I’m reading about elephant blood this morning. Such a large animal needs a unique diet. Tiny creatures do, too. Several research studies discuss the differentials between East Asian elephant species, but this one compares elephants who do different jobs. If you’re a circus animal, these findings are statistically significant.
Not all circus elephants are low in magnesium (Mg) and phosphorus (P) – only middle-aged females. These two trace minerals are required for healthy protein absorption in red blood cells. The study finds some basic equivalencies between circus elephants and their wild-roaming peers. They all eat bananas, as it turns out, and potassium levels are about the same for all the elephants in the study. But as the circus females age, they lose Mg and P at higher rates than circus males. Females in the wild don’t have this problem.
The study concludes that data from wild animals is best to establish the normal dietary bases for trace minerals in males and females. Circus females are treated as an anomaly. Very few studies investigate the right nutrient compound for circus elephants, especially the ladies.
Makes sense, until it doesn’t. The notion that their nutritional needs compare to wild animals is poppycock. Further, it may be bunk to search for the solution in science
What is normal and who measures?
The question itself may be the place where the sciences and arts are cleaved. Our inquiry methods are so similar, but they were pulled apart. Before industrialization, disassembling human bodies (and dissembling about it) was as covert and fashionable as Shakespeare. Activities after nightfall at a time when the circus came of age.
The Enlightenment – a potent combination of power, patriarchy, and patronage – brought scientific thought into the daylight and left the other logics in the bordello. Science began to pull apart humane knowledge, dissecting it into knowable parts, never quite acknowledging that something was there a priori, nascent and naive as it seemed. Like, how to care for working elephants – a system of knowing that could only arise in a specific place and time at the adaptive hands of those in the muck. Looking at the lanky limbs of those leathery ladies and thinking, wtf?
Now, centuries later, the elephants suffer, scientific questions are banal, and we are unearthing a bitter root. We are psychologically and emotionally dissociated from life itself, having nurtured in our time only the lived experiences that can be documented and explained scientifically.
Look at the great ruse going on in healthcare right now. We are crowing about the scientific proof for creative practice, and quietly shadowing the mystery of it. We have pulled apart each of the senses in neuroscience, and are late to acknowledge the absurd faith it takes to care for human beings. These are practices that also require adherence, cultivation, and transmission to be successful over time.
That’s why so many of my huddles are in the kitchen. The work-from-home transition during the COVID crisis was an unusual moment of feminist home-court advantage. Suddenly, pets and children existed in the minds of managers. Our authentic selves appeared on screen and in the background. Science having the shits was fascinating to watch. Especially from the studio where we lose our shorts all the time.
For me, it was rough to be seen on screen so quickly. But, as I lost the daily dress up, I gained a greater sense of myself a priori. Before I knew to be this person in a suit, I was myself someone else. In my opinion, Foucauldian logic is extremist and fetishistic. Of course, we are something before we know. Self origins go back generations and are not the product of analysis.
In other words, circus elephants came from the wild and are going to die in captivity whether we do the research or not. Their a priori existence matters, but it was untended all those years and still is quite muted. What could science do about it now? Even the evidence is gone. And, what hubris would ask?
The analytical error appears again. What if our search is not for the trackable? What if their needs are ephemeral or can’t be described in words? Like humans, maybe circus elephants need the amibguities of society – novelty, surprise, and delight – right alongside some genetic traces of the past. Maybe they are pale and lanky, of sorrow and boredom. Other scientific evidence shows that middle-aged American females (like me) need ground minerals, too.
Knowing my own circus past – and the loop of such circular logics – I aim to study crocodile tears next.
Anne L'Ecuyer 