- Editorial
- I. Why do we want to think humans are different?, Colin A. Chapman, Michael A. Huffman
- II. "Animal", Jeff Sebo
- III. The Trouble with Liminanimals, Philip Howell
- IV. The Global Pigeon, Colin Jerolmack
- V. From Over the Horizon: Animal Alterity and Liminal Intimacy beyond the Anthropomorphic Embrace, Richie Nimmo
- VI. Time to rethink the law on part-human chimeras, Julian J Koplin, Julian Savulescu
- VII. Queer Liminal Animals, Sacha Coward
- VIII. The Spiritual Ecology of the Shepherd, So Sinopoulos-Lloyd
- IX. AMANDA PARADISE: Resurrect Extinct Vibration, CAConrad
- X. Animal Architecture: Beasts, Buildings and Us, Paul Dobraszczyk
- XI. Feral Cities: Adventures with Animals in the Urban Jungle, Tristan Donovan
- XII. At Home in Other Skins, in Other Formations of my Body, Ama Josephine Budge
- Imprint
III. The Trouble with Liminanimals
- Philip Howell is a Professor of Historical Geography and Fellow of Emmanuel College. His research interests are primarily in animal geographies, geographies of gender and sexuality, colonialism and imperialism. He has studied popular movements in 19th century Britain, the regulation of prostitution in Britain and the British Empire, and the emergence of modern cultures of pet-keeping. His principal contemporary research concerns historical animal geographies.
This paper addresses the borderlands between nonhuman animals and human beings via the concept of liminality. Liminality is not a singular or stable theoretical foundation for understanding animal-human relations, and the ambiguities and contradictions (the ‘trouble with liminanimals’) are productive rather than disabling. Three versions of liminanimality are discussed. Commensal animals, wild or domestic species living on anthropogenic food sources and sharing their living spaces with humans are referred to here as liminanimals 1.0. The anthropological theory of liminality, exploring liminal states, stages and spaces, offers alternative opportunities, and animals caught in such conditions can be thought of as liminanimals 2.0. These theories allow us to explore the indeterminate zone between the human and the animal, and, crucially, the ways in which ‘liminanimality’ applies to both nonhuman and human animals. Thirdly, the problematic conception of ‘humanity’ is addressed through intersectional critiques, taking in the dangerous crossings of race and animality. This work further unsettles the border between human and nonhuman, and reframes the notion of liminal animals to serve a progressive politics. Creatures caught up in these forms of marginalization might be called liminanimals 3.0. This essay argues ultimately for recognition of the borderlands between humanity and animality rather than that between humans and animals.
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Originally published in Parallax, 2019, Vol. 25 No. 4, Animal Borderlands.