Race, Place, and the Bounds of Humanity1

Bibliographic Data

ID8067868
AuthorsGlen Elder (1University of Vermont, corresponding author), Jennifer Wolch (0000-0003-4252-7495, 2UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA), Jody Emel (3CLARK UNIVERSITY)
Year1998
Volume6
Issue2
Pages183-202
Publication date1998-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSociety and Animals (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1063-1119 • E-ISSN: 1568-5306
PublisherBrill (PUBLISHER • NL)
DOI10.1163/156853098x00140
OpenAlexW2032681193
LanguageEN
Citations received36

The idea of a human-animal divide as reflective of both differences in kind and in evolutionary progress, has retained its power to produce and maintain racial and other forms of cultural difference. During the colonial period, representations of similarity were used to link subaltern groups to animals and thereby racialize and dehumanize them. In the postcolonial present, however, animal practices of subdominant groups are typically used for this purpose. Using data on cultural conflicts surrounding animal practices collected from media sources, we show that such practices have become a key aspect of the human-animal boundary due to the radically changing time-space relations of postmodernity. Drawing on Spivak's notion of "wild practice, " we propose a radical democracy that includes animals as well as subaltern peoples, and argue for the rejection of dehumanization as a basis for cultural critique, given its role in perpetuating racialization and violence toward both human and non-human animals

Dehumanization · Environmental ethics · Epistemology · Geography · Human animal · Modernity · Political science · Politics · Postmodernity · Race (biology · Racialization · Sociology · Subaltern · Anthropology · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Human-Animal Interaction Studies · Gender Studies · Law · Philosophy

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