Animal Bodies, Technobodies: New Directions in

Cultural Studies, Feminism, and Posthumanism

A Review of Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in

a Posthuman World, edited by Jodey Castricano and
Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersectionsof Media,
Bioscience, and Technology, edited by Anneke
Smelik & Nina Lykke

Maneesha Deckhat

IN TRO DU CTIO N ................................................................................................ 505

I. HARAWAY'S POSTHUMANIST INFLUENCE ................................................... 507
II. POSTHUMANIST TRAJECTORY 1: NONHUMAN ANIMALS ........................... 510
A . Anim als in Cultural Practices ........................................................ 510
B . N ew Theoretical Terrains .............................................................. 512
C . W hither Cultural Studies? .................................... .. . .. . .. . .. .. . . .. .. . .. . .. . 516
III. POSTHUMANIST TRAJECTORY 2: HUMAN TECHNOBODIES ....................... 517
A. Technology and Gender in Everyday Life ..................................... 517
B. Genes, Gender, and Cultural Representation ................................. 518
C. Feminist Cultural Studies of Technoscience .................................. 519
IV. LIMITED CRITIQUES: DIFFERENCE, POWER, AND INTERSECTIONALITY .... 521
V . THE POSTHUM ANIST LEAP ......................................................................... 523

INTRODUCTION

As do most areas of critical literature, cultural studies usually takes the

human subject as a given. Recently, however, calls to enrich the field through
non-anthropocentric inquiry that extends beyond humanist parameters have

t Associate Professor, Faculty of Law, University of Victoria. I would like to thank the editors of the
Yale Journal of Law and Feminism for their careful editorial assistance.

Copyright © 2009 by the Yale Journal of Law and Feminism

 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

become more frequent.' These calls find a robust response in two recent
anthologies: Animal Subjects: An Ethical Reader in a Posthuman World, edited
by Jodey Castricano; 2 and Bits of Life: Feminism at the Intersections ofMedia,
Bioscience, and Technology, edited by Anneke Smelik and Nina Lykke.3 Both
texts take cultural studies as their primary organizing anchor, taking care to
highlight and appreciate the interdisciplinarity of the field and its relationship
to feminist studies in excavating ideas and valuations of difference, alterity, and
abject status.4 As if to embody this connection between cultural studies,
feminism, and posthumanism, both texts emphasize the influence of the
writings of Donna Haraway in the genealogy of the questions they seek to map,
especially her famous cyborg figure; this figure acts as a signifier of the
technologically mediated nature of human and animal bodies and thus as a
reminder of the fallacy of biological determinism-a stark boundary between
human, animal, and machine-as well as other scientific metanarratives. 5
Animal Subjects, true to its name, focuses on the animalized dimensions of the
cyborg and posthuman studies, highlighting the precariousness of the human-
animal and nature-culture binaries by showcasing "the question of the animal"
in an array of cultural and legal practices. 6 Bits of Life concentrates more on the
human-machine side of the cyborg phenomenon, devoting itself to unearthing
current imaginings of the "bits of life" of human "technobodies"-human
bodies molded by technological matrices of various sorts-such as genes, cells,
eggs, and sperm. It is also more focused on representations of these "bits of
life" in the media.
In what follows, I introduce both texts through their reliance on Haraway's
work as a theoretical departure point. I then discuss individual contributions in
both Animal Subjects and Bits of Life, commending both for their commitment
to the analysis of cultural practices and the charting of new directions in
posthumanist theory. Within these discussions, I provide my view of the
collections' individual shortcomings, and also include a section noting the
limits of their posthumanist analysis from a feminist intersectional perspective.
Finally, I close with a discussion of the collective possibilities that arise from
Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife for developing feminist posthumanist studies.

I. CARY WOLFE, ANIMAL RITES: AMERICAN CULTURE, THE DISCOURSE OF SPECIES, AND
POSTHUMANIST THEORY (2003); Sara Salih, Filling Up the Space Between Mankind and Ape: Racism,
Speciesism and the Androphilic Ape, ARIEL, Jan. 2007, at 95.
2. ANIMAL SUBJECTS: AN ETHICAL READER IN A POSTHUMAN WORLD (Jodey Castricano ed.,
2008) [hereinafter ANIMAL SUBJECTS].
3. BITS OF LIFE: FEMINISM AT THE INTERSECTIONS OF MEDIA, BIOSCIENCE, AND TECHNOLOGY
(Anneke Smelik & Nina Lykke eds., 2008) [hereinafter BITS OF LIFE].
4. Jodey Castricano, Introduction:Animal Subjects in a Posthuman World, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS,
supra note 2, at 1, 5-6; Nina Lykke, Feminist Cultural Studies of Technoscience: Portrait of an
Implosion, in BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3, at 3, 3.
5. Castricano, supra note 4, at 12.
6. Id. at 2.
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife

I. HARAWAY'S POSTHUMANIST INFLUENCE

Despite these volumes' different trajectories in posthuman studies--one

aimed at undoing the human-animal binary and the other at undoing the human-
machine binary-both volumes give prominence to Haraway's work, which
addresses both binaries. Castricano introduces her revolutionary "cyborg
manifesto" very early in Animal Subjects, and credits it for highlighting the
"critical lag" in cultural studies arising from the absence of deconstructions of
the animal-human boundary. 7 A new essay by Haraway, Chicken, leads off the
essays after Castricano's introduction. 8 Through Haraway's hallmark use of
irony, the short piece gives a snapshot into the heavily technologically
mediated and abused body of today's factory farmed chicken and its
unacknowledged presence in the media stories and cultural iconography of our
time, from avian flu to Chicken McNuggets to Abu Ghraib and political
"pecking orders." 9 In spite of Haraway's reputation for high theory, Chicken
stays lucidly grounded, giving shape and scope to the brutality that is the
0
human treatment of chickens.'
At the same time, the piece invites readers to consider the culturally-laden
character of the attributes we assign to different animals, noting the particular
cultural symbolism and work that chickens have been made to bear and their
current situatedness in racist and sexist circuits of global power. Although this
essay does not focus on outlining the relationship between feminism and
animal-friendly posthumanist critique, readers unaware of the arguments in this
area can still glean insights regarding this relationship. For example, Haraway
questions the nature-culture binary. 1 This binary, as ecofeminists and others
have shown, is a formidable obstacle in creating egalitarian relations not just
between humans and animals, but also for racialized peoples, white women,
and other marginalized human beings who have all been posited on the
stigmatized "nature" side of this dichotomy along with animals . 2 Another
example of the connection between feminist concerns and posthumanist ones is
the use of language to disparage women and animals. As Chicken points out,
13
the term "chick" easily illustrates this point.

