In The Nature Of Things: Language, Politics, and the Environment

12. Primate Visions and Alter-Tales

Chapter 12 Primate Visions and Alter-Tales Jane Bennett In Primate Visions Donna Haraway offers a reading of primatology—its texts and textbooks, its National Geographic documentaries, its graduate programs —as a contemporary cultural tale about the natural and the human . She exposes the imprimatur of the myth of Eden on the scientific study of apes. This reading, like any other, proceeds by way of a set of political affirmations, moral priorities, and hopes for the future. Haraway not only unearths the myth within primatology, she crafts an alternative to it. This alter-tale is concerned not with sin but with "the nature and meaning of difference," not with salvation but with "the prospects of survival for nuclear humanity that also face[s] deep ecological crisis."1 Her widely read "AManifesto for Cyborgs" is an early presentation of this alter-tale; the cyborg myth reappears in Primate Visions, albeit mostly between the lines.2 Arich mosaic of biography, bibliography, photography, historical chronicle, biblical interpretation, and feminist criticism, Primate Visions is highly successful in bringing out the sheer volume and complexity of primatological discourse. Perhaps the submersion of the alter-tale in Primate Visions is a function of this success.3 What I would like to do, however, is raise the alter-tale up in order to explore a possibility suggested by Primate Visions—the possibility of a feminism that is itself an environmentalism, and vice versa. Or, to state it 250 Primate Visions and Alter-Tales 251 more boldly: the possible eclipse of "feminism" and "environmentalism" by an orientation of care for earthly life and for difference.4 Such an exercise in Utopian imagination would combine dreams of naturalists and ideals of feminists; it would work toward improving "the prospects for primate survival, including . . . human survival" while promoting "differentiated meanings, material abundance, and comprehensive equality ."5 I would like in this essay to think with and against Haraway's work. I present that work first as a representative of a new strain of nature discourse , and then as an exemplar of a particularkind of rhetoric, one that seeks to combine social critique, antiessentialism, and methodological self-consciousness with myth. I wish, through Haraway, to explore the political potential of this kind of rhetoric. After excavating Haraway's altertale , I shall turn, then, to the question of narrativestrategy,to the poetics of the alter-tale. The Origin Story So Yahweh expelled him from the garden of Eden, to till the soil from which he had been taken. He banished the man, and in front of the Garden of Eden he posted the cherubs, and theflame of a flashing sword, to guard the way to the tree of life. Genesis 2:5-7 Haraway's alter-taleissues from a critical confrontation with the "origin stories " of environmentalist, feminist, and primatological discourses. The story of Eden is, of course, their prototype. It begins with a place of sensory splendor, perfect harmony amidst exceedingly rich diversity, plentywithout toil, joyful wonder at existence that does not fade with maturity, maturity without death. It ends with land that is posted: for reasons not entirely clear but somehow just, we are no longer allowed in. The Book of Genesis invokes feelings of happiness and longing and remorse, and it links each of these emotions to another on the list,producing a sort of associational cascade . The appeal of the story lies partly in the bittersweet experience of going down thisfalls: sweet is the thought of purityand perfection,bitter is the regret at having brought forth the banishment;sweet is the knowledge that the garden grows even in our absence, bitter is the taste ofhomesickness ; but, still, sweet is the thought of purity and perfection, and so on. Euro-Americans tell and retell this story in a varietyof contexts.Haraway discerns its presence, for example, in documentaries about African primates . These films often depict women scientistshugging or romping with apes in the wild. Through video technology and mystical womanhood, we 252 Jane Bennett are able to glimpse nature-without-human-toil(the jungle is not a garden, but at least there is no agriculture) and touch hands with humanoid creatures as innocent asAdam-before-the-Fall. In the background of these shots are the natives, agents of recent independence movements. Their presence is vaguely disturbing—will they once again restrict our access, turning the wild into a commercial or agricultural resource? Joy at reunion gives way...