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Beastly Traces: The Co-Emergence of Humans and Cattle

Josephson, Seth Joshu, josephson
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1515025660373023

Abstract Details

2018, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Comparative Studies.
Humans are not alone in this world nor have we ever been. This inter-disciplinary project develops an approach to understanding species difference through a phenomenology-informed, material-semiotic investigation human/cattle co-emergence. Cattle (Bos taurus) have been selected because of their outsized significance in the transformations that have defined contemporary human life. By identifying a select set of sites and developing a situated investigation around a “beastly figure” representative of each of them, this project demonstrates the co-productive and emergent qualities of our interspecies relationships and makes a case for situated co-emergence as an ethical and ontological paradigm for animal studies. Over the course of the text, I will consider several “beastly figures” each of which offers an example of co-emergent human/cattle processes. I come to these figures through a process of “tracing,” starting with my own situated position and moving toward an encounter (albeit a mediated one) with the world-making frame of another being. The dissertation begins with a “0” chapter on the wild aurochs, an animal predating or excluded from the human/cattle domestication relationship. Each subsequent chapter takes up a different figure of human/cattle entanglement to highlight a passageway of encounter between species or identify an emergent whole that the integration of our species creates. Chapter 1 follows the alphabet back to its beastly source, provides an overview of the tracing methodology, and makes a case for the importance of cattle specifically. Chapter 2 considers the medieval bestiary as a material object, a medium for encountering an animal other, and as a model for understanding projects of knowing animals. The next three chapters consider contemporary entanglements between humans and cattle and the emergent potentials of each. All this builds toward a conclusion, which pulls together the threads of each chapter to emphasize the ethical importance of consideration of individual experience. This leads to a proposal for a practice of ascetic release as a compassionate method for a future coexistence. This work identifies contemporary patterns of struggle where the meaning of species difference is negotiated. It maps these moments as sites of material and semiotic passage, highlighting our complicated human dependency on the animal other. Finally, it recommends a reassessment of both human-exceptionalism and anthropocentrism, and indicates the viability of an alternate conceptual paradigm. The paradigm I propose acknowledges that our position as humans frames any philosophical perspective on other animals but it also refuses to place ourselves at the center of value. This paradigm develops from a recognition that anything we might plausibly call our “humanity” is always codetermined with others and is an expression of our “animality” not a transcendence of it. Rather, true “transcendence" comes from a recognition of ways that we are participants in forces beyond our full control and that these larger, emergent phenomena act upon us, shaping our experience as living beings.
Hugh Urban, PhD (Advisor)
David Horn, PhD (Committee Member)
Bernhard Malkmus, PhD (Committee Member)
Isaac Weiner, PhD (Committee Member)
402 p.
Animals; Comparative; Cultural Anthropology; Ecology
animal studies; cattle; bovine; emergence; media studies; domestication; semiotics; religion; science and technology studies; rewilding

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Josephson, josephson, S. J. (2018). Beastly Traces: The Co-Emergence of Humans and Cattle [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1515025660373023

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Josephson, josephson, Seth. Beastly Traces: The Co-Emergence of Humans and Cattle. 2018. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1515025660373023.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Josephson, josephson, Seth. "Beastly Traces: The Co-Emergence of Humans and Cattle." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2018. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1515025660373023

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1515025660373023
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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.