Sharing the condition of abandonment: The beastly topology of condolence cards for bereaved pet owners
2017 (English)In: Animal Places: Lively Cartographies of Human-Animal Relations / [ed] Jacob Bull, Tora Holmberg and Cecilia Åsberg, London and New York: Routledge , 2017, 1, p. 89-114Chapter in book (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
This chapter focuses on spatiality in representations of the loss of and grief for companion animals. Giorgio Agamben’s theorization of the distinction between political and bare life is used to analyse around 350 condolence cards for bereaved pet owners. It is shown that the visual emplacement of pets in different contexts in the collection of cards underlines that pets are worth grieving, while at the same time a distance is maintained between humans and other animals. In spite of this distancing, it is argued that the cards have the potential to challenge the normative boundary between grievable and ungrievable life.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
London and New York: Routledge , 2017, 1. p. 89-114
Series
Multispecies Encounters ; 3
Keywords [en]
Afterlife, Giorgio Agamben, Anthropocentrism, Anthropological machine, Bereavement, Companion Animals, Condolence Cards, Death, Domestic Animals, Dying, Euthanasia, Grief, Heaven, Loss, Mourning, Mutts, Paradise, Pets, Qualitative Analysis, Souls, Subjectivity, Sympathy Cards, Werewolves, Visual Analysis
National Category
Sociology Social Psychology Human Geography Cultural Studies Animal and Dairy Science
Research subject
Sociology
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mdh:diva-45400ISBN: 9781472483249 (print)OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mdh-45400DiVA, id: diva2:1357669
Projects
Intimitetens sociala former
Funder
Swedish Research Council, 2014-14652019-10-042019-10-042019-10-11Bibliographically approved