Lilla Dent

March 2017
Advisor: Wade Schuman

A “Universe In Itself”: An Animist Perspective

Why have I spent the last year preoccupied by the humble object (the discarded cigarette butt,

the threadbare childhood toy) in my artwork? My attempts to answer this question for myself

have led me to the conclusion that I feel quite differently – and certainly more strongly – about

so-called “inanimate” objects than many people.

This realization had in fact begun to dawn on me from a very early age. I distinctly remember

how watching a preschool friend stomp gleefully on a spongy turtle toy of mine at the poolside –

for the fun of watching the water spurt out of its soaked fabric – caused me an acute physical

sense of distress. Catching another friend of mine playfully hurling one of my favorite stuffed

animals across the room on another occasion likewise made me not only wince, but also feel a

deep sense of mortification at the utter lack of respect being shown to what was not for me a mere

bundle of stripy synthetic fur, but a faithful companion. It would not occur to me to throw Rolfie

across the room, or trample on Lucy, any more than it would occur to me to do these things to my

friend’s pet dog or cat; I simply could not fathom how my peers could perform such violent and

insulting acts with such obliviousness. (Needless to say, all of my childhood stuffed animals had

names – both first and last, and sometimes even a middle – personalities, and elaborate

background stories.)

It seems highly probable that the development of this sensitivity of mine was at least partially

stimulated by a number of factors in my familial environment growing up. I was raised in a home

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where not only the stuffed animals and toys but also many personal articles (“Miffy” the scarf),

kitchen utensils (“Sharkey” the oven mitt) and other household items (“Caliban” and “Ariel” the

computers), as well as even some of the furniture (“Pita” the giant bean bag) and naturally our

bicycles (“Queen Conch,” “Sea Slug,” and “Killer Squid”) and the car (“Betsey”) had colorful

names, personalities, and stories. I remember as a lower-schooler even naming the left- and the

right-hand sides of the backseat of the car – “Mog” and “Spoi”, respectively – and assigning them

different personalities! (Not surprisingly perhaps, this is a habit which I have continued to indulge

into adulthood; most recently, I named my bathroom garbage can “Greta.”)

I suspect that some of this bent for attributing (or arguably, perceiving) stories and spirits within

all of the everyday items which surrounded me also emanated from my Japanese mother’s Shinto

background, a religion which embraces the animism of all things, from animals and trees to water,

stones, and dirt. (This of course is a worldview which is embraced by many other non-Judeo-

Christian traditions and is prominent in most early pagan and native/aboriginal religions across

the globe. The Haitian vodou or voodoo tradition, for example, which remains alive and well

today, is founded on the premise of the interconnectedness of all reality, a vibrating web of spirit

energy which permeates and connects every substance and object in the universe1.) In my opinion

the best way of looking at all of this is cumulatively: every object has animacy – vitality and

precious mystery, or in other words, a soul – to somebody out there. Thus, although from the

perspective of any one given person on the planet, not all objects can be said to have a soul, from

the collective human perspective, all objects do. A character in Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of

Salt describes this equation as a sort of marvelous chemistry, explaining that all things, even the

1 Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti.

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flimsy matchstick he holds in his hands, are “living,” but that not all things produce a “reaction”

between each other which will activate this energy or cause it to be sensed and appreciated 2. (That

is to say, it is the unique chemistry between oneself and any given object that determines whether

the soul spark in another thing can be sensed and appreciated, but more on this chemistry later.)

Now, whether or not an object has animacy is a notoriously difficult philosophical concept to

measure, but my personal method of evaluation consists of measuring the involuntary emotional

reaction generated by the item in question. If an object triggers the production of emotions

(tenderness, melancholy, frustration, etc.) typically associated with our relationships to things

unanimously perceived as animate (humans, animals, plants, etc.), then it is safe to say that this

object possesses some degree of animacy for the person experiencing the emotions. For example,

I can say that I believe my old European History notebook from high school has animacy, because

it triggers in me certain uncontrollable emotions (a slightly paradoxical blend of nostalgic

fondness and vague dread) that I would probably not feel towards, say, a blank piece of Xerox

paper in the library copy machine. (Incidentally, it is important to note here that the animacy of an

object has nothing to do with its objective “value” or utility; a broken twig has just as much

potential to trigger an emotional response in a person as a diamond ring or a family heirloom.)

