A Critique of Animal Science Knowledge Production in We are All Completely Beside Ourselves

Abstract

Animals who can not independently voice their own conditions are put into a representational strategy dominated by human scientists. However, situated in anthropocentric ideologies, the scientists are usually not faithful narrators of animal stories, but ventriloquists for the animal’s other status. As a novel exploring an experiment in which a human and a chimpanzee are raised up together, We are All Completely Beside Ourselves puts this situated process of animal science knowledge production under scrutiny: Conducted against the anthropocentric background, the experiment inevitably shows a tendency to emphasize the human-animal binary opposition and the animals’ other status in the world. Disappointed by this phenomenon, the human girl who has grown up with a chimpanzee and believes in human-animal affinity, Rosemary, chooses to reject the logocentrism and human-animal distinctions propagated by scientists, and to disseminate her own knowledge of human-animal similarity, love and mutual-respect. However, since Rosemary’s experience can not be reproduced in the reality, the novel’s nihilist tendency to deny all the scientific achievements is dangerous. The scientist’s role as a spokesman for animals and nature is still irreplaceable in reality, and a compromise should be reached between the dogmatic scientism criticized and the radical disbeliever to science advocated by the novel.