dog days of summer

Dog Days of Summer, a comprehensive exhibition exploring the dog as it is represented in
photography, video, and film will be on view from June 3 through September 12 at UCR/California
Museum of Photography. Featuring over twenty artists, this ambitious show will be both inquisitive
and entertaining as it explores images from late 19th century photography through postmodern and
political deconstructions of the dog and society. Artists among the group include Diane Arbus,
Roger Ballen, Manuel Carrillo, Jo Ann Callis, William Eggleston, Elliott Erwitt, Tony Mendoza,
Pedro Meyer, Susan Meiselas, Yoshimoto Nara, and Joseph Vitone.

Walking With Cerberus: Anthropomorphism and the Void
Gregory W. Bredbeck, Department of English, UCR

I walk my Cattle Dog, Beau, in a desert where stray dogs are common (Beau was found here,
umbilical cord intact). Our path typically crosses theirs without incident. But one dog has joined
us. A large, dark dog now parallels us each time, walking the crest of a north running dune hill a
good ways to the east. The morning light silhouettes him so I see few clear details, but he's shaped
like a Rottweiler and has the breed’s lope. He paces us and shadows our course down the wash
until it turns west and the dunes turn east and we diverge.

I call him Cerberus after the three-headed canine guardian of the ancient Greek underworld whom
Odysseus must wrestle into submission so that he might be guided through Hades and back. He
is one of two dogs who figure in Homer’s epic. The other is Argos, the faithful hound who guards
his master’s doorway while the hero wanders, and who dies moments after being the sole creature
to recognize Odysseus when he returns from his almost twenty year journey.

Together Homer’s dogs anthropomorphize the intangible but inviolate boundaries between life and
death, and between the public and the private, into humanly knowable forms. They also domesticate
these boundaries into images compatible with the human psyche. The separation of the public sphere
of collective interaction from the private sphere of individual autonomy is in practice loosely defined
and shifting; Argos reifies and stills the line that separates the public—the town square where suitors
wait to take the hand of Penelope, Odysseus’s wife—from the private—the interior space of individual
authority and familial sustenance—thus allowing the narrative to move seamlessly across and back
the threshold. Cerebus removes the omnipresent boundary between life and death to the end of the
world and guards it with monstrous powers—for all but one epic hero, there is no risk of premature
transgression. Antithetical helpmeets at opposite ends of human experience, they are also one and
the same: each is a dog.

My morning odyssey, though not epic, is still symbolic. When I look westward and down I see Beau;
eastward and up, I see Cerberus. One familiar, one unknown. One’s home is my threshold, one is
homeless and wanders along the brink. Two dogs in such opposition that seeing one demands that
the other be unseen. But also one and the same: each is a dog. It is paradox caused by observation.
Further away the two individuals might appear as one pair, not one near to and one far from me, but
two in proximity to each other. That a human observer should cause what he records is known as the
anthropic principle in astrophysical science. The polarity of the threshold and the brink is not inherent
in the two dogs but adheres to them by my presence as observer.

Cerberus and Argos, therefore, are anthropomorphic projections of the position humans occupy in a
system of duality. But not all dogs are dualistic. In Vedic culture, Hinduism’s Rig Veda (c. 1500 B.C.E)
tells of the dogs of Yama, God of Death: “the watchers, four-eyed, who look on men and guard the
pathway.” But they are also “Yama’s two envoys” who “Dark-hued, insatiate, with distended nostrils…
roam among the People.” (Book 10, Chapter 14: 10-11) They guard Cerberus’s boundary between life
and death; but also roam among humans like Argos, not dying, but rather bringing death and collapsing
the divide between two discrete ontological realms. They signify not only the brink of the knowable, but
also the void: the negation of the principium individuationis, the hypothetical condition which allows “this”
to exist separate from “that,” creating the possibility of duality.

The dog as void also roams through Western traditions. British folklore tells of “ghostly black dogs, the
size of large retrievers, about the fields at night…of such a forbidding aspect that no one dare venture
to pass them, and that it means death to shout at them.”1 Such hell hounds (which are are the prototype
for Conan Doyle's The Hounds of the Baskervilles) chaotically collide the knowable into the ineffable,
and thereby call into question each one’s formal existence as an independent category exclusive of
the other. They are the void viewed from duality, reduced to a single concept of death and personified
by one individual creature, albeit horrific. The hell hound is Cerberus were Cerberus a stray dog.

