Published
2024-01-31
Metrics
Metrics Loading ...

Affective politics and animal collectivity

DOI: https://doi.org/10.22490/26655489.7612
Section
Artículos de reflexión
Martina Davidson Universidad Federal do Río de Janeiro (UFRJ)

For some years now, many researchers have dedicated themselves to studying animality and its multiple extensions into ethics, politics, and the rights of species other than humans. There are several justifications for choosing to develop more animal-focused research, but this article highlights the fact that thinking about animality and from it can provide us with alternative philosophical paths to anthropocentric and colonial thinking, making visible or constructing other worlds, multispecies worlds. To begin reflecting on these worlds, the notion of multispecies worlds is initially developed. Then, the concept of animal affective politics (and animal collectivity) is presented, exemplified through spiders and wolves. Building on these reflections and theoretical contributions, this article argues that animal affective politics and animal collective experiences (and affection in all its scope) are understood as one of the multiple possible tools to (re)produce multispecies worlds. Through this exploration, the possibility is opened to investigate affections and their politics in animality as a powerful alternative to further expand our negotiation capacity in the uncertain terrain of multispecies worlds. Investigating the affective investment that runs through the core of disputes about the meaning of relationships and the world relocates us in the debate and values the inherent conflict condition in the pursuit of fair decision-making in the realms of ethics and politics.