What is an Animal?

Question 1

How many humans and pets in the UK?

Answer 1

65m humans, 51m pets

Question 2

What is Dualism?

Answer 2

A way of understanding & defining animals in terms of their otherness

Question 3

Who comes under Dualism and what were their main points?

Answer 3

Aristotle - no souls
Enlightenment - not capable of reason
Descartes - machines, can’t feel pain
Today - no language

Question 4

What does Ingold say Western thought does? What year?

Answer 4

Drives division between humanity and animality (2000)

Question 5

What defines humanity?

Answer 5

personhood, agency, moral conscience, intentional social values

Question 6

How were the boundaries between human and animal blurred historically?

Answer 6

Werewolves - changed from human to animal and back again.
If found, trialled. Both the human and the animal burnt at the stake.
Caused confusion and fear.

Question 7

Who discussed typology of production systems and what were they?

Answer 7

Tapper 1994
Hunting and Gathering - toteism, agency, personhood
Pastoralism - herds as replicas of human society
Agriculture - taming of the wild
Urban Industrial Production - animals marginalised, anthropomorphism

Question 8

How does Western thought approach personhood?

Answer 8

Ingold (2000) - not open to non-human kinds

Shweder (1990) - humans occupy ‘intentional worlds’ - form or meaning

Question 9

How do the Cree approach personhood?

Answer 9

Midgley (1988) - believe personhood applies to human, non-human kinds and non-animal kinds

Question 10

What is the Species Barrier and what does it do?

Answer 10

Midgley (1994) - notion of animal stands for the anti-human.
Species Barrier accentuates differences between what is considered human and what is considered animalistic.
Criminals - inhumane.
Slavery - animalistic tendencies.
Whatever a human is, an animal is not and vice versa.

Question 11

How can we critique the species barrier?

Answer 11

It is too simplistic. Does not take pets into consideration. There is a hierarchy amongst animals just as there is a hierarchy amongst humans.
FOX (2006) - pets occupy ‘liminal position’ on border of human and animal.

Question 12

What is the difference between Hunter-Gatherer and Western ontologies?

Answer 12

HG - viewed animals with more of a likeness. Toteism. Mutual respect. Didn’t contemplate superiority over animals or disregard them. Not such a sharp divide.

Western - more exploitative relationship (e.g. designer puppies)

Question 13

What do Deleuze and Guatarri think?

Answer 13

That the focus should be on an alliance with animals.

It is more important to celebrate difference and diversity over sameness, similarity and kinship.

1987

Question 14

Kalof and Fitzgerald?

Answer 14

Belief that humans have ‘dominion’ over lower animals came from Aristotle’s work - 2007

Question 15

Fudge?

Answer 15

Animals both similar and different to us. Paradox of like and not like.
More of a problem of the human than the animal.
Rarely make the connection between the cat we live with and the cow we eat.
2002

Question 16

Midgley?

Answer 16

Term ‘animal’ used to describe what humans are not/should never be.
Notion of animal is emotive.
Gap has widened over time.
1988

Question 17

Ingold?

Answer 17

All humanities have coexisted with animals.
People’s opinions are variable.
Every attribute we have, an animal is seen to lack.
Humans are both persons and organisms, animals are all organisms.
1988

Question 18

Shepard?

Answer 18

Animals both familiar and extraordinary.
Class divisions assumed convenience and logic of animal symbolism.
1996

Question 19

Who says the animal kingdom and our history are irrevocably intertwined?

Answer 19

Caras 1996