ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author explores the positioning of nonhuman animals within the field of Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS), discussing the tension between “the animal” in the abstract and nonhuman animals as sentient beings, and the ways in which they are simultaneously hyper-visible as metaphor and analogy while simultaneously invisibilized as individual beings. People who are mistreated, whose rights are infringed upon, whose needs are neglected, and who experience violence and abuse, regularly declare the ways in which they were “treated like an animal.” Relying on the human-animal divide to make a case for the (re)valuing of human life—a move common in feminist and anti-racist theorizing and politics—thus reinforces racial and able-bodied ideologies about the characteristics of humanness that distinguishes it from animality—or from all those who are rendered subhuman.
