160THE END OF THE DAYDREAMIn “The Death of the Animal: Ontological Vulnerability,”^62 Kenneth
Shapiro identifies two different but related ways in which animals are de-
nied individuality, a positioning that, the author claims, makes animals
vulnerable to mistreatment by man. The first vulnerability involves a loss
of individuality; the second, a “loss of species identification” wherein an
animal becomes a “generic animal,” thus replaceable.^63 In relation to the
first ontological vulnerability, Shapiro identified the concept of species
as a reified entity rather than as an aggregate of individuals. Our expe-
riences of animals are therefore shaped consistently by a clash of con-
ceptions between the animal as a singular individual and an idea of the
species, which conjures generalized morphological and ethological traits.
Animals are thus understood as “impersonalized, deindividualized but
reified abstractions.”^64 According to Shapiro, this conceptualization to
which almost all wild animals are subjected “dissolves the individual [an-
imal] and invests the aggregate of, now, non-individuals with a kind of
unified being that allows members of the species to be killed as if they
were so much grass being mowed.”^65
Taxidermy as a scientific epistemological tool indeed emerged because
of taxonomy’s urge to classify animals into organized species, not for the
purpose of recognizing individuals: scientific taxidermy loathes idiosyn-
crasies. As a result, animals became “the exemplar non-individual” in or-
der to preserve individuality exclusively for the human.^66 It is this complex
set of issues that Horn’s birds propose in their enigmatic juxtaposition.
What can we say about a bird beyond recognizing the species it belongs
to, and what does that say about the bird in front of us, or the one that we
stand behind? How can we reimagine our relationship with animals through
an undoing of the representational paradigms that have constructed our
expectations of what nature and animals ought to be? As our gaze con-
stantly oscillates left and right to ascertain what we think we know already,
Horn’s undermining of photography as a medium of truth challenges
us to move forward, not by outlining possible avenues of enquiry, but by
making us painfully aware of our epistemic limitations. These questions
triggered by the tautology proposed by Horn bring us to rethink our re-
lations with animals through a critical adoption of the media of taxidermy
and photography.