The hermeneutic category of queer has established itself as a powerful tool of social criticism and political action. Questioning and crossing identitarian barriers, and drawing attention to the ways to which non-normative identities are repressed by mainstream culture is queer‟s central theoretical vocation. This paper aims to extend its application by considering the case of humans who cross the most entrenched identitarian barrier upheld by all human societies and in the whole course of history by identifying prioritarily with non-human animals. The paper starts with a critique of the language in which the oppressive relationship of our species to other ones is encoded, examines the consequences of this oppression for both human and animal identity, highlights its function as the hidden foundation of human intraspecific violence, and closes by showing the deep consonance between the two most radical proposals in the fields of queer and animal rights respectively, Edelman‟s critique of “reproductive futurism” and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.
The Love Whose Name Cannot be Spoken: Queering the Human-Animal Bond
DELL'AVERSANO, CARMEN
2010-01-01
Abstract
The hermeneutic category of queer has established itself as a powerful tool of social criticism and political action. Questioning and crossing identitarian barriers, and drawing attention to the ways to which non-normative identities are repressed by mainstream culture is queer‟s central theoretical vocation. This paper aims to extend its application by considering the case of humans who cross the most entrenched identitarian barrier upheld by all human societies and in the whole course of history by identifying prioritarily with non-human animals. The paper starts with a critique of the language in which the oppressive relationship of our species to other ones is encoded, examines the consequences of this oppression for both human and animal identity, highlights its function as the hidden foundation of human intraspecific violence, and closes by showing the deep consonance between the two most radical proposals in the fields of queer and animal rights respectively, Edelman‟s critique of “reproductive futurism” and the Voluntary Human Extinction Movement.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.