Beyond the Anthropological Difference

An exploration of what human beings and animals might become once the traditional division between them no longer holds.

Matthew Calarco (Author)

9781108797375, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 30 July 2020

75 pages
23 x 15.3 x 0.5 cm, 0.2 kg

The aim of this Element is to provide a novel framework for gaining a critical grasp on the present situation concerning animals. It offers reflections on resisting the established order as well as suggestions on what forms alternative, pro-animal ways of life might take. The central argument of the book is that the search for an anthropological difference - that is, for a marker of human uniqueness determined by way of a sharp human/animal distinction - should be set aside. In place of this traditional way of differentiating human beings from animals, the author sketches an alternative way of thinking and living in relation to animals based on indistinction, a concept that points toward the unexpected and profound ways in which human beings share in animal life, death, and potentiality. The implications of this approach are then examined in view of practical and theoretical discussions in the environmental humanities and related fields.

1. Introduction
2. The anthropological difference
3. From speciesism to anthropocentrism
4. Anthropocentrism and intersectionality
5. Indistinction
6. From ethics to ethology
7. Beyond animals?
8. Ontologies and forms of life.

Subject Areas: Physical anthropology [JHMP], Anthropology [JHM], Sociology [JHB], Society & culture: general [JF], Society & social sciences [J]