Gault 1 “The Hunter” and the Hunted: Posthumanism, Postcolonialism, and the Last Thylacine In “The Hunter” by Julia Leigh, main character “M”’s existence and experiences are affected by a transformative outlook on his predator status and a definitive reframing of his prey. Acting as a headhunter for an international biotechnology company, M attempts a drastic act of postcolonial consumption within his extended and solitary search for Earth’s final Tasmanian tiger, whose body contains enough capital to warrant a secret and illegal hunt. As M tracks the tiger within a regulated nature preserve, he utilizes conventionally “animalistic” parts of himself to aid the hunt. In a manner vital to a posthuman interpretation of M’s character, both his mind and his conception of the mind of his prey (who we can only know as deeply as the aesthetic appearance of her dead body in the book’s final pages) morph and hybridize as time progresses. M’s existence as a human is affected by a shift in definition and context, soon paralleling non- human-animal existence on a formerly human-centric, Cartesian plane of interpretation. “The Hunter” is an excellent text for examining what Worsham would call the “questioning of humanism and the schema of the human that humanism installs” (52). The definition of posthumanism as it is applied to this text: “...does not seek to transcend or eclipse the human; nor does it deny the uniqueness and difference of human beings from other species...It starts from the fact that humanism has denied: human finitude—specifically, the fact of human embodiment and human evolution as a ‘‘specific form of animality’’ (Wolfe 2009, 572). Its focus on human embodiment trains attention on the fact of physical vulnerability and mortality, which are “conditions of existence we share with all living beings” (Worsham 52-53). Posthumanism and animal studies are forming and destabilizing their definitional boundaries on a consistent basis as newer fields in cultural studies. They prove highly useful when applied to Gault 2 works in which overarching themes of “animal” and “human” coexist. “The Hunter” and its main character in particular are excellent subjects to examine with the idea of human animality or “finitude” in mind, as it presents a man who has been slowly and destructively detached from his conception of self by a rock-solid determination to connect with a supposedly “primitive” animal. This animal, which exists almost entirely in his mind, transforms him from a high-level mercenary to a predator just as vulnerable as any non-human-animal. By evaluating M, his prey, and the biotech contractor motivating his hunt, one can examine levels of nature’s predator-prey hierarchy alongside the societal motivations for the colonization of the thylacine’s environment. As M’s life becomes defined by his hunt, he modifies his understanding of his own humanity in a way that allows for primal predation but negatively affects his viewpoint of the consumption of the tiger: vitally, their existences begin to mesh and equalize in significance and M loses his sense of invincibility. When he begins his mission, M finds animal dung and “slowly smears the paste all over himself, boots included, until he is not quite human, a strange but not entirely familiar beast” (Leigh 30). In order to harvest the tiger, he acknowledges that he must harbor (not necessarily descend to, as Wolfe’s concept of human finitude rejects or a more conventional predator-prey hierarchy would suggest) the type of consciousness we would ascribe to non-human animals. For M, to constantly acknowledge that he is an elite hired hunter in a high-tech chain of command targeting one non-human beast would be mentally taxing. If he was to frame his journey this way, the emotional burden of his eventual kill would reside in a much larger and more ethically questionable context, blurred all the more by his enigmatic objectives and simplistic greed. The commencement of M’s hunt prompts his repositioning within a previously centrist interpretation of his humanity, mixing his identity with those of a non-human animal and embracing its primality. It allows him to both create a new identity for himself from Gault 3 which to position his experience, an essential effort, and also to forget what many would consider to be a highly unethical mission. As the plot commences, the occupation of “naturalist” begins to gain significance. This occupation is introduced just before M begins his hunt, providing contrast between his desire to kill and his understanding of the value of the natural world. A key contrast to M’s character is provided in the form of Jarrah Armstrong, former father to two children and the husband of the widow whose house M stays in for the duration of the book. Armstrong, a naturalist working for the university, died in the same wilderness in which M pursues the tiger (Leigh 12). The late naturalist’s interaction with the environment took a positive form, encouraging preservation and only removing parts of the wilderness that would further an