chapter 12 On Laboratory Life for a Wired Object Mirror Neurons and the New Red Peter Babette Babich MIRROR NEURONS AND LABORATORY LIFE The mirror neuron was discovered by means of the cavalier inattention of neuro - physiological researchers who accidentally made this, arguably their most famous, discovery in the course of experimenting on fully “ wired-up ” macaque monkeys. The wiring is the key and today ’ s vivisectionists, the neurophysiologists, are fond of cutting open the skulls, and in this case, subsequendy bolting electrodes into the ventral premotor cortex of the brains ’ of macaque monkeys, caught by the tens of thousands in the wild for this purpose, where they have become, so we are told, nearly extinct in their original range in India as a direct resultant.^ Thus in the service of “ science, ” monkeys die both individually and as a species. But as a culture we have learned to ignore such details as the cost of life in a laboratory or the establishment of an industry of collection for zoological and experimental purposes. We seek objectivity, which means we ignore pain in animals and disattend to the damage done to the natural world. Adorno once spoke of the innocent collusion of children with animals, not to point out that ehildren have a genetic connectedness with nature but rather to illuminate the functioning, the way, of inculcating insensitivity on a cultur - ally industrial scale.^ Adorno is drawing on Nietzsche ’ s invocation of the fool, here with respect to the clown, where Adorno ’ s emphasis upon “ the collusion of children with clowns ” in order to point, this is the moment of resonance with Nietzsche, to “ a collusion with art, ” but the point for Adorno is ever the calculating standardization of “ culture ” as it is this collusion that “adults drive out of children just as they drive out their collusion with animals. ” ' ’ Human beings have not succeeded in so thoroughly repressing their likeness to animals that they are unable in an instant to recapture it and be flooded with joy; 213 In: Geoffrey Dierckxsens, et al. eds., The Animal Inside: Essays at the Intersection of Philosophical Anthropology and Animal Studies. Lanham. MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2017. Pp. 215-227.