7. Id. at 7.
8. Donna Haraway, Chicken, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supranote 2, at 33.
9. Id. at 34-37.
10. Haraway provides statistics documenting the number of chickens killed worldwide for food and
slaughtered as prophylaxis against avian flu and also discusses the genetic engineering and exploitative
conditions on factory farms. See id. at 34-36.
11. Id. at 34 (describing "the naturalcultural contractual arrangements that domesticated both
bipedal hominids and winged gallinaceous avians").
12. Maneesha Deckha, The Salience of Species Difference for Feminist Theory, 17 HASTINGS
WOMEN'S L.J. 1, 5 (2006).
13. Haraway, supranote 8, at 34.
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

Haraway's early placement in the volume not only signals the theoretical
and practical dimensions provided by different essays in the collection but also
highlights Castricano's contention "that social and cultural analyses are more
often than not the site of multiple contradictions."' 14 Theoretically-oriented
offerings include arguments refashioning the complex concepts of personhood,
moral space, representation, and deconstruction to be more inclusive of
animals. Contributions that address more discrete topics cover the controversies
of animal experimentation, animals in entertainment, and the configurations of
animal advocacy and anti-cruelty prosecution. Leading with Haraway's essay,
however short, nicely intimates the diversity of contributions to come and their
uncovering of the contradictions in our treatment of animals. Chicken also
facilitates understanding of the contradictory attitudes we hold toward animals
in Western culture where, for example, we might treat a particular animal as a
member of our families, but think nothing of consuming the flesh of another
animal in this family member's presence.' 5 Introducing Haraway's essay,
Castricano notes that the Chicken Little figure Haraway harnesses for
subversive ends is no longer the rascal bearer of implausible forecasts about
imminent doom ("the sky is falling"), but the passionate advocate/victim of the
dangers of technoscientific assaults in agriculture to human health and, of
course, the unspeakable suffering that is visited daily on the bodies of chickens
in factory farms. 16 Haraway's deployment of the figure contradicts our standard
cultural narrative and thus accentuates her critique through irony. As
Castricano states, Haraway's ironic intervention is just one method of
illuminating the paradoxes we encounter once we engage in cultural critique in
general.
Bits of Life centers Haraway's work through There Are Always More
Things Going on than You Thought!: Methodologies as Thinking Technologies:
Interview with Donna Haraway, an interview Nina Lykke, Randi Markussen,
and Finn Olesen conducted with Haraway in 1999 that was first published in
2000 in Denmark. For those who did not encounter the Danish version or the
English translation in the Haraway Reader,17 the interview offers Haraway's
views on her writing style (worthy of note: she means to be clear!) as well as
perennial questions that trouble feminists who aim to model deconstructive
commitments in their writing but also desire a cohesive piece of scholarship.
Haraway speaks from her experience on handling the paradox of reifying
categories one means to deconstruct through the writing process, thus
appreciating standpoint feminism while dissociating from it. She also describes

14. Castricano, supra note 4, at 12.

15. See ERICA FUDGE, ANIMAL 164-65 (2002).
16. Castricano, supra note 4, at 12.
17. DONNA HARAWAY, Cyborgs, Coyotes, and Dogs: A Kinship of Feminist Figurationsand There
Are Always More Things Going on than You Thought! Methodologies as Thinking Technologies, in
HARAWAY READER, 321, 332 (2004).
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife

how she locates herself within science studies, especially given the influence of 18
Bruno Latour on the field, as gendered analysis has been minimal in his work.
While somewhat older now, the interview is productive in facilitating the
editors' hope to lay out for the reader "frameworks and approaches that have
been a major inspiration for the development of feminist cultural studies of
technoscience." 1 9
The choice on the part of both collections to center on Haraway's work is
revealing of her well-deserved prominence in matters of gender, technology,
species, and posthumanism. It should be noted, however, that Haraway herself
declines the posthuman and posthumanist label: "I never wanted to be
posthuman, or posthumanist, any more than I wanted to be postfeminist., 20 For
Haraway, the "post" in these terms intimates the fallacy that humanism
achieved its objectives of equality and dignity for all humans. More
importantly, Haraway states that "it is the patterns of relationality and, in Karen
Barad's terms, intra-actions at many scales of space-time that need rethinking,
not getting beyond one troubled category for a worse one even more likely to
go postal." 21 In her focus on relationality, Haraway stresses the importance of
understanding ourselves and our species as beings who come to be by the
process of what she calls "becoming-with., 22 This refers to the ongoing
constitution of humans through our "intra- and interaction" with other species
such that "species of all kinds, living and not, are consequent on a subject- and
object-shaping dance of encounters." 23 For Haraway, species are not knowable,
intact entities before these encounters, but take shape through them.
Haraway wants to focus our attention on relationality rather than labels.
Although she herself rejects the category of "posthuman" and "posthumanist"
she does accept the term "posthumanities" as a "useful notion for tracking
scholarly conversations" in this area. 24 It appears to be in this sense that the
collections use the terms, that is, not to suggest that human injustices have been
well-managed and are no longer at issue, but to signal a commitment to go
beyond an anthropocentric focus and question the stability of the human
boundary. Karen Barad, whose proposal for relationality Haraway endorses,
uses the "posthumanist" term this way herself and even features it in the title of

18. Nina Lykke et al., "There Are Always More Things Going On Than You Thought!":
Methodologies as Thinking Technologies: Interview with Donna Haraway,as reprintedin BITS OF LIFE,
supra note 3, at 32, 38-41.
19. Id. at 32.
20. DONNA J. HARAWAY, WHEN SPECIES MEET 17 (2008).
21. Id.
22. This is a term she borrows from Vinciane Despret, The Body We Care For: Figures of
Anthropo-zoo-genesis, BODY & SOCIETY, June 2004, at 111, 122. See HARAWAY, supra note 20, at 17
n.19.
23. HARAWAY, supra note 20, at 4.
24. Id. at 17 n.21.
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

her contribution-Living in a Posthumanist Material World: Lessons from

Schr6dinger'sCat.25 Barad writes further:
I use the terms "posthumanist" and "posthumanism" to mark a
commitment to accounting for the boundary practices through which
the "human" and its others are differentially constituted. Posthumanist
performativity is not a celebration of difference for difference's 2 sake;
6
rather, it is about accountability to and for differences that matter.
It is in this sense of boundary-blurring that I also use the term in this Review.

II. POSTHUMANIST TRAJECTORY 1: NONHUMAN ANIMALS

In addition to the Haraway contributions, there are multiple essays in both

volumes that provide cogent critical cultural analyses of current encounters
between humans and animals on the one hand and between humans and
bioscience and technology on the other. Ironically, given the influence of her
writings on feminism and cultural studies-both theories that critically evaluate
cultural norms-Haraway herself becomes a feminist cultural reference point
for the work both volumes wish to perform. What Castricano intends for
Animal Subjects is a collection that thinks seriously about animals in critical
discourses typically smothered by human-oriented questions and identities. 27 It
is a wide-ranging volume, diverse in its subject matter as well as in the
professional orientations of its contributors. Castricano has assembled not only
academics, but also legal practitioners and activists, many of whom are
recognized as experts in their fields.

