On Multispecies Mythology: A Critique of Animal Anthropology

• Published in: Theory, culture & society Vol. 33; no. 5; pp. 159 - 172
• Main Author: Watson, Matthew C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: London, England SAGE Publications 01-09-2016
• Subjects: multispecies ethnography; affirmationism; affect; late industrialism; mythology
• ISSN: 0263-2764; 1460-3616
• DOI: 10.1177/0263276416637128

This article argues that the turn to the animal is a return to mythology. By reading multispecies scholarship as narrativization of contemporary mythology, I claim that the field voices anxieties about human futures through figures of animal others. Multispecies ethnography implicitly grapples with an apocalyptic mythos prevailing in the wake of modernity’s seemingly abandoned dreams (e.g. geopolitical peace, postcolonial development, environmental consciousness, economic prosperity, public understanding of science). I reconsider the cultural function of multispecies research through two moves. First, I read Thom van Dooren’s Theory, Culture & Society article on ‘Authentic Crows’ as such a quasi-allegorical account. Second, I develop how animal anthropology captures the contemporary mythos in an ‘affirmationist’ register that counters the pessimistic affect of late industrialism. Ultimately, the critical politics of such research may be redeemed through efforts to work closely with scientists and to render explicit the accounts’ situatedness within late-industrial mythology.