THE INDIVIDUAL ANIMAL IN POETRY121or fish than about the life of an large mammal, and most pet owners
feel very differently about the status of their dog or cat than about the
life of a cow destined for slaughter. Broadly speaking, Western cultures
value individual animals when they are pets but not if they are wild
animals or livestock. And even more broadly, we accept that human
lives are to be valued individually, but nonhuman lives matter only in
extraordinary situations. Animal rights advocates, perhaps most nota-
bly Tom Regan, have made the case that progress in human morality
has occurred precisely as cultures have developed awareness of the
value of the individual, and that developing an understanding of ani-
mals as also capable of being “subjects of a life” is central to the prog-
ress of animal rights.^2 That is, animals only have rights if we recognize
and value their lives not as simple members of a broad collective but as
single sentient beings.
The rise of animal studies, and of posthumanism more generally, has
not clarified the status of the individual animal. Gilles Deleuze and Felix
Guattari, precursors of the contemporary movement to regard the rela-
tionship of thought to the animal, define the animal as by its nature col-
lective and multiple (in packs, herds, crowds, and swarms), and thus
lacking in individuality. The animal is more or less equivalent to a de-
individuated collective unconscious, opposed to (human) ego. The goal of
“becoming animal,” one of their most frequently cited ideas, effectively
signifies resisting or escaping the idea of the human as individual, auton-
omous, and progress driven—concepts constructed, they argue, by ide-
ologies of reason and capitalism. The idea of the individual animal exists
for them only as a fetish, “family pets, sentimental, Oedipal animals each
with its own petty history.” The individual is an idea, a reification of
subjectivity. Their central example of becoming animal is a literary fig-
ure; strangely, it is Ahab, who “becomes whale” in his pursuit of Moby
Dick. They note the seeming contradiction here—that Moby Dick is
not a pack or collective but a creature whose behavior and appearance
distinguish him from others of his kind. Indeed, this is precisely why
Ahab pursues him. Their reading of the novel is much like their read-
ing of animals—archetypal and eschewing the complexity and detail
they otherwise claim to champion. For Deleuze and Guattari, Moby