Duncan Corrow
Professor Nic Helms
Critical Theory
May 6th, 2024
“Humanity’s Fear of the Super Predator”
There is concept in ecology known as a “super predator;” a predator with such a large perceived predation risk that even predators larger than the super predator have altered their feeding behaviors in order to adjust to the presence of said super predator. Currently, there is only one super predator present in the entire world, and the presence of this predator reducing the ranges that other, larger predators have reduced their hunting ranges by around 50% (Prugh et al.) Of course, there is no point in hiding the identity of what this super predator is, as it does not take much deductive reasoning to figure out. Humanity, of course, is the super predator described above, with our elevated position in the food chain being a core tenant of our identity as a species. And because all people share this position of being on top of the food chain, the fears surrounding this position in nature are carried through everyone in the collective unconscious, with these fears being mostly centered around what happens when we lose this position that we hold.
The reason that people struggle to come to grasps with the possibility that we may not be the super predator of our ecosystem anymore is explained through our understanding of a concept called “Thing Theory.” Thing Theory, as defined by Oxford, is a literary concept that scholars use to “investigate human-object relations in art, literature, culture, and everyday life” (Wasserman). The area of Thing Theory that is most relevant to this idea of this anxiety that humans have about their position comes from Bill Brown’s definition of Thing Theory. His sect of Thing Theory is all about analyzing what happens when objects, for one reason or another, lose what made them objects in the first place and made them into a “thing,” with a thing being an entity that has been removed from its natural position in the human-object relationship. Because the thing in question is no longer in its original state, what made it “hidden,” or more accurately, less noticeable to us because of the thing’s standing in the relationship being highlighted, is removed, making the thing able to be examined with a critical lens.
While on the surface it may not seem like Thing Theory, or at least Bill Brown’s use of Thing Theory, may not seem extremely relevant to the question of why humans are afraid of not being the super predator, it is, in reality, a perfect way to establish this relationship going forward. The only difference is that instead of the objects becoming the things in this relationship that was established earlier, humans instead would take on the role of the object. This would, to us, turn us into things, as we would no longer fit that role. And it should almost go without saying that we as people do not like to be looked at as the object in this relationship, as that would mean we are the entity being acted upon, rather than the one acting.
There are some academic standings to support this idea of humans being unable to stomach the idea of being acted upon by another force. While the roles are somewhat different, the way that Michael Parrish Lee describes the relationship between Alice and the living things in Wonderland within the essay “Eating Things: Food, Animals, and Other Life Forms in Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books” showcases how deeply unsettling the idea of a sentient being becoming preyed upon is to us. Throughout Lee’s analysis, Alice is shown several times to be deeply unsettled by the consumption of these sentient beings, writing “Much to a prospective theorist’s delight, Alice faces the refusal of these “things” to be pinned down and reduced to concretely identifiable objects of consumption” (Lee, 1535). This piece of Lee’s text was analyzing a segment of Through the Looking Glass, where Alice discovers a shop run by a sheep character, with Alice showing deep concern that all of the items that she could buy, or “consume,” are trying their best to refuse to be purchased by hiding on the shelves where Alice is not looking.
While Lee takes this analysis to apply Thing Theory to capitalism, I would argue that the reason that Alice is so unsettled by the object’s reactions come from the fact that the objects are humanoid esc in nature, while the main being that oppresses them, the Sheep, is very much not human at all. This would make the Sheep in the story fill that role of super-predator, as the way that the Sheep is operating their business is almost exactly how we as people operate our businesses; the only difference is that the produce gets the chance to say “no.” This connection continues further into this section of the story, with the Humpty Dumpty section. Lee writes “This humanized egg thus occupies the intersection between food, person, animal, and purchasable object that a Darwinian consumer culture made available to an imagination as vivid as Carroll’s” (Lee, 1536). This is another piece of Lee’s analysis that showcases how this consumable being is anthropomorphized in the story, creating yet another uncanny “thing” that Alice must now interact with. What further makes this an unsettling situation for Alice is the fact that Humpty Dumpty was yet another being that Alice had attempted to purchase, which would make Alice’s feelings towards Humpty Dumpty very similar to how she felt about the doll earlier.
