ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how the political meaning of animals is produced in this way, through practices of humans and other animals. It demonstrates what needs to be considered empirically as well as methodologically when writing a political history of animals. A new political history influenced by cultural studies approaches of accepting new and divergent actors in turn allows for a shift in perspectives by including the political animal and a political historiography of animals respectively. Political institutions influenced animal lives and were concurrently influenced by their symbolic values and presences. The chapter considers the material interactions through which the symbolic functional role of animals is manifested. Taking actor-network theory into account, animal studies scholars have routinely pointed to the potential of animals as agents in the process of generating knowledge. The relational agency exists between all beings or species, but in particular between concrete specimens of species, between a distinct animal and a distinct human.