A. Animals in CulturalPractices

Lesli Bisgould, one legal practitioner to whom readers are treated, employs
her analysis of the notorious cat torture case in Toronto as an heuristic device to
understand our "inter-species moral schizophrenia," a term she explicitly
borrows from legal scholar Gary Francione.28 Bisgould, arguably Canada's
leading animal law practitioner and advocate, immerses us in the facts of the
case as if reading a legal factum and then uses those facts to deliver a nutshell
critique of Canadian anti-cruelty law that readers new to this area will find
useful. The case she discusses is one in which a postsecondary fine arts student
and his friends filmed themselves brutally torturing a cat, Kensington. 29 They

25. See Karen Barad, Living in a Posthumanist Material World: Lessons from Schrodinger'sCat,
in BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3, at 165, 173.
26. Id. at 172-73.
27. Castricano, supra note 4, at 2-3.
28. Lesli Bisgould, Power and Irony: One Tortured Cat and Many Twisted Angles to Our Moral
Schizophrenia About Animals, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supra note 2, at 259, 259.
29. As Bisgould tells us, Kensington received her name posthumously and was named "after the
neighbourhood in which she was killed." Id. at 260.
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife

were caught and charged with cruelty to animals under the Canadian Criminal
Code. As a defense, the student argued that he believed in animal rights and
tortured Kensington to make the political point that torture of all animals is
wrong, whether it is the type of animal normally showered with love and
affection as a companion (i.e., a cat or dog) or the type of animal routinely
tortured in slaughterhouses (i.e., those labeled as "meat"). As Bisgould notes,
most torture and exploitation of animals, such as that which takes place in the
slaughterhouse, does not come under the purview of anti-cruelty offenses
because, as human-purposed industries, the killing is not seen to 30constitute
"unnecessary' suffering" under the typical definition of this offense.
In addition to dismissing the student's explanation for his brutal actions,
Bisgould showcases the irony in a prosecution that had to charge the student
with something other than animal cruelty-mischief, in this case-in order to
proceed with an indictable offence. Bisgould's point here is that offences
against another's property are treated more seriously than offences against an
animal in and of itself. While this is an important point to make, it should be
noted that her view that the "[t]he animal cruelty offence is an offence against
the animal herself' is questionable. 3 1 As Francione has argued with respect to
U.S. jurisdictions, although anti-cruelty offences purport to be a singular area in
the law where animal interests matter, the animus, purposes, and impact of
these offenses are still human- and property-oriented. 32 Bisgould's essay leaves
the reader with a solid understanding of the pitfalls of anti-cruelty legislation
and a memorable example of the difficulty of securing convictions and
imposing substantial penalties.
In addition to legal analysis, a number of the essays provide close readings
of certain normalized cultural uses of animals. John Sorenson's essay on
Marineland, a marine animal exhibition park in the city of Niagara Falls in
Ontario, Canada, is one of the collection's most engaging. Simply titled,
Monsters: The Case of Marineland, the essay provides a devastating critique of

30. Id. at 263-65 (emphasis added).

31. Id. at 260.
32. See GARY L. FRANCIONE, ANIMALS, PROPERTY, AND THE LAW (1995). One of Francione's
main points in this influential text is the concept of legal welfarism. This is the idea that anti-cruelty
laws, while purportedly meant to protect animal interests, actually protect the property interests of
animal owners in their animals from interference and violation. This is because animals are property
under a legal system that only recognizes the interests of persons, human and otherwise. Moreover,
"legal welfarism" underscores the impotence of any law that might be established to protect animals
when animals' legal nothingness mandates that even their most serious interests are always already
outweighed by even the most trivial human interest. This is because animals are property and human
beings are rightsholders; the balancing act to assess what is "unnecessary" suffering under an anti-
cruelty statute will always be heavily skewed toward the rightsholding human or corporate person. Thus,
as against their human or corporate owners, anti-cruelty laws only protect the most sadistic or gratuitous
use of animals and not the normalized uses we make of animals despite the fact that the suffering
quotient may be the same. See also Bisgould, supra note 28, at 261 ("Even an animal cruelty charge-
the one that is supposed to be about the animal herself-requires a court to determine whether the
suffering inflicted on the animal was 'unnecessary'-meaning some pain and suffering is 'necessary'
and perfectly fine .... ") (emphasis added).
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

the politics of the "edutainment" that cultural institutions such as Marineland

claim to offer, arguing that its cultural spectacles serve as a contemporary
example of monster-making akin to nineteenth century "freak show" displays
of "monstrous human 'others' ... playing on images of savagery and
primitivism." 33 Sorensen deftly filters Marineland's narratives and factual
background through an almost ethnographic treatment of the institution, its
actors, and the protesters in terms of the level of fascinating detail delivered.
A less detailed, but still very pragmatically oriented essay is Anne Innis
Dagg's Blame and Shame? How Can We Reduce Unproductive Animal
Experimentation.34 In it, Dagg discusses her novel studies regarding the
scientific impact of animal experimentation research. Presuming research to be
significant according to the number of citations an article receives once
published, Dagg completed four studies analyzing citation statistics for articles
published in various psychological, neurological, and cancer journals over a
period of several years. She concluded that there are a "large number of animal-
based experiments that science itself (by lack of citations) has indicated are
worthless." 35 While the methodology Dagg uses may be contested, in science
departments this calibration is a familiar yardstick for measuring scholarly
impact. While Dagg hoped that her results would shame scientists, universities,
and hospitals into rethinking their reliance on animal experimentation when the
research funded and conducted was infrequently cited, she instead chronicles
36
the resistance that she encountered against publishing any of the studies.
While distressing, the resistance reveals the still marginal status of
posthumanist critique and the marginalization scholars in the area can
encounter when challenging hegemonic understandings of animals. Dagg
concludes with recommendations for researchers, animal care committees,
funders, and research journals on how to reduce animal-based research.37
Dagg's sharing of her findings provides a new angle to the animal
experimentation debate.

B. New Theoretical Terrains

Several essays in Animal Subjects also explore new theoretical terrains in

posthumanist animal ethics. Of these, some pieces work with various
philosophical traditions to offer new approaches to old questions and to
markers of moral status used to separate animals from humans. In Electric

33. John Sorenson, Monsters: The Case of Marineland,in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supranote 2, at 195,
196.
34. Anne Innis Dagg, Blame and Shame? How Can We Reduce Unproductive Animal
Experimentation?, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supra note 2, at 271.
35. Id. at 280.
36. Id. at 278-80.
37. Id. at 281-82.
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits of Life

Sheep and the New Argument from Nature, Angus Taylor unpacks the "new
argument from nature" that scientific narratives have generated to uphold and
legitimate the boundary between humans and animals. 38 The new argument
from nature is different from the old one, which insisted that animals did not
count because of some assumed biological defect and thereby defended
drawing lines to demarcate their moral exclusion. 39 In contrast, the new
argument from nature does not engage in contestations about shared or not
shared capacities or the specialness or uniqueness of humans. Rather, as Taylor
explains:
What counts is not the capacity to suffer or even, in the last analysis,
the capacity to reason, but rather the ecological niche of one's species.
It is right that we hunt, kill, eat, exploit and experiment on members of
other species for the simple reason that that's how nature works: it's us
against them, and luckily for us, in a world of predators and prey, we
are the top predators.4 °
While Taylor addresses this new, naturalized, "intuitive" basis for
exclusion, other essays theorize new reasons for inclusion. In Animals as
Persons, David Sztybel plots a different path for the application of personhood
to animals than the standard argumentation on this front. 41 Instead of relying on
understandable yet problematic arguments from sameness (i.e., to the extent an
animal reasons or feels as a human does, it deserves moral consideration)
proffered by other posthumanist scholars,42 Sztybel relies on the personal
experience each animal has with pleasure and pain, explicitly harnessing the
"person" in "personal" to make his point. While his paradigm for personhood is
more responsive to the sameness critique and demotes reason from its usual
cultural pedestal in the theorization of moral status, Sztybel does not fully
escape the concerns of feminist animal advocates regarding the exclusion of
creatures who do not share a particular trait.43 This is because having a
"personal" experience for Sztybel still depends on having sentient ability. 44

