'The lives of non-human animals, their ways of being and seeing, their experiences and knowledge, and their relationships with each other, continue to be ignored, discounted, written over and destroyed by anthropocentric practices and endeavours. Within the vestiges of colonialism, this silence and occlusion co-opts and consumes animals, physically and culturally, into the servitude of human interests, and selective narratives of history and progress.
'Decolonising Animals brings together critical interrogations, case studies and creative explorations that identify and examine how non-human animals are affected by and respond to colonial structures and processes. This collection includes the perspectives of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars, artists and activists, detailing the ways in which they question colonial ways of knowing, engaging with and representing animals. Importantly, the book offers suggestions for how we might decolonise our relationships with non-human animals – and with each other.'
Source: Publisher's blurb.
'Over eight chapters, Decolonising Animals launches an ambitious project across a series of essays from diverse disciplines, continents and cultures. Spanning animal agency, colonial and Indigenous worldviews, decolonisation and the preservation of the natural world, the authors explore what it might mean to decolonise animals, as well as contend with cognate questions beyond colonialism. Decolonising Animals is a useful collection for any reader interested in Indigenous scholarship, environmentalism, decolonial practice, animal studies, literature and archaeology. Nevertheless, it is, as the editor acknowledges, a ‘beginning’ that ‘defers questions of radical change’ (16). What it does offer, however, is vital context for particular histories, experiences and ongoing conflicts around animals that are often narrated aculturally but are in fact embedded in distinct colonial frameworks. There are two key ways that Decolonising Animals highlights the cultural and historical circumscription of animal studies: by continually drawing on a shared human place in the animal kingdom, within which non-human animals have their own agency, and foregrounding the colonial lens that overlays histories of and approaches to animals in the twenty-first century.' (Introduction)
'Over eight chapters, Decolonising Animals launches an ambitious project across a series of essays from diverse disciplines, continents and cultures. Spanning animal agency, colonial and Indigenous worldviews, decolonisation and the preservation of the natural world, the authors explore what it might mean to decolonise animals, as well as contend with cognate questions beyond colonialism. Decolonising Animals is a useful collection for any reader interested in Indigenous scholarship, environmentalism, decolonial practice, animal studies, literature and archaeology. Nevertheless, it is, as the editor acknowledges, a ‘beginning’ that ‘defers questions of radical change’ (16). What it does offer, however, is vital context for particular histories, experiences and ongoing conflicts around animals that are often narrated aculturally but are in fact embedded in distinct colonial frameworks. There are two key ways that Decolonising Animals highlights the cultural and historical circumscription of animal studies: by continually drawing on a shared human place in the animal kingdom, within which non-human animals have their own agency, and foregrounding the colonial lens that overlays histories of and approaches to animals in the twenty-first century.' (Introduction)
