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Professor John Simons is Executive Dean of Arts at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He previously taught at the universities of Wales, Exeter, Winchester, Edge Hill and Lincoln in the UK. He has published extensively on topics ranging from Middle English chivalric romance to the history of cricket and from medieval manuscripts to Andy Warhol. His major publications include the first ever critical edition of Robert Parry’s romance Moderatus and the first modern edition of a group of eighteenth-century English chapbooks. Since 2000 he has worked more or less exclusively on the field of animals in culture and writes from an advocacy perspective. John's main works include Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation (2002), Rossetti’s Wombat (2008) and Kangaroo (Reaktion Animal Series, in press). He is currently working on a monograph about exotic animals in Victorian England (The Tiger that Swallowed the Boy) and a short work on a passage in Juvenal’s third satire (with Professor Larry Welborne). He is has held various fellowships and, inter alia, is currently a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and a Fellow of the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics. He is also a published poet. Here, Dr Rod Bennison (CEO Minding Animals International) interviews John about his views on animal rights and protection, and about John's recent and forthcoming published works. ANIMAL RIGHTS AND THE POLITICS OF LITERARY REPRESENTATION In this exclusive interview with Antennae, John Simons discusses human-animal divides, the role played by anthropomorphism in our culture, and his experience as British man who moved to Australia. Questions by Rod Bennison 16 Rod Bennison: What does literary representation provide for advancing a position of animal rights? What are the implications in the functioning of animals as symbols of human literary expression over the past 50 years? John Simons: I think that the important thing is for scholars who have an interest in advocating for animals to find ways of using their discipline to promote awareness of the animal advocacy position. For me, the natural thing to work with is literary texts, although I am increasingly working with images. Literature does, however, occupy the privileged position of being the discourse through which ideas and ideology are aestheticised and debated in different periods, and so it does offer the opportunity for an historical account of the development of thinking about animals which goes beyond scientific or juridical writing. So although I don’t think literature offers any kind of special window into the individual or collective mind, I think it does, because of its public nature, offer a very particular body of evidence. I also think that the way in which canons are formed is worth studying is this context and that at least some of the material I believe is significant to the study of animals falls well outside traditional critical canons. In the last 50 years the growth of the animal welfare and the animal rights movements have, to some extent, stimulated more texts which are useful to think about animals with. However, from an historical perspective one soon notices that, unfortunately,
John Simons Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation, 2002 these movements may not have shifted the basic agenda on animal exploitation and cruelty to animals as much as might have been hoped for. And, of course, there is the whole issue of reflection on the Holocaust and the various attempts that have been made to draw parallels between cruelty to animals and the destruction of European Jewry. I think there is a good deal of pretty unsound thinking on this but I trust Isaac Bashevis Singer when he talks about the ‘eternal Treblinka’ that animals inhabit. Bennison: Can anthropomorphism be a positive influence on the rights of animals in literature? Could you discuss some examples? Simons: I take the view that anything that stimulates people to think more carefully and, therefore one hopes, more kindly about animals is a good thing and therefore I am very comfortable with anthropomorphism as a useful representational strategy. I know that not everyone agrees with this and I understand where they stand. I tend to be very pragmatic though and think that the animal rights 17 movement should take whatever is on offer that is helpful. One example that I have recently been working on is not literary but from popular television and that is Skippy the bush kangaroo. There seems little doubt that the representation of Skippy was a form of anthropomorphism and I think that this made it easier for viewers to identify with the animal. From that I am clear that many people formed a very different view of kangaroos and Australian wildlife which has been of help in guiding conservation in Australia. Some of my current work has been about resistance to eating kangaroo meat and “I can’t eat Skippy” is a phrase I’ve heard more than once in discussing the issue. Bennison: What are the essential defining differences between being a human and a nonhuman animal in your literary work? How has your interest in animals influenced your poetic works? Simons: I don’t write poetry from a programmed point of view and am one of those poets who depend upon inspiration rather than craft to get effects. So I don’t write very much, but when I do I write it’s in intensive bursts. Many of my poems start from noticing something about an animal or thinking about an animal. My first published work was called Bear Song and was a poem which tried to capture the voice of a bear as it sat on a rock trying to catch a fish. Over twenty years later I recycled that poem and the same bear became the narrator of a long work called Bestiale which was a libretto set to music by Tony Biggin and performed twice at the Edge Hill Green Arts Festival. A poem which is currently sitting in a kind of mental dry dock is about the ghosts of two elephants I once saw while I was driving on the A17. One was the elephant that visited England with Julius Caesar in 44 BC and drowned in the Thames, and the other a late nineteenth century circus elephant that is reputedly buried in a field in southern Lincolnshire. I suppose I wouldn’t imagine these things if I wasn’t interested in animals. Bennison: You moved to Australia from the UK in 2009 to join us here at Macquarie University. As an Englishman resident in the Antipodes, can you tell us what made you write your soon to be published book Kangaroo (Reaktion Series), and what challenges did writing the book present? Simons: The Kangaroo book was actually in planning before I knew I was coming to Australia, as after writing my wombat book (see below) I had a
Page 1 and 2: Antennae Issue 19 - Winter 2011 ISS
Page 3 and 4: EDITORIAL ANTENNAE ISSUE 19 O ne of
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Page 7 and 8: 5 Leading Thinkers on Animals Exclu
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