Hostname: page-component-f554764f5-8cg97 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-18T07:14:56.225Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Witnessing Animal Others: Bearing Witness, Grief, and the Political Function of Emotion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Kathryn Gillespie
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article theorizes the politics of witnessing and grief in the context of the embodied experience of cows raised for dairy in the Pacific Northwestern United States. Bearing witness to the mundane features of dairy production and their impact on cows' physical and emotional worlds enables us to understand the violence of commodification and the political dimensions of witnessing the suffering of an Other. I argue that greater attention should be paid to the uneven hierarchies of power in the act of bearing witness. Centering the animal as a subject of witnessing allows us to see with particular clarity the ethical ambiguities at work in witnessing while at the same time attending to the importance of witnessing‐as‐politics. My project here is to lay bare moments of emotional and physical turmoil not seen as such—the lives that are rendered ungrievable—and examine how we can and should respond to them. Thus, this article contributes to feminist conversations about witnessing, grief, and the political function of emotion.

Type
Articles
Information
Hypatia , Volume 31 , Issue 3 , Summer 2016 , pp. 572 - 588
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 by Hypatia, Inc.

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.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Adams, Carol J. 1990. The sexual politics of meat. New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Adams, Carol J., and Gruen, Lori. 2014. Ecofeminism. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Ahmed, Sara. 2004. The cultural politics of emotion. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Bekoff, Marc. 2007. The emotional lives of animals. Novato, Calif.: New World Library.Google Scholar
Berlin, Jeremy. 2010. The story behind National Geographic's viral chimp funeral photo. Huffington Post, March 18. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/29/the-story-behind-national_n_338120.html (accessed October 27, 2014).Google Scholar
Blackfish. 2013. Directed by Gabriela Cowperthwaite. Magnolia Pictures.Google Scholar
Bloom, Lynn Z. 2009. Witnessing. MELUS 34 (1): 13–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. 2013. The posthuman. Malden, Mass.: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2004. Precarious life. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 2009. Frames of war. London: Verso.Google Scholar
Cutter, Martha. 2009. Editor's introduction: Witnessing, testifying, and history. MELUS 34 (1): 5–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dave, Naisargi N. 2014. Witness: Humans, animals, and the politics of becoming. Cultural Anthropology 29 (3): 433–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davis, Karen. 1995. Thinking like a chicken. In Animals and women, ed. Adams, Carol J. and Donovan, Josephine. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Donovan, Josephine. 1996. Attention to suffering: Sympathy as a basis for ethical treatment of animals. In Beyond animal rights, ed. Donovan, Josephine and Adams, Carol J.New York: Continuum.Google Scholar
Donovan, Josephine. 2006. Feminism and the treatment of animals: From care to dialogue. Signs 31 (2): 305–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaard, Greta. 2002. Vegetarian ecofeminism. Frontiers 23 (3): 117–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gaard, Greta. 2012. Speaking of animal bodies. Hypatia 27 (3): 520–26.Google Scholar
Gaard, Greta. 2013. Toward a feminist postcolonial milk studies. American Quarterly 65 (3): 595–618.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
García, María Elena. 2015. Love, death, food and other ghost stories. In Economies of death, ed. Lopez, Patricia J. and Gillespie, Kathryn A.London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Gilgun, Jane F., and McLeod, Laura. 1999. Gendering violence. Studies in Symbolic Interactionism 22: 167–93.Google Scholar
Gillespie, Kathryn. 2014. Sexualized violence and the gendered commodification of the animal body in Pacific northwest US dairy production. Gender, Place and Culture 21 (10): 1321–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granek, Leeat. 2014. Mourning sicknesses: The politicizations of grief. Review of General Psychology 18 (2): 61–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gruen, Lori. 1993. Dismantling oppression. In Ecofeminism, ed. Gaard, Greta. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Gruen, Lori. 2014. Facing death and practicing grief. In Ecofeminism, ed. Adams, Carol J. and Gruen, Lori. New York: Bloomsbury.Google Scholar
Gruen, Lori. 2015. Entangled empathy: An alternative ethic for our relationships with animals. New York: Lantern Books.Google Scholar
Gruen, Lori, and Weil, Kari. 2012. Invited symposium: Feminists encountering animals, introduction. Hypatia 27 (3): 492–526.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hatkoff, Amy. 2009. The inner world of farm animals. New York: Stewart, Tabori, and Chang.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1989. Primate visions. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hemmings, Clare. 2012. Affective solidarity: Feminist reflexivity and political transformation. Feminist Theory 13 (2): 147–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Honeyborne, James. 2013. Elephants really do grieve like us. Daily Mail UK, January 30. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2270977/Elephants-really-grieve-like-They-shed-tears-try-bury-dead-leading-wildlife-film-maker-reveals-animals-like-us.html (accessed October 27, 2014).Google Scholar
Hribal, Jason. 2003. “Animals are part of the working class”: A challenge to labor history. Labor History 44 (4): 435–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jaggar, Alison M. 1989. Love and knowledge: Emotion in feminist epistemology. Inquiry 32 (2): 151–76.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Joy, Melanie. 2011. Why we love dogs, eat pigs, and wear cows. Newburyport, Mass.: Conari Press.Google Scholar
Kemmerer, Lisa. 2011. Animals and world religions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kheel, Marti. 1985. Liberation of nature: A circular affair. Environmental Ethics 7 (2): 135–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kheel, Marti. 1987–88. Animal liberation is a feminist issue. New Catalyst Quarterly 10: 8–9.Google Scholar
King, Barbara. 2013a. How animals grieve. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
King, Barbara. 2013b. The expression of grief in monkeys, apes, and other animals. In The politics of species, ed. Corbey, Raymond and Lanjouw, Annette. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Marciniak, Katarzyna. 2010. Pedagogy of anxiety. Signs 35 (4): 869–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff, and McCarthy, Susan. 1994. When elephants weep. London: Cape.Google Scholar
Masson, Jeffrey Moussaieff. 2004. The pig who sang to the moon: The emotional world of farm animals. New York: Ballantine Books.Google Scholar
Nibert, David. 2013. Animal oppression and human violence. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2013. Political emotions. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Oliver, Kelly. 2001. Witnessing: Beyond recognition. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Potter, Will. 2011. Green is the new red. San Francisco: City Lights.Google Scholar
Presser, Lois. 2005. Negotiating power and narrative in research: Implications for feminist methodology. Signs 30 (4): 2067–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schatz, Edward. 2009. Political ethnography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stanescu, James. 2012. Species trouble: Judith Butler, mourning, and the precarious lives of animals. Hypatia 27 (1): 567–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Szczupider, Monica. 2009. National Geographic visions of Earth. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/visions-of-earth/visions-earth-2009?image=2#/1109-chimps-714.jpg (accessed October 27, 2014).Google Scholar
Taylor, Chloe. 2008. The precarious lives of animals: Butler, Coetzee, and animal ethics. Philosophy Today 52 (1): 60–72.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Toronto Pig Save. 2014. Pig vigil at Fearman's. http://www.torontopigsave.org/th_event/pig-vigil-at-fearmans-3/ (accessed September 25, 2014).Google Scholar
Tortorici, Zeb, and Few, Martha. 2013. Centering animals in Latin American history. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Vialles, Noilie. 1994. Animal to edible. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Cary. 2009. What is posthumanism?. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar