Unlearning anthropocentrism
the politics of knowledge in interspecies performance
Abstract
How to think from human entanglement in nonhuman life rather than from an assumption of separation and exception? How to put a non-universalizing, dehumanist ethics of knowledge into practice? How to practice a politics of knowledge in relation to nonhuman animals, built on the principle of differential continuity or kinship in difference rather than the logic of analogy that is the shared logic of anthropocentrism and other oppressive modes of thought? This paper addresses the performative politics of knowledge at work in relation to concepts of politics, performance and animality and the emergence of interspecies performance as an ethico-political practice with reference to the work of Julietta Singh, Eva Meijer, Una Chaudhuri and Black vegan scholarship.
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