ABSTRACT
Lively Legalities aims at bringing forth a multispecies legality observed from within an ethnography of posthuman transdisciplinarity and placed in the paradoxical era of the Anthropocene, with its reconceptualization of human responsibility. This chapter analyzes how humans think of themselves as an exceptional species and, alternatively, how humans except themselves from ostensibly natural concepts like species altogether. It discusses seven themes that foundational for considering lively legalities: law and animality, legal materiality, the legal classification of the animal, property and ownership, the Anthropocene, and multispecies ethnographies/posthuman methodologies. Lively Legalities proposes a sense of urgency in light of the life-changing conditions of the planet, adding to this a questioning of the existing legal and political structures and their current conceptualization, classification, and government of life. The Anthropocene is a complex and paradoxical reference point: it embodies both humans' omnipresence and responsibility. The chapter also presents an overview of concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book.
