So What? Who Cares?

At the risk of being one of those instructors who thinks all you have to do is work on this particular class, I'm going to ask you to take a look at They Say/I Say Chapter 7, "Saying Why It Matters," and then, using one of your research articles for the current assignment.

Try using some of the techniques in the chapter. Tell me why this text makes a difference in you understanding The Ape and the Sushi Master. What difference does it make? Why?

Does it illustrate the claim? Extend it? Complicate it? Clarify it?

Clarifying Claims

The written language is difficult to pin down. We write something, but what we mean is not what the reader understands. That's why de Waal takes such great pains to provide a definition for culture, to argue against other definitions, and to show why his definition is superior to those other definitions.

Definitions are a means of clarifying a discussion.

Another way to clarify a discussion is to paraphrase it. In other words, to state the claim, quoting the author, and then to restate it in your own words, as you understand it. If you have a quote from a secondary source that also clarifies, it's a huge bonus because you are providing evidence for your statement.

For example:

De Waal notes that many people believed the earth was flat despite the fact that there were obvious signs in nature that demonstrated it to be a sphere. De Waal claims that the "unexpected often escapes attention" (183). In other words, if we're not looking closely, we may notice the obvious.

Take a claim, one of the claims you are focusing on, contextualize it, and then clarify it in your own words.

Choosing a Chapter

At this point, you have read--or should have read--the Prologue and at least two of the three chapters.

What do you want to talk about--and why? What is it about this section that interests you?

Like a Chicken with My Head Cut Off

I was talking with a coworker the other day and told her that I was running around like a chicken with my head cut off. I meant, of course, that I felt like a crazy person, running in circles, not really making any progress.

As soon as I said it, I thought of de Waal and his remarks on the way we use language to compare ourselves to animals all the time. I have never lived on a farm, and I don't know anything about chickens, with or without heads. I have no idea if the metaphor represents reality in any way--or if the illustration is completely false. It's just something I say.

In his preface to Section Three, in which he focus on the way we see ourselves, he cautions us and says "we should be particularly wary of catchy metaphors" (296). He argues that those metaphors have the power to distort the way we view animals, both human and non-human.

In your blog, you may wish to discuss how Chapter 9 fits in with this argument. If you wish, you may discuss what types of animal metaphors he focuses on in Chapter 9.

Or you may wish to focus on how the argument in the preface fits in his overall argument as stated in the Prologue.

The Prize of Discovery

Nothing is accidental in de Waal's writing. Every metaphor, every quote, every cartoon, every anecdote is intentionally chosen to clarify, illustrate, extend or complicate his argument and his claims.

And so I return to the Peter Medawar quote at the beginning of Chapter 5. Given that the reward for diligent observation and repeated experiments is the ultimate discovery of something new, how does this quote relate to the illustrations in this chapter?

Anthropomorphism, Anthropodenial, and Anthropocentrism

I avoid animal movies.

The kind where animals talk and act just like humans.

This summer Madagascar was showing at Santee Lakes and I went with some friends. It was definitely funny, but zebras and lions are not best friends in any world but the imaginary world, and it may be funny to watch a giraffe fall in love with a hippo, but you know those kind of relationships don't work.

The Ape and the Sushi Master argues that animals do indeed have a culture, that they are capable emotions and capable of learning. They are definitely not machines.

In the section of Chapter 1 titled "Bambification," de Waal says that once we understand this, then anthropodenial becomes impossible and anthropomorphism inevitable" (71).

He cautions us against the types of anthropomorphism we see in our culture and cites the example of the grizzly bear who has his arm around his mate's shoulder as they enjoy a landscape. He says, "Since bears are nearsighted and do not form pair-bonds, the image was nothing but our own behavior projected onto these animals" (71). This is anthropocentrism.

In your post, clarify the term anthropocentrism. How does de Waal illustrate anthropocentrism? What examples can you give to illustrate this?

If at all possible, include the source for your examples in your paragraph(s).

What is Science?

Before beginning a discussion of the apes in Mount Fuji, de Waal quotes Peter Medawar, who defines a scientist as a "man who by his observations and experiments, by the literature he reads and even by the company he keeps, is putting himself in the way of winning a prize; he has made himself discovery prone" (179).

Write a paragraph in which you clarify, illustrate, extend, or complicate this quote evidence, from de Waal or other sources. Be sure to identify your other sources.

Laughing at Apes - Laughing at Ourselves

In the Prologue to The Ape and the Sushi Master, de Waal claims that we like to laugh at apes trying to behave as humans—and failing—in order to assuage our doubts about ourselves and affirm our uniqueness in the animal kingdom. He illustrates his claim with descriptions of ape tea parties in the nineteenth century and stories about Jo Mendi from the 1930s, Petermann from the 1980s, and The Chimp Channel, a short-lived television show from 1999.

I don’t think that zoos still have ape tea parties, and I’m not convinced that “Hollywood produces cannot resist throwing in a chimp or an orangutan when their script asks for a laugh and they have failed to come up with anything better” (3), but I am I am wondering—is de Waal right? Do we make fun of apes in order to feel better about ourselves? Do we have a need to see ourselves as unique?

Does that limit our ability to understand ourselves or the world we live in?

Feel free to respond directly to these questions, or you may wish to respond to another student’s response.