Animal Performances
- 1 August 2004
- journal article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Feminist Theory
- Vol. 5 (2), 167-183
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1464700104045406
Abstract
Feminist science studies have given scant regard to non-human animals. In this paper, we argue that it is important for feminist theory to address the complex relationships between humans and other animals, and the implications of these for feminism. We use the notion of performativity, particularly as it has been developed by Karen Barad, to explore the intersections of feminism and studies of the human/animal relationship. Performativity, we argue, helps to challenge the persistent dichotomy between human/culture and animals/nature. It emphasizes, moreover, how animality is a doing or becoming, not an essence; so, performativity allows us to think about the complexity of human/animal interrelating as a kind of choreography, a co-creation of behaviour. We illustrate the discussion using the example of the laboratory rat, who can be thought of both in terms of a materialization of specific scientific practices and as active participants in the creation of their own meaning, alongside the human participants in science. There are three, intertwined, senses in which we might think about performativity - that of animality, of humannness, and of the relationship between the two. Bringing animals into discussions about performativity poses questions for both feminist theory and for the study of human/animal relationships, we argue: both human and animal can conjointly be engaged in reconfiguring the world, and our theorizing must reflect that complexity. We are all matter, and we all matter.Keywords
This publication has 15 references indexed in Scilit:
- Posthumanist Performativity: Toward an Understanding of How Matter Comes to MatterSigns: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 2003
- Who—or What—are the Rats (and Mice) in the LaboratorySociety & Animals, 2003
- Intimate Familiarities? Feminism and Human-Animal StudiesSociety & Animals, 2002
- Riding: Embodying the CentaurBody & Society, 2001
- Animals in Experimental Reports: The Rhetoric of ScienceSociety & Animals, 1995
- The Wistar rat as a right choice: Establishing mammalian standards and the ideal of a standardized mammalJournal of the History of Biology, 1993
- 1. What Tools? Which Jobs? Why Right?Published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,1992
- The New AnthropomorphismPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1992
- On Interests and their Transformation: Enrolment and Counter-EnrolmentSocial Studies of Science, 1982
- The albino rat: A defensible choice or a bad habit?American Psychologist, 1968