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(2017) Beyond the human-animal divide, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
An address from elsewhere
vulnerability, relationality, and conceptions of creaturely embodiment
Dominik Ohrem
pp. 43-75
How do our conceptions of embodiment shape the prospects of thinking relationally about humans and other living beings? This chapter pursues this question in the form of a critical engagement with the idea of "Vulnerability" and its role as a conceptual bedrock in which a distinctly post anthropocentric ethics can be grounded. While the lens of vulnerability enables us to articulate a critique of anthropogenic violence against other creatures, my concern is with the specific form of embodied relationality suggested by a perspective that is centered on the negative aspects of exposure, injurability, and finitude. I argue that, in order for us to envision a more affirmative ethics of human-animal relationality, we need more lively corporeal ontologies and an idea of vulnerability that emphasizes the richness of bodily life as a radically ambivalent openness to the world and other bodies instead of a restrictive focus on the shared passivity of bodily exposure.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1057/978-1-349-93437-9_3
Full citation:
Ohrem, D. (2017)., An address from elsewhere: vulnerability, relationality, and conceptions of creaturely embodiment, in D. Ohrem & R. Bartosch (eds.), Beyond the human-animal divide, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 43-75.
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