Dogs, Whiteness, and the Politics of African Humanity

Abstract

Through readings of fiction by Es’kia Mphalele, Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, and J. M. Coetzee, this essay explores the social and historical embeddedness of dogs in colonial and apartheid cultures. Whiteness, I argue, is constituted not only by its human exclusions but also by its animal intimacies. Relations with dogs can extend ethics beyond the human, as scholars have claimed, but they can also delimit the circle of human belonging, excluding Africans from the full entitlements of personhood. This has consequences not only for people but also for the animals implicated in the performance of whiteness and the politics of Black resistance.