Monkeys & Sea otters (invention and inheritance)

Max Brown

10/22/13

         Monkeys & Sea otters (invention and inheritance)

         Here I want to explore the relationship of any thing to its environment of other things. I've been thinking about this most predominantly in the context of tool usage, which Bataille posits as an essential act of delineation between the subject and the object via the complete subservience of the objects purpose. Bataille's view comes to be that tool usage births a subject which is ultimately doomed to place itself in hierarchies amongst objects. I think this is morally foolish and may possibly make thing relations abstractly complex in a way that has little grounding in reality. 

           Bataille states:

" the positing of the object, which is not given in animality, is in the human use of tools… tools are developed with their end in view, consciousness posits them as objects, as interruptions in the indistinct continuity." p. 27. 

            Starting with the statement that the posited object is not given in animality is already a rough start. If the animal world is unknown to humans ( as Bataille continually falls into poetic relapse about)  how can we known about what is posited in this animal world? Here is a basic assumption which is an undercurrent for much of Batailles tool argument. This aside, developing tools with predetermined ends in view- which Bataille defines as the positing of objects as such- is all together a rare phenomena. When was the last time that you created an object for an altogether novel end? This is essentially to say when was the last time you invented and gave something void of meaning a new functional meaning? Baitaille's language does not specifically delineate between two very different processes of objectification. One is to simply partake in the objects "thing" essence- that is to use the object as it has been intended by others.  Another objectification which is to create a new object from a thing. This latter creation act relating the object world to the subject world must be the fundamental subject-object manifestation. The former can only be viewed as such in a very abstract sense- in a way one is just inheriting the object,  like inheriting the human body, and this is in ways still a motion of "water within water" to use Bataille's phrasing. 

           This distinction between invention and an inheritance of tool use changes the way I view Batailles' argument. Just because I use a hammer or I make  a fire or I employ the internet to search for one thing or another is different than to say I make a hammer for the first time or I invent the fire. Merely taking up the use of a tool which already has been created is to simply situate myself in human culture. That is to say I am situating my persons in an already object world. Here,   the object is not subservient to me because it has existed outside of me. The human lifestyle itself is shaped by such objects. 

"The perfect- complete, clear and distinct- knowledge that the subject has of the object is entirely external; it results from manufacture." (p. 29)

            Can you assemble your computer from scratch?

            Could you even make a hammer if you tried? 

            Where is the "clear and distinct knowledge" of the tool object in my everyday life? I may know what the outcome of an action with the tool is, but this is only from experience and ultimately mimesis. 

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         Tool use is widespread throughout many animal species- monkeys, insects, elephants, birds- they all use an external object for one end or another. There is a wonderfully long wikipedia page about it. Notably, some primates even manufacture their tools and by this I mean they alter the object to serve a specific mean. The common example is that of a monkey taking a leafy twig, removing the leaves, and using the stems to fish for insects.  If a monkey manufactures, then in Batailles argument, does it have complete knowledge, to use Bataille's language, of the object? Doesn't this now make the monkey the subject?

          To situate this in the distinction between inheritance and creation of the object: monkeys can pass on the practical knowledge of this tool use via cultural transfer. A young ape watches its mother wide eyed and prepares itself to one day function independently. Thus it watches the mother fashion a twig-stem-fishing tool and inherits the object. 

         Conversely, another monkey, at some point or another manufactured this tool for the first time. It created it via a process of trial and error. This process probably involved many such monkey inventors, building upon eachother's twig-stem-fishing tool designs. This is clearly a separate object positing than the inheritance scenario (which is much more common). 

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         Now I'd like to talk about sea otters. Sea otters use rocks to open shellfish and claims. Moreover each sea otter only has one rock which they continually use. The rock is unique to the sea otter and stays with the sea otter for a significant portion of its life. In this way the rock object is an extension of the animal. 

        The simple beauty of the situation doesn't end there. Sea otters have small pouches underneath their forelegs where they store their favorite rock. In these pouches food is also stored.

         So essentially sea otters not only use tools but their physical bodies have changed to make that tool use easier. The object of the tool has literally changed the physical organic tissue of the body, imprinting itself in the form of a void where the object can reside. The pouch is an object into which only another object can fall into place. The sea otter is shaped by the object world just as much as it employs the object world.  In this way it is an object which can only respond to other objects. 

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So to roughly do some book keeping and try to wrangle out a conclusion: 

1. Tool use doesn't necessarily entail a subject-object relation. This is because only in the act of creation is there a true subject object duality. The other side of this notion suggests that in non creative processes there is no such thing as a subject, only objects amongst objects. I have attempted to show this via Batailles language and the example of monkey tool manufacture. 

The most radical implication of this is that thoughts are objects. 

2. Because the organic matter that gives rise to life is itself a thing it can behave as an object in response to other objects. In this regard all "things" including the living are objects. This is demonstrated in the sea otter. Additionally, the inheritance of the object is analogous to the inheritance of the body. The body is an object. 

note: 

theres clearly more to be said here but I find I keep hitting a wall with my words/ language that makes it really difficult to go further.