If not liberation, then what?

The article focuses on the complexities and challenges of multispecies justice, examining human-animal relationships through case studies and critical scholarship. It highlights Flavien Ndonko’s pioneering multispecies ethnography on Germans and their dogs, revealing how dogs are humanized within Ge...

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Published in:Postcolonial Studies Vol. 28; no. 1; pp. 96 - 102
Main Authors: Ihar, Zsuzsanna, Lee, Jia Hui
Format: Article
Published: Taylor & Francis Ltd Mar2025
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: If not liberation, then what?
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        au:
          Ihar, Zsuzsanna
          Lee, Jia Hui
        affil:
          Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
          Department of Cultural and Social Anthropology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Bayreuth, Bayreuth, Germany
      su:
        Human-animal relationships
        Justice
        Ethnographic analysis
        Race discrimination
        Critical theory
        Settler colonialism
      sug:
        subj:
          Human-animal relationships
          Justice
          Ethnographic analysis
          Race discrimination
          Critical theory
          Settler colonialism
      ab: The article focuses on the complexities and challenges of multispecies justice, examining human-animal relationships through case studies and critical scholarship. It highlights Flavien Ndonko’s pioneering multispecies ethnography on Germans and their dogs, revealing how dogs are humanized within German society, while also addressing racial barriers faced by Ndonko as a Cameroonian researcher. The article contrasts this with the militarized use of protection dogs by Israel Protection K9, linked to the Israel Defense Forces’ canine unit Oketz, illustrating how multispecies relations can perpetuate violence and settler colonialism. It further discusses a collection of essays titled *The Promise of Multispecies Justice*, which critiques assumptions about the liberatory potential of human–nonhuman conviviality by foregrounding issues of race, colonialism, and exploitation, and calls for a reconceptualization of justice that moves beyond liberal humanism to address historical and structural violences across species lines. The collection emphasizes plural, processual approaches to justice while warning against the co-optation of progressive discourses by reactionary forces, advocating for critical, imaginative, and context-specific engagements with multispecies futures.
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    language: English
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      custom: Copyright of Postcolonial Studies is the property of Taylor & Francis Ltd and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
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