eco-conscious interpretation of nature. Ironically, this naturalist is the one consumed entirely by the thylacine’s environment via his mysterious death, becoming an unconventional thematic foil for M in the process. The naturalist never attempts to act in any predatory manner, while M manages to avoid death and complete his hunt by consciously releasing aspects of his humanity and embracing violent predation in the same wilderness. In “What Is Posthumanism?” by Cary Wolfe, it is stated that: “...The human is achieved by escaping or repressing not just its animal origins in nature, the biological, the evolutionary, but more generally by transcending the bonds of materiality and embodiment altogether”. M self- references as an agent acting on behalf of a company established to transcend the natural state of evolution and modify the boundaries of biology via the innards of the thylacine, an excellent example of an attempt to surpass materiality and embodiment and support an apex human definition. As the narrator states, “this is the stuff that dreams-and wars-are made of” (Leigh 50). Dreams, the former entity, are phenomena that transcend the aforementioned bonds of Gault 4 materiality. In M’s case they function as vaguely optimistic contrasts to the sheer negativity of war and the true motivations of his employer, allowing for shallow justifications of a killing that may further humanity’s scientific objectives but will desecrate essential facets of human ethics. The consumerist monopolizing of war attempted by the company attempts the transcendence of embodiment by endeavoring to fully dominate the constant conflict that defines our existence, perhaps one of the most critical aspects of the human condition. In itself, M’s hunt for the thylacine serves as a microcosm structured by these autocratic desires and value systems, exhibiting the dominance man has already claimed over much of the natural world and presenting the psychological and experiential consequences of belonging to a virtually unassailable species. Returning to M’s development within the narrative of the dead naturalist, it is important to note that the plateau on which M’s hunt and the naturalist’s studies take place is a postcolonial setting. While M can walk for days and camp without seeing another human, there are occasional reminders that he is within the boundaries of a settled preserve designed to allow human access to an “unspoiled” nature while also facilitating the existence of native species. The narrator describes, “The track they were on was cut by old trappers. In a study of the area he’d read that a hundred years ago the same ground would have been regularly used by men carrying up to seventy pounds of wallaby and possum pelts across their shoulders” (Leigh 15). Nature preserves can fall somewhere in the middle of a spectrum displaying pure, structured colonialism and mostly untouched wilderness. However, Orvell and Meikle state that “It could be argued, for example, that to theorize a separate “natural” sphere beyond human intervention, which then takes on the role of total other to civilization, is always Gault 5 already a form of perceptional-ideological framing and thus implies an act of intrusion and interference with the assumed other” (438-439). This concept suggests that M’s interpretation of himself as a master of his “wild” environment is not only unsound, but that his motivation to eliminate the “other” (the thylacine) in itself makes him as an intruder before he even starts the hunt. Essentially, M interferes with the “wilderness” due to his solipsistic human interpretation of its “wildness”, a trait existing only in opposition to what would be considered “human” or “civilized”, long before he physically enters the new environment. This is the same pattern of perception formation that, on a larger scale, drives biotech companies like M’s contractor in their interactions with the “natural” world, and their belief that wilderness contains the secrets to the governing of human civilization. Beyond M’s contractor, the intruder characterization and Orvell and Meikle’s theory is highly relevant. M’s realignment of his human self with a novel definition of animal life emerges only as he ceases to “other” his prey and his environment. The elimination of the “other” or the ideological practice of “othering” is the key to lateralizing the animalistic hierarchy we project on living things. As M’s human vs. animal, predator vs. prey assessment of his environment fades, his existence becomes more and more affected by his decentralization, and he begins to relate more and more to a posthuman definition of self in which he resides among the animals instead of above them. When moving through the brush, “He is not a bird, so he does what the other animals do- he takes the path of least resistance” (Leigh 35). Over weeks and weeks in the wilderness, he captures hundreds of animals in traps set for the tiger, small failures that add up to a large psychological toll. Through the increasingly exhausted mental projections of M, the tiger