38. Angus Taylor, Electric Sheep and the New Argumentfrom Nature, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supra
note 2, at 177.
39. Id. at 182.
40. Id. at 181-82.
41. David Sztybel, Animals as Persons,in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supra note 2, at 241.
42. See, for example, Tom Regan's work, which Sztybel discusses: TOM REGAN, EMPTY CAGES:
FACING THE CHALLENGE OF ANIMAL RIGHTS (2004).
43. Carol Adams and Josephine Donovan have been instrumental in introducing this critique within
the literature. Their ecofeminist work has emphasized an ethic of care as an avenue to theorizing about
animals instead of the classic deontological and utilitiarian theories associated with masculinist modes
of conceptualizing ethics and animals. Adams and Donovan prefer this route for several reasons. One
criticism of the more classic approaches is that their reliance on rational arguments to make the case for
animals is troubling. Rational arguments, by definition, use reason as their persuasive tool. Recall that
the capacity for reason has been exceedingly privileged in Western thought as a marker of personhood
and ethical status. Adams and Donovan find it defeating for animal theorists advancing a posthumanist
critique to rely on the very capacity that has served as a critical factor to exclude animals from moral
consideration. Arguments that would afford animals ethical consideration based on their sentience and
the capacity to suffer are also problematic. While not privileging the capacity to reason, requiring that
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

Further, it is not clear that Sztybel's position avoids being categorized as a

mere extensionist argument, i.e., one that operates by extending principles and
rules to animals through logic and reason, as discussed in the joint work of two
other co-contributors to the volume. In their essay, Animals in Moral Space,
Michael Allen Fox and Lesley McLean, while acknowledging the need for
extensionist arguments, argue for more perceptive awareness in human
interaction with animals, one marked by empathy and compassion.4 5 They
provide two moving narratives to illustrate the importance of this type of
connection and the type of "moral space" we should cultivate. While this
insight is not new, the examples used are productive in impressing its
importance. Fox and McLean's treatment of "space" is less clear and seems to
move separately from the thesis about perception; while they are seeking to
locate their work in critical geography studies, perhaps more needs to be said
than the assertion that "[a]ll space in which human beings live and act ...is
moral space. ' 46 Still, along with Sztybel, it is a welcome addition to the
literature rethinking personhood.
Continuing the compilation's push against the boundaries of posthumanist
ethics, Johanna Tito gives an interesting analysis of the possibility of animal
immortality in On Animal Immortality: An Argument for the Possibility of
Animal Immortality in Light of the History of Philosophy.47 Primarily
discussing the phenomenological insights of Plato, Husserl, and Bataille for this
question, Tito's strands of discussion also coalesce around sentience, both

animals posses a certain trait, sentience or otherwise, is an argument from sameness giving rise to the
inherent exclusion sameness arguments entail. Animals are included to the extent they are shown to be
the same as humans, i.e., have the capacity to reason, suffer, use tools, and so on. Instead, ecofeminists
such as Adams and Donovan seek to topple reason from its privileged cultural status and elevate
affect/feeling/emotion in its place as a site to mine for ethical instruction and guidance. This aspect of
ecofeminist critique thus reflects the tenets of intersectionality, which aim to respect difference in and of
itself and attend to that difference in ethical deliberation, rather than argue that certain beings (animals)
should be morally respected to the extent they are similar to normalized moral persons (humans). Their
critique of reason-based arguments is closely related to the concerns they have regarding rights-based
rather than relational models in general. See Josephine Donovan & Carol J. Adams, Introductionto THE
FEMINIST CARE TRADITION IN ANIMAL ETHICS: A READER 1, 4-6 (Josephine Donovan & Carol Adams
eds., 2007); Introduction to BEYOND ANIMAL RIGHTS: A FEMINIST CARING ETHIC FOR THE TREATMENT
OF ANIMALS 14-16 (Josephine Donovan & Carol J. Adams eds., 2000). For further examples of ethic-of-
care analysis linking feminism with animal issues, see generally ANIMALS AND WOMEN: FEMINIST
THEORETICAL EXPLORATIONS (Carol J. Adams & Josephine Donovan eds., 1995).
44. Sztybel, supra note 41, at 248-49. This is problematic because moral consideration continues to
depend on possessing a particular trait. While sentience may be more inclusive than reason, it still
excludes the non-sentient. A new line is drawn. This is not to diminish the importance of sentience and
of attending to pain and suffering, as sentience-based theories advocate, to eliminate these
physical/mental states and improve well-being. But a theory that privileges sentience follows the logic
that a being must share a particular trait, however important, to matter to the rest of us. Moreover,
theories of sameness always risk being already anthropocentric despite our best intentions, since human
beings are always the ones who define what sentience is and who has it.
45. Michael Allen Fox & Lesley McLean, Animals in Moral Space, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supra
note 2, at 145, 159.
46. Id. at 169.
47. Johanna Tito, On Animal Immortality: An Argument for the PossibilityofAnimal Immortality in
Light ofthe History of Philosophy, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supranote 2, at 285.
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife

animal and human, and around the need for humans to empathize, love, and
"get a feel" for a singular animal's experience and suffering.48 Tito's account of
immortality lies not in an abstract idea of the soul, but in the ongoing ability to
love a particular animal in our life. As love for animals and humans in our lives
persists, so do they, even after they have died.49 Both Sztybel and Tito take
long-standing questions and ideas-whether animals are persons, the
importance of a soul for moral recognition-and chart new directions.
Also theoretically edifying is Paola Cavalieri's A Missed Opportunity:
Humanism, Anti-humanism and the Animal Question, which enriches the body
of posthumanist animal ethics by asking why there is "such a persistent lack of
interest in the animal question from French philosophical circles" given their
penchant for deconstruction of metaphysical humanism and analyses of
power. 50 She considers the work of Foucault, Levinas, and Derrida to illustrate
her argument and takes care to make her critique intelligible even to new
readers of these comparatively abstract theorists. Cavalieri's discussion of
Derrida is particularly illuminating in its challenge to his image as a theoretical
friend to animal advocates and posthumanist scholars. 51 Cavalieri reveals
Derrida's privileging of "cognitive endowment" as a marker of moral status
and dismantles his argument resisting the demands of the Great Ape Project, an
initiative to extend rights to all great apes (not just humans), which Cavalieri,
52
along with Peter Singer, has championed.
Derrida's concerns overlap with the problem of line-drawing discussed
earlier in relation to Sztybel's contribution. The Great Ape Project proposes
extending moral consideration to certain animals--Great Apes-based on their
likeness to non-"marginal humans," i.e., those with full cognitive capacity. 53 As
Cavalieri tells us, Derrida is disturbed by the proposal's focus on a certain
threshold of cognitive capacity not for its exclusion of other animals, but for its
exclusion of marginal humans, i.e., those who fall below the threshold