Perhaps precisely because of the general human tendency to shun and ignore the ordinary, the

unpretentious, and the disposable items of day-to-day life, I conversely have found a stubborn

delight and fascination in this quotidian flotsam and jetsam. I found this sentiment most

beautifully mirrored in a passage from Tropic of Capricorn, wherein Henry Miller describes how

objects which others see as “insignificant” and “worthless” are to him unique and precious, and in

2 Highsmith 169

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fact kindle in him a passionate sort of communion which he was unable to establish with many

fellow humans3 . Not surprisingly, Miller’s rhapsodies closely echo the Shinto/pagan conceptions

of animacy discussed earlier with which I also strongly identify: “Everything has soul,” he

affirms, “including minerals, plants, lakes, mountains, rocks. Everything is sentient, even at the

lowest stage of consciousness” and everything, even the cabbage leaf in the gutter which

provokes this entire soliloquy, is a “mysterious” and “beautiful” little “universe in itself”4.

There are however a large range of factors which determine how each of us decides whether or

not a particular object encompasses all of these wonderful things which Miller describes, and

individual sensitivities towards “inanimate” objects are as widely variant as human personalities

themselves. It seems safe to say that both nature and nurture play key roles in this variance,

research suggesting for example that parents who behave aggressively towards innocent

inanimate objects may transmit this desensitization and aggression to their children5.

Whatever leads us down the path to ultimately sensing (or not sensing) the animacy in objects,

many of us may not go so far as Miller as to classify all general/hypothetical objects as being

inanimate. For example, even I would classify “towels” (in the sense of a Platonic “Form”

category) as being inanimate. However, more often than not, a specific, real instance of this

category of items may in fact register with us as being endowed with animacy. I would never

describe a certain faded carnation-pink hand towel – once belonging to my maternal grandmother

and embroidered with her monogram, it used to hang on the bathroom towel ring when I was

3 Miller 54-56

4 ibid. 204, 226

5 Tompkins 24

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growing up – as being a completely lifeless object. I believe the consciousness of this relativity

of value can in fact even exert an additional magnifying effect on the chemistry between the

object and the valuer: something as lowly as a cigarette butt, which most people would

immediately disregard as rubbish, might in fact appear all the more precious to somebody

precisely because he understands how strange his valuation of the object would appear to

anybody else. Any besotted individual – their emotions a heady mixture of glee and shame – who

has ever hoarded a used hair-tie, a Chapstick, a ragged piece of discarded clothing, (indeed,

speaking from personal experience, even a cigarette butt!), simply because its previous ownership

by a lover has alchemized it into secret gold, already understands the workings of this principle to

the fullest. Hence of course the expression, “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure” – or to

butcher another popular saying, soul is in the heart of the beholder. In my work this year it is

precisely this oft-overlooked treasure-spark which I have tried so hard to convey to the viewer: to

reveal Miller’s hidden universe lurking in every fallen cabbage leaf.

Even within the category of objects that we perceive as being endowed with animacy, however,

a distinct hierarchy exists for each of us. There are the objects who arouse in us only a dim, far-

off, superficial sense of warmth and recognition – the armchair, for example, which we sit in

every day; or a vegetable grater, worn and scratched, which has served us for decades. We may

not feel a conscious bond with these things, so it is sometimes only when (humans being creatures

of habit) we are confronted with the idea that harm might come to them, or that we might lose

them, that we realize what they mean to us, and experience this realization via a rush of emotions

ranging from frustration to loneliness to gratefulness. Then, there are the extremely personal

objects such as diaries, family heirlooms, or favorite childhood toys, which can be seen as

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extensions of our psyches – their presence calms, enlightens, and delights us, but harm to or loss

of these items can trigger outright physical pain or panic (such as in my own case of watching

Lucy or Rolfie suffer indignities at the hands of my friends). Finally, on the opposite end of the

spectrum, there are the objects which can trigger a PTSD-like avalanche of negative emotions,

should our previous experiences involving the object have been unpleasant ones. Naturally, there

are many shades of gray and variations between these groups as well.

All of this of course points us in the direction of an obvious conclusion: whether or not we

perceive the animacy in an object very often has to do with our having had a personal experience

with the item (and clearly, the more of these kinds of experiences we have had involving a certain

object, the more likely it is that we are able to recognize its animacy). However, I believe that our

capacity for perception of the animacy of an object is not limited exclusively to objects stemming

from our own personal experiences. There is a special kind of unconditional reverence I feel, for

example, for the allegedly inanimate products and byproducts of living things – there is a greater

likelihood that I will sense an animacy in a piece of food lying on the street than in a plastic

bottle, and feel a greater shame and unhappiness at seeing it thus wasted and disrespected. Books

are also without exception for me living things.

