Table Of ContentAffect, Animals, and Autists
Affect, Animals, and Autists
Feeling Around the
Edges of the Human
in Performance
Marla Carlson
University of Michigan Press
Ann Arbor
Copyright © 2018 by Marla Carlson
All rights reserved
This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, including illustrations, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except
by reviewers for the public press), without written permission from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by the
University of Michigan Press
Manufactured in the United States of America
c Printed on acid- free paper
2021 2020 2019 2018 4 3 2 1
A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication data has been applied for.
ISBN: 978- 0- 472- 07382- 5 (Hardcover : alk paper)
ISBN: 978- 0- 472- 05382- 7 (Paper : alk paper)
ISBN: 978- 0- 472- 12393- 3 (ebook)
Cover description for accessibility: The cover features a close-up of the
character Christopher John Francis Boone from a theater production of
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time. The stage is dark and projected
onto it is the outline of a large dog. Inside this shape a young man dressed in
jeans and a T-shirt lies on his side with closed eyes with one of his palms pressed
against the outline. The book’s title is at the top of the cover, and the subtitle is
split into two lines that curve above and below the figure of the boy. The
author’s name, Marla Carlson, appears across the bottom.
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments vii
Chapter 1. Locating the Human in Performance 1
Chapter 2. Performing as Animals 21
Chapter 3. Performing as Autists 51
Chapter 4. Performing with Animals 91
Chapter 5. Performing with Autists 127
Chapter 6. Mimetic Mixing and Technologies for Becoming 163
Notes 191
Bibliography 233
Index 245
Preface and Acknowledgments
Dedications
This book began on a flight from Seattle to Chicago for the 2006 conference
of the American Society for Theatre Research, when I was seated next to
Stalking Cat on his way to the Midwest FurFest in nearby Schaumburg. Cat
was so visually striking that, upon first glimpsing him from the other end
of the plane, I was surprised that the airline had allowed him to fly wearing
what I mistakenly took to be a mask. He had tiger stripes tattooed over his
face, pointed ears, cheeks and forehead reshaped by silicone implants, and
a feline mouth shaped by moving the nasal septum, cleaving the upper lip,
and replacing his teeth with catlike dentures. His arm and leg tattoos had a
fish- scale pattern— connected to feline food rather than appearance, and his
claws were purple. His companion had brought along a pouch of tuna for
his in- flight snack. I might not have engaged with him if the flight attendant
hadn’t broken the ice—I have the received notion that it’s rude to comment
upon another person’s appearance, a rudeness compounded if that person is
a stranger. But he was happy to talk, and the conversation got me thinking
about how people feel about animals and about each other, about forms of
sociality channeled through those feelings, and about the ways that perfor-
mance intensifies and circulates these affective investments.
Beginning in earliest childhood, Cat experienced a spiritual connection
to all feline species and particularly to tigers. He said that his thirty- year
modification project of tattoos, implants, and surgical alterations intended
to bring him as close as possible to physical identity with his totem ani-
mal, the tiger, simply used technology to accomplish a sort of transforma-
viii Preface and acknowledgments
tion long- practiced among his Huron and Lakota ancestors. Also known
as Cat Man, Tiger Man, or simply Cat, he grew up with the name Dennis
Avner in Oscoda, Michigan, a small town on Lake Huron a couple hours
north of Flint. He served in the Navy as a sonar technician and worked as
a computer technician in the San Diego area after his discharge in 1980. He
began the transformation project that he had long imagined with the tat-
toos, because they were easiest to arrange, and added the surgeries gradually.
