Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-mp689 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-20T08:28:00.069Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Neel Ahuja
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Neel, Ahuja. “Cultures of Quarantine: Race, U.S. Empire, and the Biomedical Discourse of National Security.” Diss. U of California, San Diego, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Virginia, Anderson. Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Srinivas, Aravamundan. Tropicopolitans: Colonialism and Agency, 1688–1804. Durham: Duke UP, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Benítez, Jaime. “Cayo Santiago: The Formative Years.” Puerto Rico Health Sciences Journal 8.1 (1989): 19–20. Print.Google Scholar
Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. The Repeating Island: The Caribbean and the Postmodern Perspective. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Steven, Best. “The Killing Fields of South Africa: Eco-Wars, Species Apartheid, and Total Liberation.” Fast Capitalism 2.2 (2007): n. pag. Web. 10 July 2008.Google Scholar
Laura, Briggs. Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. Print.Google Scholar
Dipesh, Chakrabarty. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Mob, Da Lench. Guerillas in tha Mist. 1992. YouTube. YouTube, 10 Feb. 2006. Web. 12 May 2008.Google Scholar
Mahasweta, Devi. “Pterodactyl, Puran Sahay, and Pirtha.” Imaginary Maps. Trans. Gayatri Spivak. London: Routledge, 1995. 95–196. Print.Google Scholar
DuBois, W. E. B. “The Training of Black Men.” The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago: McClurg, 1907. 88–109. Print.Google Scholar
Frantz, Fanon. The Wretched of the Earth. 1963. Trans. Richard Philcox. New York: Grove, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
“First American Monkey Colony Starts on Puerto Rico Islet.” Life 2 Jan. 1939: 26. Print.Google Scholar
Dolores, Flamiano. “Meaning, Memory, and Misogyny: Life Photographer Hansel Mieth's Monkey Portrait.” Afterimage 33.2 (2005): 22–30. Print.Google Scholar
Michel, Foucault. The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences. 1966. New York: Vintage, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Leela, Gandhi. Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-Siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship. Durham, Duke UP, 2006. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Paul, Gilroy. Against Race: Imagining Political Culture beyond the Color Line. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Gonzáles-Martínez, Janis. “The Introduced Free-Ranging Rhesus and Patas Monkey Populations of Southwestern Puerto Rico.” Puerto Rico Health Sciences Journal 23.1 (2004): 39–46. Print.Google Scholar
Goodin, Robert, Pateman, Carole, and Pateman, Roy. “Simian Sovereignty.” Political Theory 25.6 (1997): 821–49. Print.Google Scholar
Donna, Haraway. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Herder, Johann Gottfried. “Treatise on the Origin of Language.” 1772. Herder: Philosophical Writings. Ed. Forster, Michael N. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002. 65–165. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Nancy, Jacobs. “The Great Bophuthatswana Donkey Massacre: Discourse on the Ass and the Politics of Class and Grass.” American Historical Review 106.2 (2001): 485–507. Print.Google Scholar
Kelley, Robin D. G. “Kickin' Reality, Kickin' Ballistics: Gangsta Rap and Postindustrial Los Angeles.” Droppin' Science: Critical Essays on Rap Music and Hip Hop Culture. Ed. Perkins, William Eric. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1996. 117–58. Print.Google Scholar
Bridget, Kevane. Profane and Sacred: Latino/a American Writers Reveal the Interplay of the Secular and the Religious. Lanham: Rowman, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Eduardo, Kohn. “How Dogs Dream: Amazonian Natures and the Politics of Transspecies Engagement.” American Ethnologist 34.1 (2007): 3–24. Print.Google Scholar
León-Portillo, Miguel. Broken Spears: The Aztec Account of the Conquest of Mexico. 1962. Boston: Beacon, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Ania, Loomba, et al. Postcolonial Studies and Beyond. Durham: Duke UP, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Michael, Lundblad. “The Animal Question.” American Quarterly 56.4 (2004): 1128–34. Print.Google Scholar
Achille, Mbembe. “Necropolitics.” Public Culture 15.1 (2003): 11–40. Print.Google Scholar
Hansel, Mieth. “A Rhesus Monkey Sitting in Water Up to His Chest.” LIFE Photo Archive. Google, 2008. Web. 30 Jan. 2009. <http://images.google.com/hosted/life/l?imgurl=93c095708487c31c>.Google Scholar
Walter, Mignolo. Local Histories / Global Designs: Coloniality, Subaltern Knowledges, and Border Thinking. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Gwenn, Miller. “The Perfect Mistress of Russian Economy.” Haunted by Empire: Geographies of Intimacy in North American History. Ed. Stoler, Ann Laura. Durham: Duke UP, 2006. 297–322. Print.Google Scholar
Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ wa. “The Language of African Literature.” 1986. Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Williams, Patrick and Chrisman, Laura. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. 435–55. Print.Google Scholar
Thiong'o, Ngũgĩ wa. “Writing from Prison and Exile.” U of California, San Diego. 29 May 2008. Lecture.Google Scholar
Parreñas, Rheana. “Adopting Orangutans: Ecotourist Labor, Altruism, and Charismatic Megafauna.” Intimate Labors Conf. U of California, Santa Barbara. 6 Oct. 2007. Reading.Google Scholar
Pflugfelder, Gregory, and Walker, Brett, eds. JAPANimals: History and Culture in Japan's Animal Life. Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2005. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge, 1992. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rawlins, Richard, and Kessler, Matt. “The History of the Cayo Santiago Colony.” The Cayo Santiago Macaques. Ed. Rawlins, and Kessler, . Albany: State U of New York P, 1986. 13–46. Print.Google Scholar
Harriet, Ritvo. The Platypus and the Mermaid and Other Figments of the Classifying Imagination. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Nikolas, Rose. The Politics of Life Itself: Biomedicine, Power, and Subjectivity in the Twenty-First Century. Princeton: Princeton UP, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Deepti, Sastry. “The Mediated Space of the Delhi Zoo: Nationalism and Animals.” 2006 Annual Meeting. Amer. Compar. Lit. Assn. Princeton U. 25 Mar. 2006. Reading.Google Scholar
Senghor, Léopold Sédar. “Negritude: A Humanism of the Twentieth Century.” 1966. Colonial Discourse and Post-colonial Theory: A Reader. Ed. Williams, Patrick and Chrisman, Laura. New York: Columbia UP, 1994. 27–35. Print.Google Scholar
Vandana, Shiva. Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge. Cambridge: South End, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
Silva, Silva Denise Ferreira. Toward a Global Idea of Race. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Marjorie, Spiegel. The Dreaded Comparison: Human and Animal Slavery. 1988. New York: Mirror, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Stern, Alexandra Minna. Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America. Berkeley: U of California P, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Michael, Taussig. “Zoology, Magic, and Surrealism in the War on Terror.” Critical Inquiry 34.2 (2008): S99–S116. Print.Google Scholar
Anna, Tsing. Friction: An Ethnography of Global Connection. Durham: Duke UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Viramontes, Helena María. Their Dogs Came with Them. New York: Atria, 2007. Print.Google Scholar
Alice, Walker. Foreword. Spiegel 13–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cary, Wolfe. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003. Print.Google Scholar