Lured by the Animal: Rethinking Nonhuman Animals in Educational Discourses

• In Event: Roundtable Session 117
  In Roundtable Session: Thinking Across/Through the Species Divide: Nonhuman Animals in Educational Theory and Research

Abstract

The discursive construction known as animal evokes a host of affects: emotional responses that range from fear to jubilation, awe to pity. These affects have been at the center for how humanity has discursively constructed nonhuman animals. Unfortunately, the West is rooted in binary constructions of social reality and “animal” and “human” are constructed as either/or, instead of a complex continuum accounting for all of life. Although “nonhuman animal” may seem to be a binary construction or a clever wordsmith, it is instead rooted in the fundamental understanding that we are constructed along a binary between civilized/savage, humanity/animality, or advanced/primitive. But this raises an important question: what does it mean to be human and does this category indeed exist? I will attempt to address this question by rethinking nonhuman animals and their centrality to our representational practices.
As a person of color who has seen privilege in the halls of academia, to the memories of family stories naming stifling oppressive social practices at the hands of White racism and supremacy, the animal sits firmly within this embodied reality. Although these may not seem to link to the casual observer, however, Western scientific discourses reify and legitimate a certain vision of the nonhuman along with shaping how the Other has been discursively constructed. The recent literature surrounding eco-pedagogy, social justice and critical animal studies (Andrzejewski et al., 2009; Best, 2009; Bowers, 2001; Kahn, 2010; Martusewicz & Edmundson, 2005; Nibert, 2002; Riley-Taylor, 2002), the role of masculinity in the exploitation of nonhuman animals (Luke, 2007) and to the cultural politics of nature (Shukin, 2009) begs us to begin to more deeply engage with this literature and its potential links to the various projects of critical educational theory and social justice. Examining the “animal” forces educational scholars to step outside the given parameters of what has bounded traditional educational discourses: institutional realities. By pushing against these boundaries, we also push across the boundaries that keep us grounded in hierarchical and coercive institutions.
Although the various discourses of critical pedagogy exposed many oppressive features of contemporary society, the literature remains fixed on the human experience, despite the fact that the representations of nonhuman animals provide a rich context to explore Michel Foucault’s (1980) regimes of truth. This presentation will assume a trans-disciplinary approach, utilizing the literatures from animal and critical animal studies, critical pedagogy, postcolonialism, and the poststructural tradition to examine how “animal” has been constructed by human societies in the West, while also providing a brief summary of current scholarship and its implications for educational theory and research. Specifically, the author focuses on European colonization, “animal” as a regime of truth, and the practice of speciesism. This presentation will demonstrate that the discursive construction of nonhumans is riddled with assumptions based upon Enlightenment notions of empirical science, implicating how Other humans are represented. I will end by examining Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s becoming-animal, a theoretical location from which we can begin to challenge the human/nonhuman binary in educational practice.

Author

• Abraham P. Deleon, The University of Texas - San Antonio