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<p>This paper examines Drucilla Cornell’s contribution to critical animal studies. Cornell is, as far as I can establish, the first and only scholar to engage and translate Ernst Cassirer’s characterisation of both humans and animals as <i>animal symbolicum</i> into a critical animal theory. Reading Cornell’s essay “Imagining a World Without the Violation of Animals” against her larger body of feminist and critical theory, I illustrate that Cornell opens and engages three lines of inquiry that remain underexplored in animal ethics; namely a problematisation of animal rights discourse, a discussion of the critical role of utopianism and the imagination for animal ethics, and the ethical necessity for maintaining a human/animal distinction. I argue that Cornell posits links between the oppression of women and animals and advances an intersectional approach that demonstrates how power structures interconnect across human and nonhuman registers, illustrating why feminists who are concerned with gender inequality should draw on pro-animal analyses of oppression, and vice versa.</p>

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Prolegomena on Drucilla Cornell’s Reflections on Human–Animal Relationality: Imagining an Ethical Covenant with Animals

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  • 发表日期：

    2025年5月13日

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  • Jan-Harm de Villiers

摘要

This paper examines Drucilla Cornell’s contribution to critical animal studies. Cornell is, as far as I can establish, the first and only scholar to engage and translate Ernst Cassirer’s characterisation of both humans and animals as animal symbolicum into a critical animal theory. Reading Cornell’s essay “Imagining a World Without the Violation of Animals” against her larger body of feminist and critical theory, I illustrate that Cornell opens and engages three lines of inquiry that remain underexplored in animal ethics; namely a problematisation of animal rights discourse, a discussion of the critical role of utopianism and the imagination for animal ethics, and the ethical necessity for maintaining a human/animal distinction. I argue that Cornell posits links between the oppression of women and animals and advances an intersectional approach that demonstrates how power structures interconnect across human and nonhuman registers, illustrating why feminists who are concerned with gender inequality should draw on pro-animal analyses of oppression, and vice versa.