Advaitic—non-dualistic —Vedic philosophy, which is not predicated on the certainty that there is
“this” and “that,” conceives the void as Atman—conscious-ness and origin—the dependent-arising
cause and effect of Maya, the object of thought which is the illusion called reality. But to those
imprinted by dualistic cultures certain of the discrete, formal existence of “this” and “that,” the void
is Cujo, the personification of Cerberus and Argos minus the differentiation and distance: the
anthropomorphic projection of the fear that just beneath every surface is a hell hound waiting to
tear us apart.

I think that Western cultures’ representations of dogs often meet an urgent need to domesticate
the void and to persuade ourselves that the fragile boundaries which create the possibility of homo
sapiens—both as species and as individuals—have permanence and formal existence. Certainly
most of the time when I look at Beau I see him as him and me as me—he is that creature which
brings this one pleasure.

But sometimes I look into his eyes and wonder what he is thinking. I see the amber specks
transform into stars, and the brown motes meld into earth. There is another universe in Beau
equal but opposite to my own. Mine arises from anthropic consciousness, whereas his arises
from, to coin a term from the Greek cyno for dog, cynothropic consciousness; for a dog being
looked at can also be, like Yama’s dogs, a dog looking at man, thereby skewering each creature
on the antithetical poles of a looking subject and an object looked at—poles which Western duality
must keep mutually exclusive. I have been jolted by Beau’s intense stare flashing directly back into
my own eyes. Subject or object, looking or looked: none manage to convey the dissonance of this
mutually inclusive moment, a moment when I feel, for just a second, I stop being and two conscious-
nesses meet and reveal themselves as Atman, the void. At that moment I also know Beau’s thoughts
exactly. As he looks into my eyes he completes a solipsism of mutual objectification which could
continue infinitely, ironically lending us the permanence duality seeks in its quest for formal
existence—he is thinking, I wonder what he is thinking.

1Rev. Worthington-Smith's (1910) “The Lore of Dunstable.” Rpt. in Gippeswic No.9, June 1994,
GBP1.75 from 42 Cemetery Road, Ipswich, IP4 2JA

