What is is like to be a...

Bat - well I unfortunately can't tell you that. Sorry Nagel. But I do have some insights on what it might be like to be a gorilla or a spider. Odd, you might think, but hear me out. During a recent theatre workshop, embodying these animals I was struck by the paradox of ease at which I could become a caricature of their being, given how different they are from both myself as a human, and each other as primate and arachnid. That got me thinking: i) does acting provide the possibility of escaping subjectivity?, and ii) if so, what might that reveal about our minds classify the world? Nagel's argument, famously, is that our imagination is bounded by the kinds of minds we have, the kinds of experiences they can yield in turn defining the phenomenology of our existence such that we could never truly know what it is like to be a bat. In becoming a gorilla (more precisely, my interpretation of a gorilla in a specific theatrical context) or even more distantly from my original mode of being, a spider, imagination reveals it's playful force. My mind, and the minds of those animals (or indeed any 'other' distinguished from my self), become unified in the creative exploratory act of embodiment. 

The limits on my truly knowing what it is to be a bat are set by the assumption that I am distinct - not just as an individual, but as a kind - from a bat, and thus unable to acquire in imagination (or even a Kafka-esque transformation were this possible) knowledge of their being in the world. Any attempt to do so would be futile, as I am trapped behind interpretation, and the consciousness this body of mine can make possible. Though I think Nagel is not wrong to suggest we could never know what it is truly/ fully like to be a bat, acting does, I think, go some way to close the gap - especially if we do not assume such distinction between individuated minds, selves, or kinds of beings. Once we perceive those differences as pragmatic rather than metaphysical, practical imagination can do it's work to allow us to inhabit the lives and worlds of others, like the intersection of a venn diagram. In doing so, we develop our capacity to empathise with others (especially those we see as very distinct from us), and have fun flexing the boundaries of what it means to be human. The mind reveals itself as dynamic and universal in a way Nagel's assumption rejects. 

(Now this isn't my own play, nor an analysis of someone else's. But on the topic of overturning strict categorisation, I'll post this here!)

*Inspired by a weekly theatre workshop run by Lizzy McBain at OFS Oxford.*