The Museum of Human Predation does not contain precious treasures and curiosities plucked from far and wide. What lies within its collections are neither priceless rarities sought out by art collectors nor singular objects prized for their aesthetic beauty or venerated as religious or spiritual tokens. The materials in the Museum of Human Predation are the very antithesis of the precious object. They are the mundane and homely utensils of an arduous unglamorous enterprise, likely to have been mass produced out of the most economical materials available. Disconnected from their original context and function, these wares are of relatively little worth.
Yet these pedestrian objects are a vital part of the human story. They are the material record of the human practice of predation and, particularly, of the unique human practice of domestic predation in the later part of the human predatory Age. The human story cannot be understood without an understanding of the predatory strategy they adopted as a means of subsistence, and of the instruments and infrastructures they developed to execute that strategy. The metal restraint chute, the concrete stall, the galvanized round swivel snap, the glistening killing chamber, the chain and the tether, the darkened isolated outbuilding, the rope, the hook, the whip, the electrical pain compliance device, the needle and the nose plier, the scissors, the heated iron, the rotating blade, the ejaculation probe, the insemination straw, the breeding rack, the long disposable glove, the thick rubber nipple, the plastic apron, the curving ramp, the alien motions of the human hand. Quietly, efficaciously, and inescapably, these tools and devices help humans to hold and keep other beings alive in order to extract their bodily materials and offspring over time. Nothing, it might be argued, is more central to an account of the human story in the late period of the predatory Age than this vast nether architecture of force that defines the human as domestic predator, but which has lain silent and unseen for most of the human record of history, in the shadow of the great museums of human art and culture.
The artifacts and infrastructures of human domestic predation are also masterpieces of a kind. They also inspire awe of a kind, albeit a kind of fearsome awe that might be experienced as terror when we sense the closeness of our position with those we understand to be “prey.” They are a testament to the relentless human capacity for devising ever more exquisite and effective forms of unanswerable force and coercion. But they are not only this. They are also a testament to the ceaseless resistance of the animals against bodily extraction.
The compilation of these objects provides the opportunity to study and reflect upon the human practice of predatory force and the unique form of violence it presents. We will no doubt gain many insights into human predation for decades to come. Today, with the inauguration of the Museum of Human Predation, three important observations can already be made about the human practice of predation and about the utility of foregrounding this institution of force as a major subject of research and analysis.
The first observation that emerges from the collection is that the human practice of predatory force is highly evolved. It has moved on from the use of brute physical force to produce injury and death to other animals. Instead, the kind of force that is deployed in the practice of domestic predation is designed to produce control and compliance, while preserving the productive capacities of those subject to the force. This is consistent with the unique imperatives of the domestic predation strategy which commandeers life as a generative force for the production and reproduction of bodily materials and, therefore, incorporates a pre-slaughter period of preservation as part of its approach. To keep living prey is a more delicate task than killing other beings outright. A domestic predator must be able to take from life without extinguishing it in the process. They must preserve life and consume it at the same time. This form of predation requires the production of compliance and the exertion of continuous control over the lives and deaths of animals brought under human occupation for the purpose of extraction. To this end, the human domestic predator has evolved methods of force that are designed to remove resistance. As the tools and techniques in the Museum’s collection reveal, these methods make resistance impossible — neutralizing contestation as it emerges or extinguishing it even before it arises. These methods of force, when they are effective, produce an image of compliance and the illusion that “nothing is happening.” The force deployed by humans to transform other animals into domestic prey is thereby perfected in its own erasure.
The second observation is that — contrary to the story of “the domestic animal” as a willing and oblivious servant to the extractive ends of their human keepers — the activity of domestic predation is built upon an extraordinary program of sustained force and coercion. The “domestic animal,” in other words, is not a noun but a verb. The condition of others as “domestic prey” is not a quality or characteristic residing in particular beings but an ongoing process of being preyed upon. "Things," as Simone Weil observed, are not what something is, but what we turn others into through the application of force.
The third observation is that the predatory impulse is a deep behavioural pattern that is never entirely extinguished within us and will continue to emerge and re-emerge in different times and across contexts. This powerful impulse is not confined in practice or principle to inter-species interactions but extends to intra-human conduct. We have also seen that a central feature of this particular form of violence is its tendency to become imperceptible to our apprehension. History casts a long shadow of institutions of unfathomable human predatory violence that were legalized, normalized, and economically entrenched in societies practicing such violence, appearing to its participants as merely the innocuous habitudes of one’s time and in harmony with the natural order of the universe. To observe the human predatory impulse, to illuminate its history, and to bring continuing scrutiny to its methods is a salutary and necessary practice of vigilance. May the history of what was restore us to a future of what could be.
M.H.T.
Director, ARC