Steve Haworth of Phoenix, who describes himself as a “body modification
and human evolution artist,” did most of them.1
Twenty years after beginning these modifications on his own, Stalking
Cat went to a furry event at a science- fiction convention. He says that when
he walked into that room in 2000, he felt comfortable with other people
for the first time. Furries are people who enjoy anthropomorphic art and
fiction, even taking on animal identities themselves; some are involved in
role- playing games; many use online avatars to perform in virtual space and
then sometimes perform in actual space by donning ears, tails, or complete
fur suits at fan conventions. Furry fandom provided Cat with community,
friendship, and material support. When we met, he was living on Whid-
bey Island with a couple that he had gotten to know through informal fur-
friendly gatherings of science-fi ction fans in Southern California. In 2005,
the couple relocated due to employment in the aeronautics industry, and Cat
moved north with them, doing some work on their house and looking for
computer- related work in the Seattle area.
This chance encounter came to mind during a conference the following
spring when Anthony Kubiak discussed the recent creation of a chimeric
human- cat protein intended to block allergic reactions (in humans).2 This
potentially beneficial hybrid resembles a particular instance of “aparallel
evolution” that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari describe in A Thousand
Plateaus: a type- C virus links the baboon to the cat by carrying along ge-
netic information from one species when it attaches to another. The process
alters the DNA of all three— cat, baboon, and virus.3 The anthropocentric
focus of transspecies genetic experiments distinguishes them from Deleuzo-
Guattarian philosophy, to be sure. Yet these material linkages made me curi-
ous about others forged through interspecies affect rather than DNA, and
I set out to map the vectors of desire connecting Stalking Cat with other
human and nonhuman creatures. I wondered whether most furries were so-
cially awkward men employed in technology—i n other words, to what ex-
tent the furry stereotype coincides with the Asperger syndrome stereotype
and how these stereotypes might map to reality. The limited ethnographic
Preface and acknowledgments ix
research that I conducted did not support this hypothesis but led me in
other directions. Kubiak (in conversation) wondered about a link between
Asperger syndrome, animals, and shamanism— and Cat self- identified as
a shaman, a claim that I neither support nor contest.4 The spiritual side of
this construct did not grab me in the same way as it has interested Kubiak;
instead, Cat’s intentional self-p ositioning on the borderline between human
and nonhuman struck me as significant for the present understanding of
what it is to be human, particularly in combination with the borderline posi-
tion created by what I have come to think of as neurodiversity.
So I interviewed Stalking Cat in April 2007 on Whidbey Island and
stayed for the first hour or so of the household’s monthly fur- friendly party,
observing their role- playing game based on the anthropomorphic novel- in-
progress that another member of the household was writing. Cat later told
me that he was asked to move out that summer, when expenses and dynam-
ics became unworkable. He never did find work in Seattle. A friend from
furry fandom gave him a place to live in Tonopah, Nevada, and a job in hous-
ing renovation. That friend moved on, and the work dried up. Through all of
this, Stalking Cat struggled to maintain his permanent feline performance
as a profession. When we met, he was working on a deal to market a Stalk-
ing Cat action figure that failed to materialize. He hoped for a talk show
that didn’t work out. Fees for public appearances at venues such as Ripley’s
Believe It or Not and at wildlife sanctuaries provided crucial though not
dependable income. When we last spoke, in 2009, Cat was seeking clients
as a home health aide, and the small consultation fee I was able to provide
enabled him to fix his truck but not to leave Tonopah. In 2011, when I was
finishing the article that formed the seed for this book,5 his agent informed
me that Cat was on the road, busy with public appearances, but never find-
ing quite enough work. I could no longer reach him, and his brother let me
know through Facebook that Cat couldn’t afford Internet access at home
and used the prepaid cellphone a friend had given him primarily for work-
related text messaging. And then in the middle of the night on 5 November
2012, I learned that Cat was dead, apparently a suicide by shotgun in the
garage of the house from which he was being evicted. Whereas progressive
people with money have been crucial to the flourishing of the artists that
this book analyzes, Cat’s furry network didn’t have the same resources (and
perhaps not the inclination)—h e looked for ways to monetize his unique-
ness, and the attempts did not meet with sufficient success to sustain his life
(let alone enable flourishing).
This book is for Cat but not about him. His difficulties and his death
