Distancing animal death: Geographies of killing and making killable

Abstract

AbstractAt the intersection of death geographies and animal geographies, the topic of animal death offers crucial insights for how we understand death and how we define human/nonhuman boundaries. This review piece brings rich discussions of animal death across anthropology, critical animal studies and the environmental humanities into conversation with work in geography. This article takes a two‐pronged approach; first, in recognition of the intensely spatial nature of death, this article explores where animal death takes place. This section observes how spaces of animal death are physically concealed and how this spatial distancing is aided by verbal concealment and dismemberment of the animal body, as well as how justifications for killing are organised along spatial lines. This helps to make animals killable in these spaces. The second section focuses on who is killed and made killable as well as who kills. The degree of being killable or grievable is highly uneven amongst animals, as it is amongst humans. Moreover, those individuals who routinely inflict animal death are subject to discrimination and vulnerability due to this proximity. Finally, the article concludes with reflections on what the topic of animal death can contribute to the death geographies and animal geographies literatures, and how we can move towards more animal‐centric approaches to animal death.