48. Id. at 288-90.

49. Id. at 296.
50. Paola Cavalieri, A Missed Opportunity:Humanism, Anti-humanism and the Animal Question, in
ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supra note 2, at 97, 97.
51. Id. at 106-11.
52. Id. at 109. See PAOLA CAVALIERI, THE ANIMAL QUESTION: WHY NONHUMAN ANIMALS
DESERVE HUMAN RIGHTS (2002). In June 2008, the Spanish government became the first nation to
support the project. See Great Ape Project News & Information, http://www.greatapeproject.org/
news.php (last visited Jan. 5, 2009).
53. Cavalieri, supranote 50, at 109-10. 1 use the term "marginal humans" rather than "marginalized
humans" to signal the importance of the "argument from marginal cases" that structures Cavalieri's
points about Derrida here. The argument from marginal cases is a prominent argument in animal ethics
that is used to disarm the speciesist position that insists that humans are special and rightly superior
because they can reason. Even if one were to accept reason as the singular ethical criterion, the argument
from marginal cases points out that there are human beings who, because of age (infants) or
biological/psychosocial make-up (individuals with mental disabilities), do not share this capacity. These
are the "marginal cases," and these humans are the ones who present an obstacle against instantiating
reason or any other supposed universal human criterion as the evidence of human distinctiveness and
superiority to nonhumans. See CAVALIERI, supra note 52, at 76-77.
516 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

(typically infants and people with mental disabilities). 4 Cavalieri, one of the
Great Ape Project's main proponents, does not defend this exclusion, but in her
reply to Derrida, places it in context as an understandable step toward gaining
some moral recognition for some animals. 55 The line-drawing conundrum
presented by the Great Ape Project in terms of its anti-egalitarian ramifications
for marginal humans and non-Great Ape animals alike gives rise to just one of
many interesting theoretical exchanges in which Cavalieri engages with
Foucault, Levinas, and Derrida. Cavalieri's excellent discussion of all three
theorists is accessible and thus compelling, a feat which other essays in the
collection navigating philosophical texts do not accomplish as easily.

C. Whither CulturalStudies?

The major shortcoming of Animal Subjects is the inconsistency with which

the essays engage its claimed departure point: cultural studies. Some pieces
thus suffer from the reverse of what Cary Wolfe, in both his contribution to the
volume and other scholarship, has repeatedly called for: the infusion of cultural
studies with posthumanist insight. 56 Many essays are written in a manner
apparently divorced from this theoretical framework. While both collections
note the difficulty in defining the field,57 they also denote that cultural studies'
typical foci are concepts of and relationships between difference, identity,
power, and knowledge, as well as the processes and impact of cultural
representation and enculturation in and through everyday popular cultural
forms for marginalized humans. 58 The absence of these themes (other than to
question hegemonic thinking about animals) in most of the essays in Animal
Subjects is a point that Castricano acknowledges at the outset:
Not all of these essays fall easily under the rubric of cultural studies as
the field has come to be known; but all of these essays serve as
touchstones in a widening field of study that seeks to acknowledge
diversity by demonstrating that thinking of "animals" or "animal 59
ethics" is not by any stretch a stable or even consistent endeavour.
This is an accurate statement and this reason alone makes the volume
recommended reading for scholars. Yet, after an introduction that firmly
situates the posthumanist questions within cultural studies, the reader is left

54. CAVALIERI, supra note 52, at 76-77.

55. Cavalieri, supra note 50, at 109.
56. Castricano, supra note 4, at 7 (discussing Cary Wolfe's most recent intervention to advance the
"recognition of this connection"); see Cary Wolfe, Thinking Other-Wise: Cognitive Science,
Deconstructionand the (Non)Speaking (Non)fHuman Animal Subject, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supra note
2, at 125.
57. Castricano, supra note 4, at 3-4; Maureen McNeil, Roots and Routes: The Making of Feminist
CulturalStudies of Technoscience, in BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3, at 16, 16-17.
58. Castricano, supra note 4, at 4; McNeil, supra note 57, at 16-17. I am indebted to my colleague
Anurima Baneji for a conversation on this topic.
59. Castricano, supra note 4, at 8.
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife

dissatisfied by the more traditional philosophical or empirical nature of some of

the essays in which references to culture, discourse, and concepts of difference
are absent, thus making the arguments more mundane and rote for the reader
situated within cultural studies and its interdisciplinary origins.

. III. POSTHUMANIST TRAJECTORY 2: HUMAN TECHNOBODIES

This theoretical inconsistency is a feature Bits of Life avoids. The volume

is steeped in cultural studies and feminist frameworks and, similar to Animal
Subjects, leaves the impression of charting novel directions. Yet, whereas
Animal Subjects takes the quotidian cultural use of animal bodies as its
landscape for investigation and critique, Bits of Life exposes us to seemingly
obscure technophilic practices and reveals their increasing impact on our
(gendered) lives. For example, the third part of the volume, entitled
"Remediated Bodies," introduces the reader to computer software meant to
archive memories like the human brain, the machinations of a hypertext
fiction application, 61 and the prominence of tunnel imagery in Hollywood films
and medical documentaries to portray virtual space. 62 In these three essays, the
authors successfully demonstrate the cultural ramifications of projects that one
might otherwise perceive as unimportant technological developments.

A. Technology and Gender in Everyday Life

In MyLifeBits: The Computer as Memory Machine, Jos6 Van Dijck

explores the ways in which "[d]igitization is surreptitiously shaping our acts of
cultural memory-the way we record, save, and retrieve our remembrances of
life past."6 3 She offers an interesting discussion of MyLifeBits, a new software
program that enables its users to record almost every single moment of their
lives and later search and sort through them to create an endless variety of
montages and narratives. Van Dijck wonders whether this "Googlization" of
memory, in its quest to rectify the limited potential of our ability to remember,
misses the mark of memory's meaning, noting that "mediated memories
usually serve not as exact recordings but as evocative frames. People want a
representation that triggers particular emotions or sensations, not one that
reinvokes the experience as a whole." 64 She also raises the issue of how

60. Jose van Dijck, MyLifeBits: The Computer as Memory Machine, in BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3,
at 113.
61. Jenny Sunden, What if (Frankenstein's)Monster Was A Girl?: Reproductive and Subjectivity in
the DigitalAge,in BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3, at 147.
62. Anneke Smelik, Inner, Outer and Virtual Space in Science Fiction Films and Medical
Documentaries, in BITS OF LIFE, supranote 3, at 129.
63. Van Dijck, supra note 60, at 113.
64. Id. at 124-25.
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

digitization might alter, if at all, the gendered roles of traditional photo taking
and storage, which delegate to men the handling of sophisticated equipment,
like cameras, while women take charge of the organization and display of the
printed images in shoeboxes and albums. 65 Within this cultural studies analysis
of everyday life, photography, as so many cultural practices, emerges as an
activity divided by gender according to perceptions of who is more suited to
handle machines and technology and who is more suited to create and maintain
families, nurturing home environments, and relationships. Van Dijck presents
what I would hazard most readers of the text hope to find-an analysis replete
with interesting observations that link new technology to cultural studies'
preoccupation with embodiment, self-making, and gender.

