Understanding Animals, Power, and Intersectionality

Abstract This chapter explains the three central themes of the monograph. First, it discusses “animals.” It considers some problems with terminology and highlights the role of nonhuman species in ancient agro-pastoral societies, where animals were important social players. Second, influenced by Foucault, it theorizes “power”—not as a static thing, held or possessed by individuals—but as dynamically performed and manifested through relationships (including interspecies relationships). Certain patterns of relationship are recursively performed, and the consequent power dynamics gain structural durability. Third, these power dynamics should be viewed in terms of “intersectionality”; that is, power dynamics structured by gender, race, class, and so on should not be considered independently, but insofar as they intersect with each other. The chapter contends that an individual’s species functions as another important dynamic in the intersectional mix. It ends by proposing an analytic framework of five modes in which these interconnections can occur.