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Animals, Anomalies, and Inorganic Others

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Extract

De-oedipalizing the Animal Other

The animal has ceased to be one of the privileged terms that indexes the european subject's relation to otherness. The metaphysics of otherness rested on an assumed political anatomy, implicitly modeled on ideals of whiteness, masculinity, normality, youth, and health. All other modes of embodiment, in the sense of both dialectical otherness (nonwhite, nonmasculine, nonnormal, nonyoung, nonhealthy) and categorical otherness (zoomorphic, disabled, or malformed), were pathologized and cast on the other side of normality—that is, viewed as anomalous, deviant, and monstrous. This morphological normativity was inherently anthropocentric, gendered, and racialized. It confirmed the dominant subject as much in what he included as his core characteristics as in what he excluded as other.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009

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