The permissible and the perverse: Indian geographies of interspecies sex

Abstract

We argue in this paper that what separates permissible from perverse acts of killing, or sex with, an animal is a matter of material and symbolic space. We focus on interspecies sex –which is often, but not always, bound up with killing –to argue that what separates permissible from perverse acts of interspecies sex in India, or husbandry from bestiality, is where it occurs geographically in proximity to an upper-caste, anthropatriarchal imaginary of a Hindu nation. We argue that the state-sanctioned abattoir and its breeding facility are spaces of normalized exception, in which anthropatriarchal violences are relatively permissible, and on the same grounds as in the “human” space of the home. We trace interspecies sexual contact across spheres of bestiality, animal husbandry, petkeeping, and population control. We conclude with a queer bestial ethics of avowal, one that dispenses with anthopatriarchal innocence towards a more capacious embrace of the panspecies desire for touch and thriving.