B. Genes, Gender, and CulturalRepresentation

The Bits ofLife reader is also rewarded with engaging examples of feminist
film studies critique. Mette Bryld and Nina Lykke revisit the formative work of
Swedish filmmaker Lennart Nilsson in constructing a narrative for the process
of human fertilization in From Rambo Sperm to Egg Queens: Two Versions of
Lennart Nilsson 's Film on Human Reproduction.66 They discuss how the film
projected gendered roles and traits onto the sperm, egg, and female body to
naturalize the image in our cultural imaginaries of sperm competing valiantly to
fertilize the egg, who demurely and passively waits for the winning swimmer to
find her.67 The authors contrast the revised contemporary versions of his work
in Sweden and the United States, noting how the U.S. PBS version has
responded to feminist criticism of the fallacy of the "Rambo sperm" narrative
by replacing it with the more accurate, if nonetheless similarly culturally
mediated and genetically deterministic, "Egg Queen" story.68 The PBS version
now, through "grammar and plot structure," reverses its gaze and tells the story
from the female perspective, centering the female body as the action hero(ine)
to which the hopeful sperm must be sensitive in order to be successful. 69 While
it is now "the matriarchally described egg that sets the agenda" in the
docimentary, the narrative remains problematic because it is invested in
essentializing both male and female bodies and in ascribing DNA an
70
omnipotent power to construct our bodily experiences.
Similarly, in the smartly named Screening the Gene: Hollywood Cinema
and the Genetic Imaginary, Jackie Stacey analyzes the contributions the films

65. Id. at 122.

66. Mette Bryld and Nina Lykke, From Rambo Sperm to Egg Queens: Two Versions of Lennart
Nilsson 's Film on Human Reproduction, in BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3, at 79.
67. Id. at 80-81.
68. Id. at 88-89.
69. Id.
70. Id. at 89.
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife

Gattaca71 and Species72 make to our cultural anxieties regarding the

transfiguration of human beings into "artificial bodies that disturb the
conventional teleologies of gender, heterosexuality, and reproduction" through
genetic engineering and other technologization. 73 She refers to these anxieties
as the "genetic imaginary," a type of "fantasy landscape" where "posthuman
life forms are invented ... who threaten to exceed the controlling gaze of
scientific technologies and thus continuously trouble their authority" in the
name of respecting and restoring human individuality and authenticity. 74 Part of
Stacey's distillation of how both films create this "fantasy landscape" and its
attendant narratives is to examine their efforts in making visible that which
cannot be seen: the gene. 75 To do that, she provides a brief history of
representations of the gene in the past century and highlights the current
prominence of decoding as the tool attributed with the potential to render
genetic bodies legible.76 Stacey then links this preoccupation with coding and
decoding genes and technobodies with both films' implicit acknowledgement
of gender as a cultural code, especially as seen in gendered performances of
masculine and feminine dress and appearance that are amenable to copying,
imitation, and manipulation.77 Stacey's discussion of genes, gender, and
representation plunges the reader into the enjoyable depths of feminist film
analysis and cultural studies.

C. Feminist CulturalStudies of Technoscience

The analysis in Bits of Life is neatly set up with two opening essays
introducing the field of feminist cultural studies of technoscience by Nina
Lykke and Maureen McNeil. Lykke's Feminist Cultural Studies of
Technoscience: Portraitof an Implosion lays out
some interdisciplinary key dynamics of the field, to make things easier
for readers of Bits of Life who are not familiar with the ways in which
feminism, cultural studies, and technoscience studies-that is, the
central components of feminist cultural studies78of technoscience-
have clashed as well as merged in recent decades.
Lykke provides succinct descriptions of these areas and their insights,
differences, and overlaps, which span such concepts as embodiment, identity
production, attention to popular culture, culturally situated scientific narratives,

71. GATrACA (Columbia Pictures 1997).

72. SPECIES (MGM 1995).
73. Jackie Stacey, Screening the Gene: Hollywood Cinema and the Genetic Imaginary, in BITS OF
LIFE, supra note 3, at 94, 96.
74. Id.
75. Id.
76. Id. at 99.
77. Id. at 102.
78. Lykke, supra note 4, at 3.
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

and technology as cultural practice. These descriptions quickly and ably equip
the new reader to navigate the more issue-specific discussions to come. For the
sophisticated reader, they also serve as a useful roadmap documenting the
emergence of the field. In the end, we gain the helpful understanding of
feminist cultural studies of technoscience as "bring[ing] together the founding
acts of deconstruction of all the other overlapping areas. Thus it connects the
displacement of positivist notions of technoscience, the discarding of beliefs 79
in
technological determinism, and the explosion of elitist notions of culture.,
Building on Lykke's essay, McNeil's piece concentrates on one of the
areas Lykke maps by charting "the trails that have constituted the 'cultural turn'
in science and technology studies" to consider "its contours, its orientations,
and its political significance, particularly for feminism." 80 McNeil immediately
emphasizes the uncertainty surrounding the definition of cultural studies of
technoscience, and directs the reader to the multiple ways in which the field has
been defined.8 1 She nonetheless outlines five different disciplines which have
combined to create the transdisciplinary field: cultural anthropology, literary
studies of science, studies of visual culture, British cultural studies, and
feminist science fiction studies. 82 There is some redundancy with Lykke's
essay, but overall both authors deftly distill the theoretical heritage and
confluences that have generated the area of feminist cultural studies of
technoscience.
In contrast to Animal Subjects, which loses its focus on cultural studies,
Bits of Life adheres to the departure point of feminist cultural studies of
technoscience traced in its opening chapters. After reading the collection, one is
left with a sense of immersion in this subfield of feminist studies, cultural
studies, and science studies. None of the essays detracts from this impression.
However, the liberal use, in several essays, of unfamiliar or undefined terms
that leave one with a sense that the author is in conversation with a certain
(narrow) circle of academic interlocutors does slightly impair the enjoyment
and edification the reader receives from this type of immersion. Sometimes, it
is a matter of jargon. At other times, it is a matter of the subject area; quantum
physics, for example, needs more explanation for readers new to the field than
perhaps a single chapter can provide, no matter how capable the author. 83 And
sometimes it is both:
By my agential realist account, concepts like "life state" or "alive-
ness" are not merely ideational; rather, they are specific material
configurations. And the semantic and ontological indeterminacy is

79. Id. at 12.

80. McNeil, supra note 57, at 16-17.
81. Id.
82. Id. at 18.
83. See Barad, supra note 25, at 165. See the discussion of Newtonian and quantum physics, id. at
167-69.
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife

resolvable only through the existence of a specific material

arrangement that gives meaning to particular concepts to the exclusion
of others, thereby effecting a cut between84 "object" and "subject,"
neither of which pre-exists their intra-action.
This linguistic tendency does not mar all of the theoretically rich pieces.
Lykke's opening genealogical piece is an example of an essay that maps
complex theoretical terrain with clear terms and signposts. Yet, the preference
for this type of writing does create a sense of theoretical density rather than
fluidity at more than one point, which may prevent many readers from
accessing the importance of the insights provided.

IV. LIMITED CRITIQUES: DIFFERENCE, POWER, AND INTERSECTIONALITY

Conceptually speaking, a criticism that pertains to both collections is the

absence of sustained intersectional analysis, which derives from each
collection's focus on the recuperation of one type of marginalized
subjectivity-nonhuman animals, in Animal Subjects, and "women," a category
not problematized by race, class, or other identities, in Bits of Life. Animal
Subjects renders a marvelous service in challenging cultural studies to make
good "on its commitment to destabilizing essentialist notions of the subject that
continue to rely on the hegemonic marginalization of the non-human."8 5 It
rightly identifies "the nonhuman animal as the figure that sustains the margins
of cultural studies to date."8 6 Yet, the subjectivising of this figure that each of
the essays works to accomplish proceeds through discourses largely devoid of a
gendered, racialized or otherwise difference-marked analysis. Barbara K.
Seeber's discussion of Mary Wollstonecraft's writings in "I sympathize in their
pains andpleasures ": Women and Animals in Mary Wollstonecraft is a notable
exception to this problem. 87 Sorenson also takes care to reference the imperial
history of zoos and the continuities between present-day animal display and
more historical spectacles of racialized bodies in his analysis of Marineland's
monstrosities. 88 I do not raise this criticism to put the focus back on humans,
however marginal they may be due to such factors as their gendered, racialized,
or classed positions. Rather, it is a request to receive more analyses that locate
the human/animal boundary within other foundational Cartesian binaries so as
to foster understanding of how ideas of animality and humanity are shaped by
89
the classic foci of cultural studies such as gender, race, or ethnicity.

