Meditations while Licking

The 18^th-century French physician and philosopher Julien Offray de La Mettrie argued that both a human being and an animal are machines, the only difference being in their construction and in the former having the ability to speak (which, incidentally, he did not consider an exceptional, but rather an accidental property). Having drawn the parallel between men and animals, La Mettrie discovered the organisms of both are in fact rather similar. He noted that both men and animals are able to tell good from evil, are able to feel pain and pleasure, and experience pangs of conscience as a result of inappropriate moral choices. In the process of his reasoning, La Mettrie defined imagination, which he perceived as a particular ability of the body, as the fundamental psychological ability present in both a human being and an animal. The philosophy of La Mettrie, author of the treatise Man a Machine (L’homme machine, 1748), evinced a strong tendency towards anthropomorphising animals.

Hence in the context of Józef Robakowski’s work entitled Meditations while Licking it is difficult not to refer to La Mettrie and his philosophy. The protagonist of his video is Rudzik, the artist’s pet cat. He is observed in the process of two mundane occupations: licking his fur and looking attentively. In the background, Robakowski’s voice is repeating, in concert with the cat’s action, “I am licking, I am licking…” or “I am thinking, I am thinking…”* The 1^st person singular form of the verbs underlines the cat’s subjectivity: it is he that is the active subject, communicating with the spectator and consciously performing certain actions. By repeating “I am thinking…”, Robakowski ascribes to the cat the power of judgement, a property usually attributed only to human beings. He thus approaches the animal as a personality, and his work can be located in the context of the currently ongoing research on the psychology, the inner world and cognitive faculties of animals.

Where the contemporary artist and the French philosopher differ is in their approach to an animal as a subjective being. Robakowski seems to associate the cat’s self-awareness and ability to speak with cognition and the spiritual element. La Mettrie, in turn, discovered an analogy between a human being and an animal due to extreme materialism, of which he was an advocate, in which soul is perceived as a type of matter. This view permitted him to equate man and animal, to subvert the hierarchy of the living things as differing in the level of intelligence. The French philosopher was of the opinion that monkeys can be effectively taught human speech and thus it is possible to mould them into beings able to function like a man. It seems that Robakowski does not perceive the need for such an endeavour. The “humanisation” of an animal seems a grotesque procedure that only confirms that the human approach is deeply anthropocentric. Meditations while Licking demonstrate that a cat does not need to be endowed with personality features; it is enough to see them in it, not invading the autonomy of the cat’s world at the same.

Izabela Kopania

translated from Polish by Klaudyna Michałowicz

*  Both verbs having more concise, one-word 1^st person singular forms in the present tense (liżę and myślę), the effect of the repetition is more dynamic in Polish (translator’s note).