Submitted by Adam (not verified) on Sat, 2008-05-10 21:39.
Three valuable points to take away from this interview:
1. Respect animal Otherness
"[dogs and other companion species] are beings of another species in deep encounter with us and are Not furry children, and they are NOT givers of this thing called unconditional love--which is really a terrible fantasy; that they are beings with real needs and agendas and ways of being-in-the-world that are in interaction with us... So for me companion species is a place to inhabit, to try to figure out how to live well with the crowd that we all are."
"[I]nstead of terms like humanism, or post-humanism, or anti-humanism, or whatever-humanism...the debates of humanism, that I think still consider to regard us as uniquely exceptional, human exception as such that what counts as human by expelling everything else...everything that is expelled from that which is human, makes the human that is what's left...for example mind and language are often become what is left. For me the notion of companion species walks right around that debate..."
2. Reconceptualize human identity
"[W]e have never been human; we and everybody else are always already a crowd of intra- and interrelations... that no matter where you hold still... what you find are relations in process, and what you find are that the actors are the products of those relations, not pre-established, finished, closed-off things that enter into relationship, but rather we are what come out of relating and go into the next relating..."
"[We must] become much smarter about how that category [of the human] is made, what kind of tool it is, who lives and dies inside that category, what kind of work that category should still be doing, when that category should be interrupted..." -*-
3. Toward a process-relational ethic (and avoiding dualism)
"Animal rights law and thinking...pays way too little attention to the flourishing, important, precious, long history of human and other critter interrelationship...very little honoring the working, playing, living relationships...rather humans are either protectors or violators and never really partners...We don't necessarily set the terms of our discourse, BUT I think we must be much more creative about inventing new categories that are close enough to ones that are already legible, already usable, but also move away and move towards something more livable..."
"I really do think...that there is a MAJOR disdain for working relation with animals...that protection of animals from people is the goal. And I think that this is an outrage; so that it isn't just the rights discourse, its the actual caring about, loving, living with, figuring out how to make flourish, the relationships with human being and other domestic animals, and considering us a domestic animals...I want to try to think through how to live better from inside that knot and not from a position that we are either protectors or violators..."
Three valuable points to take away from this interview:
1. Respect animal Otherness
"[dogs and other companion species] are beings of another species in deep encounter with us and are Not furry children, and they are NOT givers of this thing called unconditional love--which is really a terrible fantasy; that they are beings with real needs and agendas and ways of being-in-the-world that are in interaction with us... So for me companion species is a place to inhabit, to try to figure out how to live well with the crowd that we all are."
"[I]nstead of terms like humanism, or post-humanism, or anti-humanism, or whatever-humanism...the debates of humanism, that I think still consider to regard us as uniquely exceptional, human exception as such that what counts as human by expelling everything else...everything that is expelled from that which is human, makes the human that is what's left...for example mind and language are often become what is left. For me the notion of companion species walks right around that debate..."
2. Reconceptualize human identity
"[W]e have never been human; we and everybody else are always already a crowd of intra- and interrelations... that no matter where you hold still... what you find are relations in process, and what you find are that the actors are the products of those relations, not pre-established, finished, closed-off things that enter into relationship, but rather we are what come out of relating and go into the next relating..."
"[We must] become much smarter about how that category [of the human] is made, what kind of tool it is, who lives and dies inside that category, what kind of work that category should still be doing, when that category should be interrupted..." -*-
3. Toward a process-relational ethic (and avoiding dualism)
"Animal rights law and thinking...pays way too little attention to the flourishing, important, precious, long history of human and other critter interrelationship...very little honoring the working, playing, living relationships...rather humans are either protectors or violators and never really partners...We don't necessarily set the terms of our discourse, BUT I think we must be much more creative about inventing new categories that are close enough to ones that are already legible, already usable, but also move away and move towards something more livable..."
"I really do think...that there is a MAJOR disdain for working relation with animals...that protection of animals from people is the goal. And I think that this is an outrage; so that it isn't just the rights discourse, its the actual caring about, loving, living with, figuring out how to make flourish, the relationships with human being and other domestic animals, and considering us a domestic animals...I want to try to think through how to live better from inside that knot and not from a position that we are either protectors or violators..."
-*- Favoite quote