Stray Dogs, Post-Humanism and Cosmopolitan Belongingness

Interspecies Hospitality in Times of War

Bibliographic Data

ID8092406
AuthorsMatthew Leep (0000-0002-6398-5316, Western Governors University, corresponding author)
Year2018
Volume47
Issue1
Pages45-66
Publication date2018-06-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueMillennium Journal of International Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0305-8298 • E-ISSN: 1477-9021
PublisherSAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/0305829818778365
OpenAlexW2809508533
LanguageEN
Citations received18

International Relations scholars have recently begun exploring the politics of human-animal relations in global affairs. Building on Jacques Derrida’s work on hospitality and animals, this article theorises possibilities of responsibility to animals in war zones, pushing the limits of what it means to be with and for others regardless of their human or animal otherness. Specifically, I develop a critical account of cosmopolitan belongingness to illustrate how our being on earth is always a ‘being-with’ animal others. In thinking through possibilities of post-human belongingness that could emerge in times of war, cosmopolitanism becomes a futural task, an out-of-time and endless confrontation of past and future opportunities for interspecies togetherness. The theoretical significance of this approach is illustrated with a case study on the killing of stray dogs during the Iraq War. This case reveals a cosmopolitanism calibrated to more fully consider possibilities of human-animal belongingness amidst violence

Belongingness · Cosmopolitanism · Environmental ethics · Hospitality · Humanism · Non-human · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology