Humans, Animals, and U.S. Society in the Long Nineteenth Century: Volume II: Animal and Human in American Thought (Part 2) (1)

By: Dominik Ohrem

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Synopsis: Volume II continues the discussion of animals/animality in U.S. social and scientific thought to address the ways in which the nexus of ideas surrounding human-animal distinctions became intertwined with interhuman hierarchies and power relations, including through the synergistic dynamics between race and species as co-implicating “taxonomies of power” (Claire Jean Kim) that informed both chattel slavery and settler violence against Indigenous peoples. A second section traces the evolution of animal advocacy from early individual voices to the formation of an organised movement following the Civil War, documenting a shift – however limited by structural constraints – from largely anthropocentric concerns with the social consequences of human cruelty towards other creatures to a broader moral consideration for nonhuman animals in their own right.