84. Id. at 170.

85. Castricano, supra note 4, at 2-3.
86. Id.
87. Barbara K. Seeber, "Isympathize in their pains and pleasures": Women and Animals in Mary
Wollstonecraft, in ANIMAL SUBJECTS, supra note 2, at 223.
88. Sorenson, supra note 33, at 197.
89. Glen Elder, Jennifer Wolch & Jody Emel, Le Pratique Sauvage: Race, Place, and the
Human-Animal Divide. in ANIMAL GEOGRAPHIES: PLACE. POLITICS. AND IDENTITY IN THE NATURE-
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

In the same vein, Bits of Life foregrounds feminist analysis, but it features a
version which gives primacy (probably inadvertently) to gender differentiation;
other grounds of difference important to mainstream feminism, after its
contemporary reworking through critiques of intersectionality, are only briefly
mentioned. Heteronormativity, racism, and ethnocentrism are infrequently-
mentioned concepts when Bits of Life is compared to other contemporary
feminist collections despite "the political commitment to cultures and
subjectivities of 'inappropriate/d others' and marginalized groups" that inform
both feminist studies and cultural studies. 90 Moreover, for a collection
concentrating on posthuman analysis, particularly one with Haraway's
interventions in the foreground, it stays firmly wed to technocultural
mediations of humans; rarely are animals mentioned in the context of
"inappropriate/d others" or otherwise. Parenthood and Kinship in IVF for
Humans and Animals by Amade M'Charek and Grietje Keller is an important
exception. 9 1 To be fair, Bits of Life sets for itself the ambitious project of
dissecting the intersections of multiple disciplines, and by and large it achieves
its goal. Yet, for the reader who takes the editors at face value when they state
that the collection "is grounded in questions about today's biocultures, which
pertain neither to humanist bodily integrity nor to the anthropological
assumption that human bodies are the only ones that matter,"
92
as highlighted on
the collection's back cover, disappointment may ensue.
Interestingly, the closing piece in Bits of Life escapes this disconnect. In
"The Politics of Life as Bios/Zoe," Rosi Braidotti develops what she calls
"sustainable nomad ethics." These ethics focus not only on the concept of
sustainability as endurance over time, but also on cultivating affectivity, or the
capacity for feeling and emotion, particularly joy and desire, as a being endures
so that the "subject's potentia-the capacity to express her or his freedom"--is
promoted. 93 For Braidotti, then, promoting potentia is what it would mean to be
ethical, and it is an "approach [that] cannot be dissociated from considerations
of power." 94 Braidotti is clear that such considerations include dismantling the
biased bios/zoe binary where "[tjhe relationship to animal life," which
"constitutes one of those qualitative distinctions upon which Western reason
erected its empire," is questioned.9 5 She notes more fully:

CULTURE BORDERLANDs 72, 72-73, 80-85 (Jennifer Wolch & Jody Emel eds., 1998), is an example
of scholarship that approaches questions of race and the human-animal divide through a cultural studies
lens.
90. Lykke, supra note 4, at 8.
91. Amade M'Charek & Grietje Keller, Parenthoodand Kinship in IVFfor Humans and Animals:
On Traveling Bits of Life in the Age of Genetics, in BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3, at 61.
92. BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3 (text quoted from back cover).
93. Rosi Braidotti, The Politics of Life as Bios/Zoe, in BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3, at 177, 184-86.
94. Id. at 183.
95. Id. at 177.
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits of Life

Life is half animal, or zoe (zoology, zoophilic, zoo), and half

discursive, or bios (biology). Zoe, of course, is the poor half of a
couple that foregrounds bios, defined as intelligent life. Centuries of
Christian indoctrination have left a deep mark here. The relationship to
animal life, to zoe rather than bios, constitutes one of those qualitative
distinctions upon which Western reason erected its empire .... One of
the most persistent and helpful fictions told about human life is that of
its alleged self-evidence, its implicit worth. Zoe is always second best,
and persistence of life independently of rational control, even
regardless of it and at times96 in spite of it, is a dubious privilege
attributed to nonhumans ....
Braidotti is keen to reverse this stigma, revitalize zoe, and "introduce an
ecophilosophy of belonging that includes both species equality and
97
posthumanist ethics."
In a sense, reading Animal Subjects and Bits ofLife as supplements of each
other answers most of the concerns raised here. However, even when read
separately, both collections are worth the attention of scholars in Canada,
Europe, the United States, and beyond. Indeed, an element to appreciate in both
texts is their comparative dimension. Posthumanist theory is comparatively rare
and Western contributions to this area emanating from outside the United
States are rarer still. While engagements with influential U.S. theorists are
evident in and important to both collections, the Canadian and European foci
for many of the essays internationalizes and thus enriches an emerging area.
Castricano was deliberate in this endeavour, intending the collection "to serve
as a challenge to cultural studies scholars-particularly in Canada-where
there is less reference to nonhuman animals in the curriculum than there is in
the news." 98 For their part, Smelik and Lykke note that their collection arises
from a more European context, and thus "choose[s] different cultural
metaphors" and stronger commitments to "the materialism of continental
philosophy" than those found in North America. 99 They note the added texture
that "engag(ing) with U.S. Scholarship and U.S. popular culture as partial
100
outsiders" can bring in illuminating feminist concerns with technoscience.

V. THE POSTHUMANIST LEAP

Overall, Animals Subjects and Bits of Life offer eye-opening accounts of

cultural critique to readers new to the fields of critical animal studies and
critiques of technoscience. Readers familiar with one or both literatures will
still find essays here that ask new questions, refine their theoretical knowledge

96. Id.
97. Id. at 183.
98. Castricano, supra note 4, at 7.
99. Anneke Smelik & Nina Lykke, Introduction to BITS OF LIFE, supra note 3, at ix, xiv.
100. Id. at xv.
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

base, and provide compelling, illustrative case studies in the process. Reading
them together, one senses an unprecedented momentum in the development of
posthuman analysis within cultural studies. The texts accomplish what Rosi
Braidotti advocates in her ethic of the sustainable nomadic ethic to subvert the
bios/zoe binary. "Instead of falling back on sedimented habits of thought,
[these texts] have proposed a leap forward into the complexities and paradoxes
of our time." 10 1 It remains to be seen whether cultural studies and other areas of
theoretical inquiry will take this posthumanist leap and leave the unexamined
fictions of what it means to be human far, far behind.
Feminism informed by intersectionality can and should be at the front of
the theoretical pack preparing to take this leap. As Carol Adams, Josephine
Donovan, and other ecofeminists have shown, continuities between the
exploitation of women and exploitation of animals abound. 10 2 As a theoretical
vantage point explicitly committed to deconstructing difference and attending
to marginalized subjectivities, feminism needs to center "the human" as a social
construction that must be investigated rather than place the human subject at
the center of its investigations. Creating this type of feminist posthumanist
studies will take time and an epochal shift in our sensibilities about humanness.
Confronting the paradoxes in how we treat beings we perceive as either not
fully human or non-human requires an openness most of us are not ready to
extend.
The question of whether open minds or open hearts are the answer to this
paradox engages the debate in animal ethics, prompted by ecofeminists,
regarding the animus for this type of monumental change. Does it come from
convincing people through rational arguments or from moving people through
their emotions and relationships with non-humans? 10 3 It is difficult to resolve
this debate. We see examples of both routes in the collection, often in the same
contribution. 104 My own sense is that both open hearts and minds are needed,
coupled with the widespread recognition that faculties for reason and emotion
are integrated rather than dichotomous concepts exhibited by both human and
nonhuman animals.' 05 Laws, too, should change. Here again, various proposals
have been proffered in animal law literature. Scholars have grappled with how
to rework or dismantle the current property paradigm for animals. Some insist

