males like Nim deal with their conditioning on reaching full maturity? Are they less 'valuable' once they fail to prove that they can in fact 'speak' to us in the ways expected by experimenters? What then happens to these so-called 'failures?
What does a narrative about Nim, to take just one example, tell us about the relations that obtain between humans and their 'close relatives', the great apes?
Main Texts:
Elizabeth Hess. Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would be Human. 2008.
Project Nim. Dir. James Marsh. DVD. 2011. |