	dog days of summer
	Dog Days of Summer, a comprehensive exhibition exploring the dog as it is represented in photography, video, and film will be on view from June 3 through September 12 at UCR/California Museum of Photography. Featuring over twenty artists, this ambitious show will be both inquisitive and entertaining as it explores images from late 19th century photography through postmodern and political deconstructions of the dog and society. Artists among the group include Diane Arbus, Roger Ballen, Manuel Carrillo, Jo Ann Callis, William Eggleston, Elliott Erwitt, Tony Mendoza, Pedro Meyer, Susan Meiselas, Yoshimoto Nara, and Joseph Vitone. Walking With Cerberus: Anthropomorphism and the Void Gregory W. Bredbeck, Department of English, UCR I walk my Cattle Dog, Beau, in a desert where stray dogs are common (Beau was found here, umbilical cord intact). Our path typically crosses theirs without incident. But one dog has joined us. A large, dark dog now parallels us each time, walking the crest of a north running dune hill a good ways to the east. The morning light silhouettes him so I see few clear details, but he's shaped like a Rottweiler and has the breed’s lope. He paces us and shadows our course down the wash until it turns west and the dunes turn east and we diverge. I call him Cerberus after the three-headed canine guardian of the ancient Greek underworld whom Odysseus must wrestle into submission so that he might be guided through Hades and back. He is one of two dogs who figure in Homer’s epic. The other is Argos, the faithful hound who guards his master’s doorway while the hero wanders, and who dies moments after being the sole creature to recognize Odysseus when he returns from his almost twenty year journey. Together Homer’s dogs anthropomorphize the intangible but inviolate boundaries between life and death, and between the public and the private, into humanly knowable forms. They also domesticate these boundaries into images compatible with the human psyche. The separation of the public sphere of collective interaction from the private sphere of individual autonomy is in practice loosely defined and shifting; Argos reifies and stills the line that separates the public—the town square where suitors wait to take the hand of Penelope, Odysseus’s wife—from the private—the interior space of individual authority and familial sustenance—thus allowing the narrative to move seamlessly across and back the threshold. Cerebus removes the omnipresent boundary between life and death to the end of the world and guards it with monstrous powers—for all but one epic hero, there is no risk of premature transgression. Antithetical helpmeets at opposite ends of human experience, they are also one and the same: each is a dog. My morning odyssey, though not epic, is still symbolic. When I look westward and down I see Beau; eastward and up, I see Cerberus. One familiar, one unknown. One’s home is my threshold, one is homeless and wanders along the brink. Two dogs in such opposition that seeing one demands that the other be unseen. But also one and the same: each is a dog. It is paradox caused by observation. Further away the two individuals might appear as one pair, not one near to and one far from me, but two in proximity to each other. That a human observer should cause what he records is known as the anthropic principle in astrophysical science. The polarity of the threshold and the brink is not inherent in the two dogs but adheres to them by my presence as observer. Cerberus and Argos, therefore, are anthropomorphic projections of the position humans occupy in a system of duality. But not all dogs are dualistic. In Vedic culture, Hinduism’s Rig Veda (c. 1500 B.C.E) tells of the dogs of Yama, God of Death: “the watchers, four-eyed, who look on men and guard the pathway.” But they are also “Yama’s two envoys” who “Dark-hued, insatiate, with distended nostrils… roam among the People.” (Book 10, Chapter 14: 10-11) They guard Cerberus’s boundary between life and death; but also roam among humans like Argos, not dying, but rather bringing death and collapsing the divide between two discrete ontological realms. They signify not only the brink of the knowable, but also the void: the negation of the principium individuationis, the hypothetical condition which allows “this” to exist separate from “that,” creating the possibility of duality. The dog as void also roams through Western traditions. British folklore tells of “ghostly black dogs, the size of large retrievers, about the fields at night…of such a forbidding aspect that no one dare venture to pass them, and that it means death to shout at them.”1 Such hell hounds (which are are the prototype for Conan Doyle's The Hounds of the Baskervilles) chaotically collide the knowable into the ineffable, and thereby call into question each one’s formal existence as an independent category exclusive of the other. They are the void viewed from duality, reduced to a single concept of death and personified by one individual creature, albeit horrific. The hell hound is Cerberus were Cerberus a stray dog. Advaitic—non-dualistic —Vedic philosophy, which is not predicated on the certainty that there is “this” and “that,” conceives the void as Atman—conscious-ness and origin—the dependent-arising cause and effect of Maya, the object of thought which is the illusion called reality. But to those imprinted by dualistic cultures certain of the discrete, formal existence of “this” and “that,” the void is Cujo, the personification of Cerberus and Argos minus the differentiation and distance: the anthropomorphic projection of the fear that just beneath every surface is a hell hound waiting to tear us apart. I think that Western cultures’ representations of dogs often meet an urgent need to domesticate the void and to persuade ourselves that the fragile boundaries which create the possibility of homo sapiens—both as species and as individuals—have permanence and formal existence. Certainly most of the time when I look at Beau I see him as him and me as me—he is that creature which brings this one pleasure. But sometimes I look into his eyes and wonder what he is thinking. I see the amber specks transform into stars, and the brown motes meld into earth. There is another universe in Beau equal but opposite to my own. Mine arises from anthropic consciousness, whereas his arises from, to coin a term from the Greek cyno for dog, cynothropic consciousness; for a dog being looked at can also be, like Yama’s dogs, a dog looking at man, thereby skewering each creature on the antithetical poles of a looking subject and an object looked at—poles which Western duality must keep mutually exclusive. I have been jolted by Beau’s intense stare flashing directly back into my own eyes. Subject or object, looking or looked: none manage to convey the dissonance of this mutually inclusive moment, a moment when I feel, for just a second, I stop being and two conscious- nesses meet and reveal themselves as Atman, the void. At that moment I also know Beau’s thoughts exactly. As he looks into my eyes he completes a solipsism of mutual objectification which could continue infinitely, ironically lending us the permanence duality seeks in its quest for formal existence—he is thinking, I wonder what he is thinking. 1Rev. Worthington-Smith's (1910) “The Lore of Dunstable.” Rpt. in Gippeswic No.9, June 1994, GBP1.75 from 42 Cemetery Road, Ipswich, IP4 2JA