Arvind Thomas ABSTRACT

“Critical Animal Pedagogies”

Arvind Thomas, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

 

Whether as pet or as pest; whether as model dissected in the lab or as meat carved at the table; whether as symbol or referent, the non-human animal looms large though often invisible to us but still shaping what many of us in the West categorize as “human.” How do texts key to the so-called Western canon create the category of the “human” in apposition or, as is often the case, in opposition to that of the “animal”? To what extent, if any, do the same texts fail in policing the boundaries separating the “human” from the “animal”? What are the implications of attending to moments when such boundaries are blurred or even transgressed? Put differently, what are the conceptual and ethical gains of reading texts from the perspectives of the non-human animals that are frequently invoked only to be silenced?

 

This paper will illustrate pedagogical approaches to uncovering and critiquing the “human-animal binary” that underlies much of the Western canon in history, literature and the sciences. The approaches I offer are informed by an ethical veganism that eschews any consumption or exploitation of non-human animals. Drawing upon my teaching of a seminar on the construction of the “human” by texts ranging from Aristotle’s The History of Animals and Linneaus’s Systema Naturae to Darwin’s Descent of Man and Aph and Syl Ko’s Aphro-ism, the paper will highlight the questions I use to motivate omnivore students to read such texts from animal-friendly perspectives, and thereby reflect on issues central to veganism. Such questions touch on matters of logic (similarities and differences, and taxonomies), rhetoric (definitions, descriptions, identifications and figures of speech) and grammar (passive/active voices, and subjunctive moods).

 

Keywords: human-animal binary, pedagogy, composition, rhetoric, the Western canon