A Democracy of Fellow Creatures: Thinking the Animal, Thinking Ethics in Whitehead’s Philosophy of Organism

Abstract

Abstract Poststructuralism and Whiteheadian process thought each uniquely dismantle the anthropocentric hierarchies and speciesed constructions we have used to (mis)calculate our ethics with non-human bodies. Yet each perspective uniquely continues, despite its own affirmations, to privilege the identity and construction of the human over other bodies. In an effort to move past these shortcomings and into a more creative ethical imagination, this article reads Whiteheadian metaphysics as an affirmation of poststructural singularity, and uses poststructural criticism to deconstruct Whitehead’s subtler form of anthropocentrism. By joining these traditions together, this article makes clear their respective blind spots, moves past the limited and troubled framework of species upheld in each, and advances the truly novel, creaturely relations for which both traditions adamantly call.