This weekend in London I attended the second meeting of the British Animal Studies Network, which is funded by a grant from the Arts & Humanities Research Council.
The focus of the meeting was on “Humans, Animals and Posthumanism” and the speakers were Ron Broglio, Lynda Birke, Neil Badmington, and discussant, Martha Fleming.
All of the presentations were stimulating as well as the discussions they provoked. For example, I wasn’t familiar with posthumanism as a concept and like, postmodernism, shies away from definitive definitions.
But, from an animal rights perspective, you would think that posthumanism would recognize the animal issue to some extent. Except for some noted scholars like Donna Haraway, it would appear it doesn’t. Posthumanism goes toward the direction of beyond human in the sense of cyborgs and humans transformed by technology (think of the Terminator).
During this discussion I raised the question whether posthumanism would have been more enlightened on the animal issue if it had been called posthuman-animalism?
Anyway, I don’t mean to trivialize what was a fascinating discussion. But simple (or relatively simple) questions are often the most difficult to answer. For example, another question posed was, “What is it like to be a bat?” This was prompted by an article by Thomas Nagel.
I find it hard enough to know myself let alone another species or an individual of the species. Another deceptively simple question is, “Is a pet an animal?” Which, if I remember correctly, is posed in Erica Fudge’s Animal. The answer is, of course, yes and no. Yes because a cat or a dog, for example, is another species other human. But no because by their relationship with us they are no longer an animal existing on their own terms. They are as much dependent upon us as we are on them.