101. Braidotti, supranote 93, at 191.

102. See Deckha, supra note 12; see, e.g., CAROL J. ADAMS, THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF MEAT: A
FEMINIST-VEGETARIAN CRITICAL THEORY (1990); BEYOND ANIMAL RIGHTS: A FEMINIST CARING
ETHIC FOR THE TREATMENT OF ANIMALS, supra note 43; THE FEMINIST CARE TRADITION IN ANIMAL
ETHICS: A READER, supra note 43.
103. See supra note 43 and accompanying text.
104. Articles in ANIMAL SUBJECTS that rely mainly on logical argumentation include, for example,
Cavalieri, supra note 50; Rod Preece, Selfish Genes, Sociobiology and Animal Respect, in ANIMAL
SUBJECTS, supra note 2, at 39; and Sztybel, supra note 41. Those whose argumentation underscores a
more affective response include Fox & McLean, supranote 45; and Bisgould, supra note 28.
105. Jenny Nedelsky, Embodied Diversityand the Challengesto Law, 42 MCGILL L.J. 91 (1997).
2009] Book Review: Animal Subjects and Bits of Life

that a property status is incompatible with a legal respect for animals. 0 6 Other
scholars, doubtful that the current reverence for property will abate anytime
soon, argue that the property category can be rehabilitated to be more respectful
and protective of animals.'0 7 More recently, the capabilities approach, widely
discussed in human development circles as a barometer of well-being and guide 08
for legal and policy change in the global South, has been applied to animals.'
While such a widespread reordering of rights, entitlements, and capabilities
is certainly rare, there has been some recent movement in the international
arena for reforming the status of posthuman entities. Spain, for example,
recently became the first country to endorse the Great Ape Project. 10 9 This
follows and expands New Zealand's move in 1999 to stop experimentation on
nonhuman Great Apes for human (Great Ape) benefit. 110 Ecuador, at the time
of this writing, has voted in favor of a new constitution that would accord rights
to forests, rivers, air, and islands."' Both these proposals elevate posthuman
entities from being the objects of property rights to the subjects who possess
rights. Given the current anthropocentric legal landscape and the attendant
propertied legal paradigm for nonhumans that facilitates their instrumental use,
112
these are remarkable initiatives.
This is not to say that they are not beset by their own set of tensions and
paradoxes. Adding to the debate Cavalieri outlines in her essay, 113 it is arguable
that the Great Ape Project is not much removed from an anthropocentric order
since the rationale given for extending human rights to them is their similarity
to humans. Moreover, it may be that a discourse analysis of the debates in
Ecuador over the need for constitutional protection of the environment would
reveal a heavy undercurrent of the romanticized view of Nature, strictly cut-off
from an equally essentialist concept of Culture. This is the precise binary that

106. CAVALIERI, supra note 52; REGAN, supra note 42; STEVEN M. WISE, RATTLING THE CAGE:
TOWARD LEGAL RIGHTS FOR ANIMALS (2000); Gary Francione, Taking Sentience Seriously I J.
ANIMAL. L. & ETHICS 1 (2006).
107. David Favre, Integrating Animal Interests into our Legal System, 10 ANIMAL L. 87 (2004);
David Favre, Equitable Self-Ownershipfor Animals, 50 DUKE L.J. 473 (2000).
108. MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM, FRONTIERS OF JUSTICE: DISABILITY, NATIONALITY, SPECIES
MEMBERSHIP, 392-407 (2006).
109. See Great Ape Project News & Information, supra note 52.
110. For a description and critique of the limits of this law, see Peter Sankoff, Five Years of the
"New" Animal Welfare Regime: Lessons Learned from New Zealand's Decision to Modernize its
Animal Welfare Legislation, I I ANIMAL L. 7 (2005).
111. Clare Kendall, A New Law of Nature, GUARDIAN.CO.UK, Sept. 24, 2008,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/24/equador.conservation; Heather Tomko, Ecuador's
Constitutional Amendment Will Benefit Environment, TARTAN, Oct. 13, 2008, http://www.thetartan.
org/2008/l0/13/forum/ecuador; Alex Witze, The Great Beyond, Sept. 29, 2008, http://blogs.nature.com/
news/thegreatbeyond/2008/09/ecuador._grants-rights to-natur.html (posted on behalf of Amber Dance).
112. I would still categorize the Great Ape Project as non-anthropocentric if: 1) we understand that
term to mean giving attention and respect to nonhuman beings; and/or 2) we accept that in the context of
the abysmal treatment of nonhumans (such as animals) that any legal reform measure that extends
positive legal recognition (rights or otherwise) to them is a welcome development irrespective of the
measure's strategic reliance on the logic of sameness to humans. See Cavalieri, supra note 50.
113. Id.
 Yale Journal of Law and Feminism [Vol. 20:505

both collections have identified as harmful to our understandings of both

animals and humans. But at least the objections to these legal initiatives are
non-anthropocentric and do not stem from human anxiety and fear over
uncharted disturbances to a romanticized and naturalized order that leaves us
securely at the top. It is precisely Great Apes and other primates, as well as
technoscientific interventions mixing humans with animals and machines, that
cause us to confront the precariousness of the "human" category and our
imagined human identities. 114
While the complexity of these and other questions about what a
posthumanist legal order would look like and the magnitude of a posthumanist
leap seems overwhelming, the two collections provide enough critical analysis
to convince us of the posthumanist character of everyday life and the fragility
of the "human" as an intact identity. They further motivate us to at least
consider partaking in a more posthumanist and compassionate path in our own
lives, ever skeptical of the metanarratives that invite categorical separations
between species, bodies, and technoculture. So moved, we can then begin to
contemplate the precise type of legislative reform that will reflect a
posthumanist vision of justice in the many facets of life-food, fashion,
families, entertainment, leisure, research, medical treatment-where we
encounter the posthuman. This will be difficult yet important work. To return to
Haraway's articulation of species meeting and becoming-with one another:
A great deal is at stake in such meetings, and outcomes are not
guaranteed. There is no teleological warrant here, no assured happy or
unhappy ending, socially, ecologically, or scientifically. There is only
the chance for getting on together with some grace. The great Divides
of animal/human, nature/culture, organic/technical, and wild/domestic
flatten into mundane differences-the kinds that have consequences
and demand 115
respect and response-rather than rising to sublime and
final ends.

114. Marie Fox, Re-thinking Kinship: Law's Construction of the Animal Body, in 57 CuRRENT
LEGAL PROBLEMS 469 (Jane Holder, Coin O'Cinneide & Michael Freeman eds., 2004).
115. HARAWAY, supra note 20, at 15.