New Possibilities: Gender and embodiment in the human-horse context

• In Event: 419 - Section on Animals and Society Paper Session. Sex, Gender, and the Nonhuman Body

Abstract

It is well known by now that paying attention to human-animal relationships can offer insights into the human experience. While many scholars have done well in demonstrating this, few have explored questions of gendered embodiment specifically in the context of human-animal relationships. This paper explores how the human-animal context can offer alternate bodily modalities that can shift experience of gendered embodiment. Using ethnographic data of in-depth interviews and participant observation, I focus on women's experiences of embodiment when working with horses. Given the high level of physical contact between horses and riders, many horsewomen talked about an altered sense of embodiment when working with horses. At times their experiences of embodiment were so greatly altered that they felt as if they were sharing one body with their horses. This shift in their embodied experience offered new possibilities to reimagine themselves as embodied subjects, indeed female subjects, in new and different ways. I argue that their narratives about themselves in relation to horses provide a unique vantage point from which to look at the lived experience of embodiment and gender. They serve as a potent example of the power of human-animal relationships to alter the human experience.

Author

• Keri Jacqueline Brandt, Fort Lewis College