Pet grief: when is nonhuman life grievable?
(engelsk)Manuskript (preprint) (Annet vitenskapelig)
Abstract [en]
This study explores how pet owners grieve their pets and view their pets’ transience. Drawing on Butler’s notion of the differential allocation of grievability, I have analyzed eighteen interviews with pet owners. Butler argues that grievability is made possible by a normative framework which allows for some human or human-like lives to be grieved, while other lives are rendered ‘lose-able’. All the interviewed pet owners say that they are capable of grieving a nonhuman animal, but analysis suggests that they make their pets grievable and ungrievable by turns. I argue that by maintaining this ambivalence, the interviewees negotiate pets’ inclusion in a human society while simultaneously defending human exceptionalism. The article concludes with a discussion of pet grief as a potentially destabilizing emotion. I suggest that grieving beings on the border between grievable human and lose-able animal—‘werewolves’ according to Giorgio Agamben—may be a powerful way of challenging normative frameworks which arbitrarily render some human and nonhuman lives lose-able.
Emneord [en]
animal studies, Giorgio Agamben, bereavement, Judith Butler, companion animals, grief, human-animal relations, loss, mourning, pets
HSV kategori
Forskningsprogram
Sociologi
Identifikatorer
URN: urn:nbn:se:uu:diva-261595OAI: oai:DiVA.org:uu-261595DiVA, id: diva2:850674
2013-10-292015-09-022015-09-02