But how does this connect back to how humans as a whole react to the prospects of becoming the one that is being consumed? While Lee’s example does a good job of showcasing how it creates a deep level of discomfort at the idea that we would ever become the consumed, Alice’s actions on what she does afterwards are never analyzed through this lens. Fortunately, one does not have to look far to see the large number of texts that exist that cover what would happen if we were no longer the super-predator, especially in contemporary fiction. There are countless examples of humanity being put on the backfoot, having to go through considerable efforts just to stay alive when another more monstrous or powerful species takes the role of the Sheep in the Alice example, at least in principle. And when looking at these stories there is always one common trend. We as a species almost always tend to rebel against this new super-predator.
Probably one of the most famous modern examples of this trend in literature is Hajime Isayama’s Attack on Titan, which sees a new, monstrous group of human esc monsters taking over the world and forcing humanity to focus many of their efforts as a society to defeat the titans so that they can reclaim the world that was once theirs. This series showcases several of the trends that come with this scenario of humans losing their super-predator status. The humans in the show do not choose to simply coexist with the titans or choose to change their way of life to accommodate this change in the food chain; the humans’ main goal in the show is to actively exterminate the titans, creating several new technologies with the sole intention of eliminating the titans for good. This refusal to be consumed is very similar to the doll or Humpty Dumpty in the Alice story, which means that this stories themes are connected to that idea of refusing consumption.
The Wachowskis’ The Matrix also comes to mind when thinking about an example like this. While the AI beings in the movie are not actively consuming humans in the traditional sense, they are harvesting them for a resource that humans produce, which is the energy that they are giving off. The interesting thing about this movie that separates it from the other examples is the fact that, despite being consumed, humans are given something from the super-predator, the AI, in return for being consumed. Humans are allowed to live with the titular Matrix, which is a computer system that simulates the real world perfectly; the only exception is that the AI can manipulate this system at will. For those who are unaware that they are within the Matrix, life is normal, with only some small eccentricities of the Matrix potentially showing themselves slowly. However, those who do discover the truth of being within the Matrix, again, actively rebel against the AIs in the movie to free themselves from being consumed. This aspect of the Matrix is what is most revealing about humanities thoughts towards being consumed; it is not the pain that comes with being consumed that is disturbing to us, but rather the notion of humans being consumed at all, especially on a mass scale, that is being portrayed throughout these stories.
Of course, what all of these stories have in common is the common throughline that there is a new group of beings that has arrived to start consuming humans. Our loss of the super-predator status in these stories is the main driving factor in the plot, and our reaction is almost always to rebel against this new species that has come to exploit us. What is most ironic about this is that we as humans are the largest exploiters in the world, and yet despite these stories being extremely popular among us, very little often comes from parallels that could be drawn from our replacements and ourselves. If the super-predator is innately an evil concept that needs to be rebelled against, why do we as a species still choose to be one to the rest of the ecosystem on the planet? Do we believe that oppression on this scale only evil against sentient life, or is it simply more convenient to believe that we are not a super-predator like the ones within these works of fiction.?
Works Cited:
Lee, Michael Parrish. Other Things: Food, Animals, and Other Life Forms in Lewis Carroll’s Alice Books. 2014. Literary Theory an Anthology, by Julie Rivkin and Michael Ryan, Third Edition ed., Newark, John Wiley & Sons, 2017, pp. 1529-46.
Prugh, Laura R., et al. “Fear of Large Carnivores Amplifies Human-caused Mortality for Mesopredators.” Science, vol. 380, no. 6646, 19 May 2023, pp. 754-58. Academic Search Premier, https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adf2472. Accessed 6 May 2024.
Wasserman, Sarah. “Thing Theory.” Oxford Bibliographies, 24 June 2020, http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/display/document/obo-9780190221911/obo-9780190221911-0097.xml#obo-9780190221911-0097-div1-0004. Accessed 6 May 2024.
Sprockets and Springes 