I believe it is also possible to simply imagine and empathize with the experiences and emotions

other people have had relating to a particular object, and achieve a recognition of its animacy in

this way as well. An example which perhaps most people can relate to: walking down the street,

one stumbles upon an abandoned glove, or a baby’s shoe, in one’s path. Naturally, one begins to

wonder a little about the story and the owner behind the lost object, to feel the ghostly presence of

the one-shoed baby, the cold-handed young woman. Some of us, however (myself included), take

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such an interest in objects and their interactional relationships to humans that we extrapolate

further, and sense or imagine narrative and animacy far more subtly in encountered objects

(which might not always tell as immediately recognizable or empathetic of a tale as the lost baby

shoe). This has been the impetus behind my meticulous cataloguing of street trash: the series of

encounters with various items of “trash” which a casual walk down an NYC street typically

entails often feels like a walk down the corridor of the world’s sorriest orphanage or animal

shelter, as a sea of unloved – detested! – and quite literally downtrodden little faces look up

mournfully at me from the sidewalk, the only responsive soul in a swarm of oblivious passersby.

Of course, another explanation for the individual disparity in sensitivity towards animacy would

be that every brain performs a different amount of filtering (or triage) action upon the multitude

of objects which it encounters on a daily basis. It simply takes too much mental and emotional

energy to acknowledge and celebrate the mysterious and worthy soul in every single thing which

crosses one’s path, and this is why it can sometimes be utterly exhausting to sense the animacy in

so many surrounding objects. One knows that one cannot follow the sympathetic urge and make

the emotional investment which the object demands, but the urge is there; and unfulfilled, it

slowly ferments into a cocktail of thwarted responsibility, regret, and guilt vis à vis all of the

innocent, helpless, unwanted “stuff” which other people callously dispose of, waste, and trample

on. A heightened sensitivity towards the animacy of objects can certainly make for a more

rewarding, enlightened, and creative life, but it can also be a draining burden, even a

psychological weapon to be turned against the individual. Certain accounts of child mind-control

experiments, for example, describe how stuffed animals or other toys become potent tools in the

hands of brainwashers, first as a method of intimidation, as the otherwise deprived child’s

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attachment to and perception of sentience in the familiar object can be used against him by

“torturing” or destroying the object in question; and later as triggering material to direct the

subject’s behavior6. The sources for these accounts admittedly may be questionable, but the logic

behind the training premise seems all too real, speaking from the perspective of someone who

suffered very unimaginary discomfort as a child from the inadvertent mistreatment of favorite

playthings. It is also a motif that has continued to resurface in American pop culture and media

for the past several decades, making appearances for example in The Cat People (1982), Hide and

Seek (2005) and several of David Lynch’s films, as well as shows like the recent Stranger Things.

Mind-control conspiracies aside, I have as an adult certainly experienced feelings of exhausted

frustration as a result of the disparity between my sensitivity towards the animacy within

everyday objects and my actual power to acknowledge and do honor to these numberless souls.

My work this past year has explored this gnawing dissatisfaction as well as attempted to transmit

the beauty and mystery of the animacy I see all around me which inspires me in the first place. In

this way I believe I have enjoyed a victory on two fronts, for my work has become not only an

effective vehicle for personal expression and exploration but also a satisfying outlet for the

release of pent-up frustrations (which individually may not amount to much, but which certainly

acquire a deadly weight over the course of many years). I may not be able to rescue and cherish

every single item of detritus I find in the street – but I can do perhaps better by immortalizing

them forever in a unique drawing or print.

6 Wheeler 30, 330, 376

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 Works Cited

Tompkins, Paul J Jr. Assessing Revolutionary and Insurgent Strategies: Human Factors Considerations of
Undergrounds in Insurgencies. Edited by Nathan Bos, The United States Army Special Operations
Command, 2013.

Highsmith, Patricia. Carol oder Salz und sein Preis. Diogenes Taschenbuch, 2015.

Miller, Henry. Tropic of Capricorn. Grove Press, 1961.

Vodou: Sacred Powers of Haiti. The Field Museum. 1400 S. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago, IL 60605, March
20, 2015.

Wheeler, Cisco and Fritz Springmeier. The Illuminati Formula Used to Create an Undetectable Total
Mind Controlled Slave. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2008.