| Chapter 1: | An Introduction to Polarity, Ambiguity, and Kinship |
|
|
Rats and mice were both speci-al and mammal in the relations of laboratory-administered caring. Speci-al differences between humans and rodent research animals were diminished in the operation of fleshy kinship to yield the grounds upon which rats and people could communicate. Mammalian and speci-al qualities of rodent research animals were, therefore, privileged at different times, and they yielded different possibilities for the recognition of different registers of kinship and human-animal relatedness. Throughout this book, I examine the ways in which classifications of ‘mammal’ and ‘specie’ are entailed in both crossings and undergirdings of human-animal, nature-culture, animate-inanimate (or equipment), and other divisions in the laboratory context.
Polar, Ambiguous, and Ambivalent Rat/Mouse/Human Relationships in the Western Imagination: Pet and Pest
Let me start off by saying something briefly about rodent polarity, ambiguity, and ambivalence in the broader Western context. Of course, it is not only the West that might be discussed here. Drawing on the insights of Douglas (1966) and Leach (1964), Tambiah (1969), for instance, noted the ambiguous location of rats in the Thai context:
It is perfectly true that rats, and to a lesser extent mice, have long borne upon their small bodies the weight of deep, enduring, bitterly hateful human antipathy in the West (see Birke, 2003, pp. 207–208). However, one need only think of the popular movie-mouse Stuart Little or go to the nearest city pet store to be made aware that revulsion is not the universal human response to rodents, even when that universe is taken to be the West and even when it is (in this ethnographic circumstance) taken