Consuming Timothy Treadwell: Redefining Nonhuman Agency In Light Of Herzogs Grizzly Man

This chapter revisits Herzog's Grizzly Man in order to reassess and redefine notions of animal agency. It presents a brief examination of Timothy Treadwell's and Herzog's respective conceptions of grizzlies. While Treadwell is driven by multiple forces to diminish the space that separates him from grizzlies, Herzog seeks to re-establish a clear division between the species and enlarge the gulf between humans and other animals. Finding each of these conceptions to be inadequate, the discussion then borrows from the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to provide a more substantial and subtle conception of animal agency, one that may be characterized by spatial concatenations that neither privilege proximity nor valorize distance. These newly-theorized spatial geometries establish an alternate trajectory for relating to other animals without eliminating distinctions between species.Keywords: animal agency; grizzlies; Grizzly Man; Herzog; Timothy Treadwell