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Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Neel Ahuja
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Extract

Histories of race and empire have shaped the field imaginary of species studies from its inception. Politically, the field's animal-activist heritage models its critique on movements for racial justice. Historically, this move links to Enlightenment conceptions of animals that relied on the same objectifying methods used to represent slaves and the poor: sentimentality, representations of cruelty, humane manifestos. Epistemologically, the taxonomic tools that name the objects of analysis have been deployed to define non-Europeans as subspecies or independent species. Geographically, the field's intellectual production is centered in the United States, Australia, and Britain, tied to neocolonial institutions of animal advocacy, and slow in recognizing internal critiques of animal and ecological movements by activists of color.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 556 - 563
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009

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