becomes a complex character, both cunning and sentimentalized as the final female of her species. M begins to see himself as less of a superior human hunter and more as a fellow Gault 6 predator sharing a landscape with a creature he has only an abstract motivation to kill. With this acknowledgment of the biotech company’s increasingly irrelevant role in his mission, he begins to recognize himself as an abstraction that takes on qualities of the animals he lives among. As he falls asleep, he immerses himself in his imagination: “The eyes in his head are no longer his own, thick fur runs along the back of his neck...His arm is bent at the elbow, and a paw, not a hand, rests against his bony convex chest” (Leigh 91). M’s transformation provides a vital illustration of the hunter-prey relationship, a consumptive connection that structures all of life but varies greatly in regards to humanity and our inter-species relationships. M’s identity is propped up by his military experience and “years of service” (Leigh 24), which facilitated the development of his ability to “go without” (Leigh 25). He reminds himself of his own strength by recounting that he was “Not like the others he once knew, soldiers who refused to leave for their jobs because at the last minute they’d misplaced their lucky spoon...or a memento from...a dear departed colleague”. He has been selected for this job because he is the elite of the elite, and the most able to locate, kill, dissect, and dispose of the last thylacine on earth. On the spectrum of hunting skill that M’s descriptions make apparent, a distinct form of dehumanization is mandatory to perform at a high level. M has abandoned much of his desire or capacity for emotion, either choosing or failing to acknowledge the multifaceted emotional situations caused by his interactions with Jack Farrah’s family and his own feelings for his prey (initially, the thylacine, and later, humans he resolves he would have to kill and dispose of should they interfere with his operation). This trend in M’s behavior and identity can be interpreted in two ways. Firstly, we can see his depersonalization as a product of his desire to supersede the portions of his humanity that hinder his abilities to kill. Secondarily, we can see the same as a further unconscious Gault 7 “animalization” of his drive and actions. Keeping posthumanism in mind, the second interpretation does not imply a descent to primality, but a personal acceptance of human finitude and a mindset that incorporates killing as a part of an animalistic life. Unfortunately, this mindset allows M to avoid the trauma of completing a kill he knows is tragically unethical due to its integration with the demands of his contractor. M’s pride in his stoicism motivates him initially, exhibiting a conscious and egotistical attempt at depersonalization as referenced in the first interpretation. However, over the course of the hunt, M’s human pride, a construct Wolfe would categorize as a construct resulting from repression of animal origins and perhaps an attempt to embody an unreachable ideal, falls to the wayside. He operates among non-human animals as their equivalent, killing and consuming perhaps as an apex predator but not as man defined by his species’ mastery of nature. Towards the book’s conclusion and prior to the thylacine’s death, the narrator states, “There is no way he will miss this shot, and he holds the animal in his sights, knowing that he is a killer, and that he, too, will be killed” (Leigh 162). Here, a posthumanist analysis of the hunter-prey relationship becomes particularly enlightening. Two questions must be asked: initially, what is it to hunt, and furthermore, what is it to be hunted? To be thorough, these questions must be asked of both M and his prey. Referencing the postrepresentational cognitive philosophy of Daniel Dennett, Wolfe comments: “And just as different forms of being human in the world are rewritten in terms of a homogeneous Cartesian ideal, so nonhuman beings, in all their diversity, are now rendered not as fully complete forms of life that are radically irreducible to such a thin, idealized account of what counts as subjectivity but rather as diminished or crippled versions of that fantasy figure called the human-...now rewritten as the user-illusion qua enduring subject” (Wolfe 45). Gault 8 Asking our two questions in regards to M naturally provokes an evaluation of his subjectivity from a Cartesian standpoint. From his reflections in the beginning of the book we can derive that M believes his role as a human hunter is a simple occupation no more complex than that of a man completing any day-to-day work, albeit an occupation that he can link somewhat to his own pride. Killing is straightforward, and while it remains a violent and vivid action, no particular thrill is derived from his efforts. His perspective on what it is to be hunted, however, varies widely. M seems to harbor the sentiment that, much of the time, the thylacine would qualify as a being that reflects “diminished or crippled versions of