Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

Guess who's not coming to dinner -- Husbands -- Breeders -- The combo -- Black sheep -- Jim Crows -- Conclusion : embracive reconciliation

White Fathers, Stolen Generations

Made to Matter

Lori Gruen

Do depictions of crazy cat ladies obscure more sinister structural violence against animals hoarded in factory farms? Highlighting the frequent pathologization of animal lovers and animal rights activists, this book examines how the “madness” of our relationships with animals intersects with the “madness” of taking animals seriously. The essays collected in this volume argue that “animaladies” are expressive of political and psychological discontent, and the characterization of animal advocacy as mad or “crazy” distracts attention from broader social unease regarding human exploitation of animal life. While allusions to madness are both subtle and overt, they are also very often gendered, thought to be overly sentimental with an added sense that emotions are being directed at the wrong species. Animaladies are obstacles for the political uptake of interest in animal issues-as the intersections between this volume and established feminist scholarship show, the fear of being labeled unreasonable or mad still has political currency.

Gender, Animals, and Madness

Animaladies

Human relationships to animals (both 'real' animals and the ideas attached to animality) have shifted over the last century. Pet ownership is on the increase, wildlife has gone from being a threat to being threatened, and animal science ruptures traditional ideas about animal capabilities and human exceptionalism. At the same time philosophy, literature and popular cultural forms inspire new questions about what it means to be human in the time of 'humanimal' coexistence. The field of Human Animal Studies accounts for the diverse, contemporary interplay of animals and humans. Human Animal Studies brings animal science into conversation with humanities and social scientists, and that unique coming together produces an extraordinarily dynamic, and rapidly expanding field of inquiry. This book equips students to enter this field by mapping key multidisciplinary ideas, debates and approaches.

An Introduction

Human Animal Studies

Most members of the Stolen Generations had white fathers or grandfathers. Who were these white men? This book analyses the stories of white fathers, men who were positioned as key players in the plans to assimilate Aboriginal people by 'breeding out the colour'. The plan to 'breed out the colour' ascribed enormous power to white sperm and white paternity; to 'elevate', 'uplift' and disperse Aboriginality in whiteness, to blank out, to aid cultural forgetting. The policy was a cruel failure, not least because it conflated skin colour with culture and assumed that Aboriginal women and their children would acquiesce to produce 'future whites'. It also assumed that white men would comply as ready appendages, administering 'whiteness' through marriage or white sperm. This book attempts to put textual flesh on the bodies of these white fathers, and in doing so, builds on and complicates the view of white fathers in this history, and the histories of whiteness to which they are biopolitically related.

Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

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