The Fall of Charlotte Dujardin – animals look back at us





The release and broadcast of the video showing Charlotte Dujardin cracking the whip at the legs of the big bay horse as he canters around the arena is hard to watch. The person recording the event laughs: a way to spend the energy that rose in her body as she witnessed something real but failed to find some words to say at the time. What has so far gone unnoticed, though, is the surprisingly polite way in which the horse objects to the whip. He continues to canter on the track but kicks out every few beats, higher and higher as time goes on. It is a kick crying out to be read.



Vincent Munier's magnificent photographs and films often catch the animal looking back at him. His artistry captures the animal's gaze and frames it. His work gives us an idea that we are being looked at by a manifestation of the Other in their form. His travelling companion on the trail of the snow leopard (in the new documentary, The Velvet Queen), Sylvain Tesson, found the right words: "we are not alone."



From this point of view, clarified by Lacan with his invention of Schema L in 1955, a new possibility opens up that sidesteps the cacophony of accusations from the place of the superego amplified by the imaginary plane. Instead of cancelling the conversation and burying Charlotte Dujardin under a mountain of moral outrage, we can try to imagine the message coming back directly from the horse as if from the place of the Other. This dimension opens up the quiet space of ethics by calling the subject of the unconscious to take up a place on the stage.  



Caption competition:

"Excuse me, could you try to say it a little more clearly, please?

 I can't understand what you want from me."


Animal photos by Vincent Munier (link)

The Velvet Queen (La panthère des neiges, 2021), an award-winning documentary by Marie Amiguet & Vincent Munier; text by Sylvain Tesson (The Art of Patience: Seeking the Snow Leopard in Tibet, trans. Frank Wynne, Oneworld Books, 2021). Original soundtrack by Nick Cave & Warren Ellis (2021).

Jacques Lacan, Seminar Book II, The Ego in Freud's Theory and in the Technique of Psychoanalysis 1954-1955, text established by Jacques-Alain Miller, trans. Sylvana Tomaselli, London/New York, Norton, 1991, p. 243.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Warlingham Park Hospital's Open Doors and Farms

Image
In 1999 my colleagues and I were tasked with packing up and closing down Barbara Ward and moving to Gresham Ward at the Bethlem Royal Hospital a few miles up the road. We were part of the march of progress, stepping towards Care in the Community for the 21st century. A middle-class housing complex was planned for the newly vacated, beautiful site that once was Warlingham Park Hospital.  To enter the new ward at the Bethlem there was a locked door and a security camera that captured our image and sent it the few yards up the corridor to the nurses' station, which looked directly onto this entrance. The ward doors at Warlingham were almost always unlocked.    It is only now, browsing the archives kept by the Museum of the Mind at the Bethlem, that I discover that the open door policy at Warlingham was the initiative of T.P. Rees, who had taken over as medical superintendent in 1935. On his arrival "he ordered that the gates of the Hospital were to be left unlocked, and...
Read more

North Berwick Ponies on The Law

Image
There are eight Exmoor ponies, all geldings, living on a lovely piece of public land called the the Law in North Berwick, Scotland. It's on the coast, a short train ride from Edinburgh, and they've been there since October 2013 thanks to the initiative and vision of an exceptional man employed by the local council at the time whose name is Duncan Priddle.  The main feature of the land is a volcanic plug which gives the place it's name: the Law. It is all that remains from an ancient eruption and it sticks up 187m in an otherwise gently undulating landscape. The ponies regularly climb to the top of the Law and Sylvia Beaumont, who lives nearby, is often there to take their photos to post on the FaceBook page dedicated to this small herd. Earlier this year she captured a moment where the ponies were drawn to a man playing his bagpipes with the Law in the background. The video she took of the moment was enchanting . We went to visit Sylvia and the ponies this summer, and for t...
Read more

Grounded Words, Speaking Beings, Fields of Language

Image
I gave a talk on Zoom a few weeks ago to my colleagues in the equine facilitated practitioners group (LEAP) where I trained. On the back of that, one of my colleagues invited me to visit her place to see how she manages her venture. I looked on the OS map and discovered that her yard was based right next to an Anglo-Saxon burial site on the North Downs of Kent. I saw that it was a short riverside walk from a station that was directly connected to one near where I live, so I dug out my enhanced CRB certificate and my passport and we made a plan for me to visit the very next weekend. When I arrived I saw three women deep in conversation close to a chestnut horse who was standing quite still, as if presenting his whole right side to their gaze. This was Frank, who had made it all the way to 36 years old and now looked rather tired. The three women were talking seriously about him, making plans, and deciding what to do. I noticed the quality of his fur, the look in his eye, and his stan...
Read more