The Nepali Pastor: Becoming-Animal To Save Stray Dogs' Lives

Ongoing knowledge-building projects makes the flock docile and disciplined; the flock's inclusion in incomplete projects makes it happy; incomplete knowledge-building turns a group of people into a flock of animals. So it is the madman, who has an endless drive to produce more and more knowledge, whose knowledge is always incomplete, who is the pastor of the flock, because the flock disciplines itself before him/her because he/she includes that flock in ongoing knowledge-building projects.

The madman is driven precisely by the desire to be a pastor of the animals, such as, in the Nepali case, the stray dogs. He/she begins in his/her ambition to be pastor by sleeping among these animals, in their territories and wastelands and not his/her own, and by the end he/she has developed a core group of stray animals which are his flock, which look to him/her for the management and protection of their territories; he/she has finally “become-animal” to use the Deleuze-Guattari term; he/she has become a stray dog, and therefore gains their trust.

The pastor begins as the madman and ends with becoming-animal. The lack of discipline among Nepali people shows that Nepali people lack pastoral power today; pastoral power has moved in Nepal from the management of people to the management of stray animals. The movement towards becoming-animal does not discount pastoral power in today's age when knowledge-building matters, rather, the pastor's knowledge may be used for improving the lives of stray animals.

It is by Nepalis' respect for pastoral power that any governmental project of killing stray dogs will be stopped, and these stray dogs can instead be seen as included within pastoral power's projects and hence in a very pure way seeking their own earthly territories, as the pastor has taught them to do just as he/she taught people before.