This trans-species psychology allows us to see, even experience, the worlds of carnivores as they might - from the inside-out. The scientific model used to explore human minds applies to other animals. We know this because of what neuroscience has discovered - mammals, birds, fish, and reptiles (and now, it appears, invertebrates like bees and octopi) share common brain structures and processes that govern thinking and feeling. There certainly are differences between white sharks and elephants, but the similarities are much greater. What first lead you to explore the minds of carnivores?Ĭarnivores are a natural counterpoint to the herbivorous elephant, the subject of my previous book, Elephants on the Edge. She answered questions from Mind Matters editor Gareth Cook. Through “trans-species psychology,” Bradshaw asks us to consider the many ways that the animals we fear are far more similar to us than we might like to think. She uses the orca for a case study in the evolution of morals to explore emotional intelligence, her main example is the crocodile. In “ Carnivore Minds,” she argues that predators are none of these things. Bradshaw, known for her psychological work with elephants, asks readers to reconsider. The grotesque body is a symbol of rebellion against social constraints and is open to.The carnivore needs no introduction: fearsome, cold and brutal. The grotesque is a tool meant to "bring down to the earth, turn their subject into flesh," therefore actualizing abstract ideas (Bakhtin 0). Yet through the abuse, each character becomes more genuine, fallible, and human by acknowledging his or her grotesqueness. In both these works, the grotesque body is not hideous or disgusting instead, the outside influences that violate it are monstrous, such as the hunter who both exposes and abuses the young native girl's grotesque body or Davis who treats Eva as property to own. Grotesque realism allows the female body to transition from untouchable to realistic, becoming aware of itself, of the body as pieces and parts, limbs presenting an unstable and changing body, while the realism of the ideal acknowledges the body's awareness of the other, of duality, but the emphasis is not delegated to the self or self-knowledge. To say these two texts are carnivalesque celebrations is difficult when so much violence and domination against women occurs however, each in its own right celebrates, not comically but excessively, empowerment and the creation of a new being: the evolving female grotesque figure. When discussing Bakhtin's ideas of the grotesque, the carnivalesque cannot be ignored. This temporal nature reflects the actions of the characters, as well as social beliefs concerning the female body and identity, which shift and evolve almost as quickly. Then the grotesque deconstructs the previously built identity to begin building again. The grotesque body becomes a theater of transformation, constructing and reconstructing female identity, yet since the grotesque body is in continuous motion, "in the act of becoming," exceeding its own borders, constantly being formed and reformed but never finished, this transformation is only temporary (Bakhtin 317). Eva's and the young native girl's stories are told through their treatment of others and by others, the consumption and release of their bodies, and how each woman turns from an innocent virgin, the ideal static woman, to a female predator. Jones and Carter use the grotesque female body as both a narrative and a narrator the circular elements of the texts mimic the repeating elements, such as eating, drinking, urinating, defecating, crying, menstruating, and sexual drive, creating a grotesque text which tries to overcome its own repetitive design. The ideal female, however, is supposed to be perfect and untouchable. Foucault called the body an "inscribed surface of events (traced by language and dissolved by ideas), the locus of a disassociated Self (adopting the illusion of a substantial unity), and a volume in perpetual disintegration" (148). Although all the grotesque elements are natural and healthy, within the female body, society considers them monstrous and unseemly. Gayl Jones in Eva's Man and Angela Carter in "Master" render manifestations of the grotesque with a language of excess that encourages dual readings, or what Bakhtin calls a "double body," usually indirectly undercutting specific social phenomena such as the proper way women and men should behave (318).
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