ABSTRACT
Ending with the all-women street performance, City Horses, by Anna Källblad and Helena Byström, I pose the rhetoric questions: What if human labour and animal work were organised and performed according to embodied human and animal needs to generate social, rather than economic, values and wealth? I suggest that taking the body and its sensitivity seriously is key to preserving the distinctness of human and animal species in a world that is framed by the dressage mechanisms of contemporary capitalism. As it all too often seems impossible to live, move, and work together without harming other animals in competitive capitalism, the book concludes by stressing that artistic performances that critically engage with the given entangled social and economic dressage condition—rather than aesthetically represent it—remind us of that a more mutually responsive cultural praxis is needed.
