The Return of the Animal: Presenting and Representing Non-Human Beings Response-ably in the (Post-)Humanities Classroom

Abstract

The return of the animal?1 We acknowledge that it may seem woefully naive to herald the return of non-human creatures under present conditions, when they are worse off than they have been in some 65 million years (see Garrard 2004, p. 155). We also agree with Jacques Derrida that the Western idea of ‘the animal’ itself has contributed greatly to the plight of living animals (Derrida 2002).2 But, as necessary as it is to raise our students’ awareness about the global extinction crisis and about the historically unprecedented scale of industries in which animals suffer and die by the billions,3 with countless negative ramifications for the biosphere, we believe that the ecocritical classroom can be an ideal place to discuss — and work towards — the return of the animal, for two reasons. First, some animals, such as the wolves of Yellowstone, actually are returning, however controversial and unfinished such projects may be. Second, over the past several years a rapidly growing body of work on the ‘ethical question of the animal’ (Wolfe 2003, p. 8) and on representations of animals and animality in human cultures has been redefining ‘the animal’ and, in the process, challenging the anthropocentric foundations on which the humanities are built. Scholars like Cary Wolfe have even begun thinking in terms of the ‘posthumanities’: a set of new interdisciplinary formations that could radically transform the nature of a humanities education.