One of the major themes in the oeuvre of Joseph Beuys, perhaps most famous for his primitivist mysticism in relation to fat and felt, is the restoration of the modern individual's relationship with nature. Artifices of modernity can create an alienating distance between the human-made and the natural, to make it seem as if they were somehow separate, diametrically opposed even, but they cannot instigate a schism in metaphysics. Bound by natural processes, human beings remain intricately related to the natural world, whether we resist or submit. Beuys recognized this modern pathology and tried to find a diagnosis, if not a remedy.

One artwork exemplifying this lifelong engagement with denaturalized modernity was called I Like America and America Likes Me. During this performance, Beuys was entrapped in a gallery space with one companion, for days and days on end. Thus described, the artwork may possess a sobering aura of quotidianeity. As if there were something special about being imprisoned with someone else… As if! Couples during a pandemic would scarcely be impressed by this premise. There was, however, something special about the encounter. For his companion was a wild coyote.

[T]hey start to organize communicative norms through which they can express their intentions. Thus, they develop a language.

At the uncertain arrival of Beuys in the gallery, both parties undergo a process of what can be called "radical interpretation."[1] The coyote doesn't understand German, English or whichever human system of language Joseph Beuys may choose to utilize; conversely, Beuys can only guess at the intentions behind its growls, shudders and other gestures. Both interpretive endeavors are radically indeterminate, for a communicative history, such as a shared tradition of language, is lacking. After a while, rules emanate from their patterns of interaction. Under certain conditions, the coyote allows Beuys to come closer; and vice versa. Rituals surrounding food, sleep and perhaps even play arise. In brief, they start to organize communicative norms through which they can express their intentions. Thus, they develop a language.

The natural world too can speak volumes, though not literatim, while we assume the mute by virtue of the deaf.

Seen in this light, I Like America and America Likes Me dismantles the linguistic exceptionalism that flatters the contemporary human. Man is special, for man can speak – or so the argument goes. In possession of this power, he can call for action, conjure up institutions according to the natural rights of the species, he can describe the world as it is. Engulfed by such equivocation of reason and speech – already evident from the ambiguity of the Greek logos that appears in the opening sentence of one of the most important biblical texts: John – he separates himself from the natural world. The natural world too can speak volumes, though not literatim, while we assume the mute by virtue of the deaf. By questioning this logocentrism in his interaction with a wild animal, Joseph Beuys teaches that language is not particular to humanity. Rather, it is widespread among the animal kingdom, to which we belong. 

[1] Donald Davidson, 'Radical Interpretation', Dialectica 27, no. 3/4 (1973): 313–28.