Outside the Anthropological Machine: Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies [Hardcover]

In the midst of the climate crisis and the threat of the sixth extinction, we can no longer claim to be the masters of nature. Rather, we need to unlearn our species arrogance for the sake of all animals, human and non-human. Rethinking our being-in-the-world as Homo sapiens, this monograph argues, starts precisely from the way we relate to our closer companion species. The authors gathered here endeavour to find multiple exit strategies from the anthropocentric paradigms that have bound the human and social sciences. Part I investigates the unexplored margins of human history by re-reading historical events, literary texts, and scientific findings from an animals perspective, rather than a humans. Part II explores different forms of human-animal relationships, putting the emphasis on the institutions, spaces, and discourses that frame our interactions with animals. Part III engages with processes of translation that aim to render animals experience and perception into human words and visual language.

Introduction

Chiara Mengozzi

1. A Giraffes Journey to France (18261827): Recording the Encounter From the Animals Point of View

?ric Baratay

2. Structures of Captivity and Animal Agency: The London Zoo, ca. 1865 to the Present Times

Violette Pouillard

3. Atlantic History From the Saddle: The Role of Horses in the Slave-Trading Atlantic World

Rachael L. Pasierowska