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All rise.
As we arrive at the scene it is in the distance. Words have not yet
been formed. The chapter is unwritten. The sentence has not yet been
passed.
I write this in a cell. It is not how I had imagined
it would be.
When I was a child I was taken on a visit to a zoo. The sadness was
overwhelming. A gorilla picked its nose and looked past me as if I wasn’t
there and I questioned my own desire to exist as a human. A keeper approached
the gorilla. The gorilla stood its ground. The gorilla was not intimidated.
The gorilla was unmoved. There was a mirror in its cage and through
this we met each other’s gaze.
My movements have been arrested. But I feel no sadness and do not pick
my nose. The cell is empty and clean and bright and smells faintly of
bleach. When I woke up this morning I was untransformed. Unreconstructed.
Unreformed. There is no mirror but I will stand my ground.
All rise.
All will rise. As so many have risen before. Risen and fallen and reached
a conclusion upon which all have agreed.
In the courtroom, barristers focus more on what they
are saying than what they are showing. So he will remain conscious that
the jury will be watching him all the time. That he will need to exude
trustworthiness. He will never cover his mouth when talking. In body
language it is a sign of lying. He will want to demonstrate that he
is in control of the situation. Making himself look bigger. By putting
his hands on his hips and spreading his legs. Implying dominance. He
will tent his fingers. Which will suggest confident power. There’s a
fine line between aggressiveness and power however. So he will temper
his movements with plenty of steady eye contact.
Happy to tell Her Ladyship. Where we must begin. With the magical power
of replication. The image reflecting what it is an image of. Wherein
the representation shares in or takes power from the represented. The
compulsion to become the Other.
In imitating we will find distance from the imitated. Much will be made
of the fact that vision, more than any other sense, requires a certain
distance between subject and object. And further that this physical
distance corresponds to the emotional distance of detached intellectual
scrutiny. Vision cannot be pinned down to the absolutes of proximity
and distance. To see is to be in at least two places at once. The claim
that sight is naturally distancing will be coupled with the observation
that vision is somehow disembodied.
Leaving us with two eyes, the eye of the mind and the eye of the body.
All rise.
All eyes will be directed towards me. My misgivings will be returned
to me on reflection. But my true self will not be revealed. Will not
be in evidence.
I will look for cues. I will appear calm. Resigned
even. At one with my surroundings. I will act and react. I will ape
their behaviour. Follow the steps with disguised movements.
Perhaps I am certain of my vindication. Perhaps I am resigned to my
fate. Justice is a set of expectations about what one deserves and how
one ought to be treated. Justice has been served when these expectations
have been appropriately met. Ritual is a means to regulate and stabilize
the life of a system. Adjust its internal interactions, maintain its
group ethos, and restore a state of harmony after any disturbance.
The intercession of animals is common because animals remain ambiguous.
He will ask Her Ladyship whether we were reducing animals to signs or
beginning to learn their languages. The barrister will explain. I feel
self-conscious playing myself but not when I’m playing a panther. The
next step will be to make the animal human. The elephant will now have
legs and arms. The physical and psychological aspects of the animal
will be kept. They will be transformed into the human counterpart in
himself.
It will not be a dog-eat-dog world because really dogs don’t eat other
dogs.
All rise.
All will arrive. Fate, freedom, character. All will observe the rules,
follow the steps. Go through the motions. Motive. Intent. Physiognomy.
He will put it to me that external characterization
can be achieved intuitively. And also by means of simple external tricks.
Mimicry will be the sign of a double articulation. A complex strategy
of reform, regulation and discipline. Which will appropriate
the Other as it visualises power. Mimicry will also be the sign of the
inappropriate. A difference or recalcitrance which will cohere the dominant
strategic function of colonial power. Intensify surveillance, and pose
an immanent threat to both normalised knowledges and disciplinary powers.
The evil eye. My Lady. Where an individual has the power, voluntarily
or involuntarily, to harm another individual. Merely by looking at or
praising that person. Typically the victim’s good fortune, good health
or good looks invite or provoke an attack by someone with the evil eye.
In the barrister’s hands mimicry will emerge as one of the most elusive
and effective strategies of colonial power and knowledge.
All rise.
I write this in a cell. I find myself repeating empty gestures. Accepting
hollow promises. Obtained by deception.
In thinking. I should be free because I am not in another. I remain
simply and solely in communion with myself. Yet, I am not I. In the
sense of my usual consciousness of myself. Here alone I struggle to
convince myself that I am not being observed. The cracks and marks on
the wall take on faces and personalities. Voices, arguments and instructions.
The eye of providence. A window onto a blind alley.
I am not alone but with someone whom I seek in myself and cannot find.
We correspond. Myself and the gorilla. Thoughts and movements exchange.
I lose myself in the environment. Sink back into nature. The hidden
foundations. Historical fields. Ancient lives of struggle and disease.
