Cultural Studies and Environment, Revisited by Phaedra. C Pezzullo

Author:Phaedra. C Pezzullo [Pezzullo, Phaedra. C]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317982579
Barnesnoble:
Goodreads: 20859490
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

Cats in history

In the popular genealogies of cats now filling the bookstores and documentary channels, the earliest cats were wild animals. Later cats were worshipped as gods in Egypt and then massacred as representatives of Satan in the middle ages. As a result of popular mobilizations against cruelty to animals throughout modern Europe, they became household pets (Jay, 2000). This narrative of transformation is as popular to cat lovers as Christmas and Easter are to Christians, and follows a somewhat similar trajectory. Contemporary cats may live as domestic pets, these histories remind us, but never be fully domesticated. The persistent ‘de-naturalization’ of cats in popular iconography paradoxically fuels this repetitive retelling of the history of cats as a powerful and subjugated species. Cats’ persistently ambiguous status may account for the terror aroused by them in ancient and modern mythology and for the concentrated belittlement of cats today, when the domestic cat exemplifies both the threatening amorality of the non-human and the innocence of children and small furry animals. Their representation builds on this history and works in continuous tension between these meanings.

It is important to contextualize the symbolic work of animals in the context of their social history. With the growth of industrialism in England and across Europe, city life made it impossible – unhygienic and illegal – to keep many species of animals as domestic pets. The pet became a non-working animal while other animals worked like slaves in the streets and undergrounds of the city. As working and farm animals were forcibly ejected from the domestic sphere, machines replaced both people and animals. The cat switched from being a hybrid worker-spirit-demon to being a pet as a consequence of changes in the social landscape that redefined the roles of animals as violently as those of people. The popular embrace of dogs and cats as domestic pets was part of this rationalization process (Tester 1991). Human and animal bodies and their meanings were reorganized together by the discursive regime of industrial capitalism. Once nature seemed comfortably under control, pets were safe for middle- and upper-class households to love and to embrace. The sense of complacency engendered by this perceived taming of nature helps account for the rage of critical theorists who attack them. There is no doubt that cats occupy a special place as targets of such rage. There have been numerous bestseller books inciting hatred for cats as well as those advocating love for them. As Rogers remarks, ‘there are no I Hate Dogs on the lists’ (1998, p. 163). And surely no scholars of other animals have so often been required to respond to hostile questions about why their research subject matters.

By the early twentieth century, cats, like pianos, were part of the ideology and practice of domestic life in many countries. If their lives were initially symbiotic with human life because of their hunting abilities, such attributes are rarely visualized today. Perhaps the public recollection of cats’ capacity to decimate large rodent and bird populations would

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