Book Review | We worship pets and subject farm animals to horrible conditions: Riikka Kaihovaara’s work shows both sides of the coin

Essays

Riikka Kaihovaara: Strange animal. Athena. 243 pp.

René Descartes (1596–1650) is considered a forerunner of the modern scientific worldview.

Documentary writer Riikka Kaihovaara (b. 1980) according to Cartesianism meant a destructive division into two: only man has free judgment and reason, nature works like a clockwork mechanism.

Only now is the long shadow of Cartesianism loosening its grip, on many fronts at once.

Science and philosophy have not even come to an agreement on what human consciousness is. Not to mention how to relate to plants and animals’ experience of the world.

Instead of awareness, however, Kaihovaara speaks of “feltness” and bodily experience.

According to plant neurobiology, glutamate, melatonin and serotonin flow in plants. Scents are for communication, warnings to fellow species or attracting pollinating insects.

What about octopuses with two hearts and bundles of nerves in their tentacles, “a kind of peripheral brain”? Or spiders, whose tail secretes a web of silk thread that is part of their consciousness? Or the familiar ones who seem to have some kind of learning ability or “muscle memory”?

In Kaihovaara’s hands, nature is full of anomalies. And the ecosystems of the seas are dizzying in their strangeness.

Dolphins and the language of whales, “intellectuals of other species”, has led many researchers to the middle ground between madness and genius.

American neuroscientist-psychoanalyst John C. Lilly (1915–2001) dreamed of an English-Dolphin language-English dictionary and opening the doors of consciousness to the wisdom of the “Einsteins of the sea”.

The methods included wild lsd trips in a sensory deprivation tank. Lilly research assistant Margaret Lovatt masturbates the genitals of a dolphin named Peter to strengthen the bond.

According to Kaihovaara, researchers go astray precisely in their assumption that all sufficiently developed species need symbolic, conceptual thinking.

The clicks and whistles of the dolphins are part of the supersonic sonar system, messages about shoals of fish and ship movements.

Perhaps man is stuck in the labyrinth of his unnecessary knowledge and existential anxiety. For others, the ability to be present in this moment is enough.

There is a risk of death directed and scripted series for Yleisradio, among others The history of drugs in Finland (2015) and History of Sex-Finland (2017). His latest documentary Death of the Queen (2022) discusses the loss of pollinating insects.

The documentary maker’s background and subculture mentality are visible Strange animal pages in many ways.

Kaihovaara presents the reader with a huge number of different perspectives and research directions. Sometimes he is charmed by the visions of acid heads and romantics, and sometimes he remembers a healthy skepticism.

There are also many references to fiction. Eva Kilpi in his works reaches towards the common origin of all living things. Polish by Olga Tokarczuk lindens dream unconsciously, free from time and death.

Current The twists in identity politics don’t bother Kaihovaara a bit.

In his first collection of essays Wild person (2019) Kaihovaara exposes greens and feminists as bulls-eye Matti Mäkelän (1951–2019) ecological thinking.

In a foreign animal surrounded by red-green circles Timo Hännikäinen (b. 1979) essays about mortality receive a factual and understanding reading.

Kaihovaara’s own strength is also in his kooky attitude, in asking strange and disturbing questions.

Man would have to give up his separateness and humble himself as a species among species. Contrary to many contemporary eco-essayists, this does not mean just wallowing in the post-colonial guilt of Western man.

In the life cycle let’s go beyond good and evil. Nature can accommodate inexplicable cruelty and tragedies.

The smiling dolphins may rape or torture their fellow species. Chimpanzees poke at the brains of smaller great apes. The cute deer from children’s books and Disney cartoons scavenge the carcasses of people lost in the forest.

The herring whale is an unfathomable predatory fisherman that devours tons of smaller ones every day.

Danger in the essays, western ethical awareness and the meat industry booming with huge volume appear as different sides of the same alienation from nature.

In Finland at the beginning of the 20th century, animals in the home yard could be cared for and kept as individuals, but eventually killed for food.

We can no longer tolerate the suffering of animals. Therefore, dogs and cats are objects of mixed care and worship. Cows, chickens and pigs have been herded into inhumane intensive production plants. Out of sight, out of mind.

Author Antti Nylén has compared the archipelago of animal prison camps Andrei Tarkovsky Stalker(1979) to the Zone.

Thoughts of trees and animal spirits are not just posthumanist progressivism. But just as well the wisdom of indigenous peoples. Kalevala too at the core are the rites of appeasement related to bear killing.

Kaihovaara argues for selective meat eating, American beat poet and Buddhist nature activist by Gary Snyder (b. 1930) in spirit.

Bulk meat from freezers and “sanctified meat”, Snyderian participation in the sacral food web and the exchange of gifts are contrasted.

Kaihovaara describes his own worldview as “deeply rooted in the circle of life.” As well as empathy towards “like” and “passers-by”, actually towards all life.

If vegans won’t swallow Kaihovaara’s thoughts without biting, probably the same with atheists.

The materialistic-naturalistic worldview has condemned man as “dead while alive”, a hopelessly detached and lonely being.

Kaihovaara outlines a new kind of feeling of holiness from an agnostic basis.

Man should eat and be eaten. Scavengers and rot eaters are part of the earthly doctrine of resurrection, eternal life as part of the cycle of nature.

Strange animal In November, he won the Toisinkoinen prize of the domestic literature subject organization of the University of Helsinki.

Kaihovaara’s essays are precisely fiction. He doesn’t hesitate to bring up his own anxiety and uncertainty in the face of big questions.

Comfort and hope lie in realizing our own animality.