"[chimpanzee] politics"

[Laurence Horn]

At 8:00 AM -0500 1/14/10, Joel S. Berson wrote:
>We need to find out if Morgan was using "primate" to stand in for
>"human" ... and what "descent" refers to.
>
>Joel

I have her book around somewhere but who knows 
where.  Its title is a pun on the (at least then) 
widely used locution "The descent of man" for 
evolution of humans; her point was that women 
played more of a role in this than men did, 
prompted by their need to care for infants, which 
caused women to spend a lot of time in the water, 
keeping the kids out of harm's way.  There was 
more to it than that, but it's a fun read as 
books on evolutionary biology go and actually 
more convincing than I can make it sound here. 
She wouldn't have used "primate" to stand in for 
"human", but she would certainly have compared 
the origins of humans (using the informed 
speculation she brings in elsewhere in the book) 
with that of other primates--and she also has a 
lot to say about elephants, whales, and other 
non-primate mammals.

And eels.  To crib from an old paper of mine, 
"Eel of darkness, eel of light", discussing 
man's, and especially woman's, profound fear of 
snakes:

===============
Morgan (1972: 157) rejects the standard view 
attributing this phobia to 'something we brought 
down with us from the trees'.  Rather, as befits 
our evolutionary lineage as the aqueous ape, it 
is not the snake in the grass that gives us those 
'atavistic creeps' but the deadly eel in the 
water.  As evidence for her proposal, Morgan 
points out that while 'the snake is by an 
enormous margin the animal that most people 
loathe', further inquiry shows that the 
creature's most abhorred attribute is its 
'sliminess'.  Mais où sont les slimy snakes 
d'antan?

Now, an eel is very slimy, but a snake's skin is 
as dry as a length of sunbaked rope.  That slimy 
snake that haunts our nightmares exists nowhere 
on God's earth, except in the backwaters of the 
race memory of Homo sapiens.
        (Morgan 1972: 157)

And it would have been especially the female of 
the species, naked in the shallows with an infant 
or two in close attendance, who was most 
vulnerable to the mordacious ravages of the eel, 
and hence the most likely to have translated this 
memory into what endures as a vestigial phobia 
within the sex-linked collective unconscious.
===============

LH

>
>At 1/13/2010 11:59 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
>>In 1972 "The Descent of Woman" by the influential and controversial
>>writer Elaine Morgan was published. It contains a chapter titled
>>"Primate Politics" that I suspect fits the emerging meaning of
>>politics under discussion, but the work is only viewable in snippets
>>with GB.
>>
>>http://books.google.com/books?id=OjqAAAAAMAAJ&
>>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Morgan_%28writer%29
>>
>>
>>On Wed, Jan 13, 2010 at 11:33 PM, Joel S. Berson <Berson at att.net> wrote:
>>>  ---------------------- Information from the mail header
>>-----------------------
>>>  Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>>>  Poster:       "Joel S. Berson" <Berson at ATT.NET>
>>>  Subject:      Re: "[chimpanzee] politics"
>>>
>>-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>>  Jon, there is Frans de Waal's "Chimpanzee politics : power and sex
>>>  among apes", first U.S. ed. 1982; a translation
>>>  of  "Chimpansee-politiek," apparently also 1982.  I wouldn't be
>>>  surprised if he was the coiner, although perhaps someone else has an
>>>  article earlier.
>>>
>>>  I note also that Nicholas Wade had an article in the NYTimes Jan.11
>>>  (or Jan. 12 in print?), titled, variously, "Deciphering the Chatter
>>>  of Monkeys and Chimps" or "In Monkey Babble, Seeking Key to Human
>>>  Language Development ...".  Like the PBSers, Wade too doesn't think
>>>  chimps have language.
>>>
>>>  Joel
>>>
>>>  At 1/13/2010 09:53 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
>>>>Tonight's PBS show, "The Human Spark," discussed chimp behavior.
>>>>
>>>>The term regularly used by the primatologists to refer to interactions
>>>>within groups was "chimpanzee politics."
>>  >>
>>>>This sense of "politics" went undefined except for a parallel use of
>>>>"manipulation" and "social scheming."
>>>>
>>>>It was indicated that chimps do not use "language" but do take part in
>>>>"politics."
>>>>
>>>>JL
>>>>
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>
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