Encounters with Animal Minds: Lessons in Interspecies Relationships and Intersubjectivity (Part II)

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animal behavior, Barbara Smuts, consciousness, human-animal relationships, interspecies communication, interspecies relationships, intersubjectivity, mutuality

In part one, I touched on the tremendous insight into animality in Barbara Smuts’ article “Encounters with Animal Minds.”  However, the main themes of her narrative revolved around interspecies relationships and the concept of intersubjectivity.  Using personal narratives to describe her research experience with a baboon tribe in Africa and her intimate experience with dog companion Safi, she creates a theory of interspecies relationships based on direct experience.  Despite her focus on direct experience and phenomenological insight, she doesn’t stray too far from her scientific roots.  She concludes the paper with seven concrete stages she discovered in building interspecies relationships.

Letting Language Be

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ability, ableism, animal communication, disability, ego, interspecies communication, language, meaning, signs, speech, symbols

For those researchers, scholars, linguists, and enthusiasts who revel in the marvel of human language, this post is for you.  Never mind that language has no absolute definition and varies depending on who studies it.  Never mind that depending on the definition, language also incorporates communication systems of other animal species.  I’m talking about language at its core—pure and simple.

Encounters with Animal Minds: Lessons in Animality (Part 1)

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animal bonds, animal consciousness, animal minds, animality, Barbara Smuts, consciousness, human-animal bond, human-animal relationships, interspecies communication, intersubjectivity, self/other

Barbara Smuts and Safi

I just recently read an article by Barbara Smuts, published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies.  Unlike many articles I come across with the phrase “animal minds” in the title, this article was far from being a pretentious imposition of human privilege on nonhuman animal experience.  In fact, I would go so far as to say this article was amazing and profound and greatly contributes to an emergent body of knowledge in western thought surrounding the animal condition and reconceptualizing interspecies animal relationships.

The detailed narrative of her experiences working with baboons and chimpanzees and her intimate relationship with her dog companion Safi are wonderful explorations into animality,  intersubjectivity, and animal bonds.  The intimacy developed in her experiences confirmed that she “did indeed belong to this planet.”  In this post, I will focus primarily on her work surrounding animality.