Two dogs

Two dogs whose presence will have already done away with any attempt to identify the relation between the human and the animal as having a singular quality and an already established meaning. The first dog – in Turner's Dawn after the Wreck – appears loyal (see Figure 9.1). The dog awaits its drowned owner. The dog is faithful. The dog's presentation is a reiteration of the dog as the iconographical presence of loyalty and devotion. However, it is equally the case that once the relation is stripped of the gloss within which loyalty is always painted as unthought and thus ill considered, it may be that what is being staged is a more complex form of relation. Indeed, if this watercolour is viewed after the hold of the without relation has been suspended then it is possible to begin to approach the work in terms of a modality of friendship. Or, at the very least, to take it as marking the presence of a relation that cannot be reduced to mere animal obedience. To the extent that this other possibility can be maintained it provides Turner's work with its founding tear, a tear which signals the moment beyond any possible reduction of the dog to the figured presence of the animal. In addition, it is precisely this other possibility that has already been identified by Voltaire.