On Animism: Confession

“If things become active, alive, or even person-like, where does this leave actual humans? Animism in this sense is greeted by the Western mindset as the threat that we must exchange positions, for now we can only imagine ourselves as annulled, in the role of the inert, passive stuff that was previously the thing-like “matter” out there. And the provocation reaches further. Its echoes can be heard in the question, “So, do you really believe?” For what is at stake here seems to be of a confessional nature, such that if one would dare to answer “yes,” one would no longer be an accepted member of the modern community.”

I would like to respond to Anselm Frank’s Animism: Notes on an Exhibition and our conversations in class by recounting my first memory of an uncanny experience, one that occurred while viewing an art exhibition. Frank writes that Freud’s notion of, “the ‘uncanny’, (is sensed when) something is either more alive than its should be, or exposed as ‘merely’ mechanical.”

In 1996, at the age of 8, my parents and myself took a trip to Kansas City. My mother was taking a class there, and so my father and I spent the time sightseeing: going to the zoo, the children’s museum, and the Kansas City Art Museum.

At the art museum, while entering one of the contemporary galleries, I noticed with suspicion a well-disciplined, authoritative police officer standing at attention in the corner of the gallery. My father must have noticed my inquisitive posture in regard to the officer. He called me over and whispered, “Dylan, would you go ask that police officer what time it is?” Naturally, I accepted this responsibility, but approached the man with hesitation, with each careful step becoming progressively more fearful of his “realness” or lack thereof. And what would the consequences be should I be wrong?

Duane Hanson, Museum Guard, 1975

Eventually I was in close enough proximity to shyly request, “Excuse me officer, could you tell me what time is it?”

The only answer I got was my father’s laughter. The wax sculpture in that moment, motionless, in a rupturing silence, dissolved much of my belief in its life. Though there was a part of myself that continued to fear its frightening return.

It was the first time I could see the border construction that Frank spoke of in her essay, “the ‘proper’ boundary between self and world. The question of animation—what is endowed with life, the soul, and agency—seems inevitably and immediately to call for distinctions and boundaries: between animate and inanimate matter, primitive and civilized, subjective perception and objective qualities, the colloquial perception of the real and the merely fictive or imaginary, and last but not least, between interior self and exterior world.”

This encounter put me at odds with the object, and the object’s life. I could initially sense something about it that was off but could not decipher the meaning of its lack of movement—if it was of his discipline, his authority, or rather, of his material status. I will always remember the encounter being funny to my father—my yet underdeveloped ability to discern what was “real” or “alive” and what was not.

His laughter quickly encouraged mine, stripped away my fear of the policeman, and we laughed together, but the officer did not laugh.