234THIS IS NOT A HORSEanatomo-political power (through the inconfutable materiality of animal
hide) and the working of the technologies of docile bodies (in the summon-
ing of the dog signifier). Realism and indexicality are once again central to
this proposal. The assemblage stages a theatricality that mobilizes the
viewer’s body for the purpose of generating a nonaffirmative value, one that
surprises by inserting an alternative/complementary narrativizing element.^41
This becomes evident as the elusive image of a dog’s head appears in the folds
of the fur coat only when seen from a lateral viewpoint.
The seeming naturalness with which the fur coat hangs on the head of
the mannequin, and the effortlessness with which this arrangement in
turn visually gestures toward the canine, further emphasize the problem-
atic naturalization that biotechnologies of control transhistorically ac-
quire in technocapitalist economies.
As seen, the retrieval of dispositifs entails consideration of the inter-
mingling networks of power relations established between “discourses,
institutions, architectural forms, regulatory decisions, laws, administrative
measures, scientific statements, philosophical, moral and philanthropic
propositions.”^42 At this stage, it is important to consider that all human/
animal relationships inscribed in It’s Hard to Make a Stand can be catego-
rized as prosthetic. Each object included in the assemblage, like in the
Duchampian readymade, alludes to the missing human body part implied
in the object-related action. The notion of prosthetics has played a defin-
ing role in human/animal studies conceptions of posthumanism. As Cary
Wolfe argues, man “is fundamentally a prosthetic creature that has co-
evolved with various forms of technicity and materiality, forms that are
radically ‘not-human’ and yet have nevertheless made the human what
it is.”^43 The appearance of the dog within the signifying set of the assem-
blage thus places an emphasis on the self-reflexivity and intra-action es-
sence of the technologies of biopower. Ultimately, dogs are the most suc-
cessful incarnation of the application of technologies of docile bodies ever
performed in the history of domestication—dogs, much more than cats,
are the quintessential pet for a reason.^44 We are all familiar with the in-
tense devotion dogs have for their human companions, but guide dogs are
capable of establishing an even deeper bond. Clinton R. Sanders’s view of
guide dogs is that “the dog and person are defined by self and others as a
unitary social actor. In this sense the dog is transformed into a literal ex-
tension of the owner’s self.”^45 Dogs, like horses, can therefore also inhabit