The death drive. We would not have even the concept of freedom if the
reality of coercion were not already present.
The wonder of mimesis lies in the copy drawing on the character and
power of the original. To the point whereby the representation may even
assume that character and power. In an older language this is sympathetic
magic.
From the law of similarity. The magician infers that she can produce
any effect she desires. Merely by imitating it.
All rise.
All will be apprised of the circumstances and the evidence. Past the
testimonies and the exhibited behaviours.
Using body language with clients is a controversial
soft skill because barristers may disagree on the priorities they have
for their work. The idea is that you can use body language to ascertain
a person’s overall disposition to an entire situation, and, therefore,
to predict their overall actions. The butterfly, wings spread, becomes
the head of a huge bird of prey. But a perceptive barrister will deliberately
use body language to detect whether his client is lying about their
asset position.
If it pleases Your Ladyship.
Offensive mimicry. Designed to surprise the prey. Defensive mimicry.
Designed either to escape the sight of the aggressor or to frighten
it away by a deceptive appearance. Direct mimicry when it is in the
immediate interests of the imitating animal to take on the disguise.
Indirect mimicry when animals belonging to different species show professional
resemblances.
He will identify two principles. First, homeopathy, the law of similarity.
The principle that like produces like, where pouring water encourages
rain. Second, contagion, the law of contact. The principle that things
which have once been in contact continue ever afterwards to act on each
other, where harm caused by a piece of hair will be felt by the person
who owns the hair.
But things are rarely so simple. The undeniable caveat in the use of
all body language is that it is ambiguous, and consequently it definitely
is not admissible in a court of law.
All rise.
I write this in a cell. From which I may rise. After night and silence,
the regenerated life.
Thrown into solitude, the convict supposedly reflects. Placed alone
in the presence of my crime, I learn to hate it. And, if my soul is
not yet blunted by evil, it is in isolation that remorse will come to
assail me.
All deception requires simulation. These two experiences of the self.
One felt, the other seen. Are never fully reconciled. I cannot ever
attain the completeness, the unified and stable presence of my specular
double. The resulting vacillation between identity and difference, self
regulation and alienation, is the origin of a fundamental ambivalence
that characterises my relationship with myself and others. Isolation
provides an intimate exchange. Between the convict and the power that
is exercised over me. The desire to emerge as authentic through mimicry
is the final irony of partial representation.
Animals first entered the imagination as messengers and promises. They
had magical functions, sometimes oracular, sometimes sacrificial. Animal
spirits could affect economic behaviour. Nearly all modern techniques
of social conditioning were first established with animal experiments.
So too were the methods of so-called intelligence testing. And in the
first stages of the industrial revolution, animals were used as machines.
As also were children. The eyes of the gorilla were attentive and wary.
The gorilla had secrets. Recent speculation about the possible origin
of the evil eye have included the suggestion that it is related to gaze
behaviour perhaps involving gaze aversion, common in many animal species.
It may be said a person who kills by sorcery or a miraculous act must
be killed. But the person who kills by the eyes must not be killed.
The only reason for the distinction is that the person who kills with
the eyes did not want or intend to do so. And couldn’t have avoided
doing so. The application of the eye was involuntary. The difference
between first and second degree manslaughter.
All rise.
All eyes will arrive at the scene where with due process the features
of justice will emerge. Words will be performed. The chapter will be
enacted. The sentence will be passed.
All rise.
Plagiography
Giorgio Agamben – The Open: Man and Animal
Albert Bandura – Social Learning Theory
Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce – Wild Justice
Catherine Bell – Ritual: Perspectives and Dimensions
Walter Benjamin – On the Mimetic Faculty
John Berger – On Looking
Homi K Bhaba – The Location of Culture
Suzannah Biernoff – Sight and Embodiment in the Middle Ages
Geoffrey Bird and Cecilia Heyes - Imitations:Thoughts About Theories
Roger Callois – Mimicry and Legendary Psychasthenia
Alan Dundes (ed.) - The Evil Eye: a Casebook
Peter Forbes – Dazzled and Deceived
Michel Foucault – Discipline and Punish
James George Frazier – The Golden Bough
Robert W Mitchel and Nicholas S Thompson – Deception
John Mortimer - Rumpole and the Younger Generation
Denis Owen – Camouflage and Mimicry
Rajesh P. N. Rao, Aaron P. Shon and Andrew N. Meltzoff - A Bayesian Model of Imitation in Infants and Robots
Jane Marla Robbins – Animal Exercises
Constantin Stanislavski – Building a Character
Michael Taussig – Mimesis and Alterity
Harry Witchel – Using Body Language With Your Client
This text has been written by J. A. Harrington on the occasion of Nicky Coutts' solo exhibition My Previous Life as an Ape.
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