that fantasy figure called the human”, but who retains a vital autonomy that allows for thoughtful evasion. As a result, she is worthy of much anthropomorphizing: “Do you remember, tiger, when you were young and used to follow your mother down the escarpment to the verdant plains?” (Leigh 49), “Ah, perhaps you were so young then that you had not yet been born...and had only savored the sheep through your mother’s blood” (Leigh 50). To be hunted is not to be rendered weak, but to be unknowingly subjected to a being with the power to govern your mortality. If one is easily hunted less dignity is found in death, and with more difficulty comes esteem. As M closes in on the thylacine, he is brought to the point of declaring that [the tiger] “You won’t die alone” (Leigh 164). To be hunted is either an unremarkable or highly honorable way to die, as we can tell from M’s unemotional treatment of the many smaller animals he kills in traps in contrast to the thylacine’s corpse. In death, after a long, long, hunt, it becomes clear the thylacine has earned dignity that almost equals M’s, despite belonging to a different and supposedly “inferior” species. As stated previously, the thylacine is viewed by both the reader and M as being a creature endowed with a diminished version of humanity, but it is vital to recognize that this humanity is constructed entirely from the subjectively motivated anthropomorphic projections of M. To hunt Gault 9 and be hunted from the thylacine’s perspective can be understood separately from M’s interpretations of these actions. As a non-human animal, to hunt is an extraneous undertaking, and we see M moving towards similar impartiality. To be hunted, on the other hand, would be a constant from thylacine’s birth and a factor that only becomes more substantial as time presses on. This is a feeling M, for all of his attempted synchrony with the actions and emotions of the thylacine, will never truly know. He says, “She is more than an animal to him, more than a wallaby or pademelon, and he observes her body as he would the body of a friend laid out in the morgue” (Leigh 164). This is the point at which he fulfills the definition of a “user-illusion qua enduring subject” (Wolfe), resolute enough in his humanness to empathize with a creature to which he has given a “thin” and idealized identity based off of his own human experience. He interprets her death as he would a fellow human, as he knows no alternative. However, the efforts of his consciousness are the same that made him an objective predator in regards to his interpretation of the construct of “wildness” (Orvell and Meikle) and his desire to join it. This places him on the level of an animal defined largely by her unpredictable and innately lethal environment. What Wolfe would call M’s “human finitude” allows for the recognition of M’s nature not as a human or non-human-animal, but perhaps as a human animal. This label would be supported by the erosion of the human-animal binary, displayed in all of its complexity thanks to M’s consistent re-defining of his initially Cartesian human self. Circling back to the core of posthumanism, the “unique animality” of humans and M’s human finitude is perhaps the most imperative underlying theme in “The Hunter”. Naturally, one can pull themes of mortality, primality, consumerism and colonization from “The Hunter’s” narrative, all subjects that could tie in closely to a posthuman analysis. By acknowledging his “unique animality” and thus relating animality to both subjects, we can assess M himself as if he Gault 10 were the thylacine’s peer, a highly useful application of functional posthumanism. With this application we are also able to go even deeper and see M’s prey as a living entity as vital to the book as any human character. It also allows us to view the book’s colonized environment from a standpoint that blurs boundaries and borders, raising questions about what humans “preserve” and what we choose to release or destroy based on the nature of our intrusion. Finally, by utilizing posthumanism as an interpretive lens, we have come to a greater understanding of the extensive process of human interventionism: even one of our most conventionally straightforward natural relationships, the hunter and the hunted, is not exempt from substantial distortions of human-animal boundaries and the reframing of definitions that can lead to novel interpretations of humanness. Gault 11 Works Cited 1. Leigh, Julia. The Hunter. New York: Four Walls, Eight Windows, 2000. Print. 2. Orvell, Miles, and Meikle, Jeffrey L., eds. Architecture, Technology, Culture, Volume 3: Public Space and the Ideology of Place in American Culture. Amsterdam, NLD: Editions. Rodopi, 2009. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 11 November 2015. 3. Wolfe, Cary. What Is Posthumanism? Minneapolis: U of Minnesota, 2010. Print. 4. Worsham, Lynn. Toward an Understanding of Human Violence: Cultural Studies, Animal Studies, and the Promise of Posthumanism. Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, 35:1, 51-76.