The Problem of Anthropomorphous Animals: Toward a Posthumanist Ethics

Abstract

This article examines arguments in favor of and against the anthropomorphism of non- human animals across the natural and social sciences. Delineating the political agendas underpinning each side of the debate, the essay demonstrates how both sides embody an anthropocentric paradigm. Both anthropo-denial (resistance to anthropomorphism) and anthropo-insistence (affirmation of anthropomorphism) ultimately depend upon and reinscribe the human/animal binary, a binary both speciesist and specious. This article argues for a posthumanist ethics, which discards as ethically pernicious the humanist “human,” along with the moral code that revolves around it.

Keywords: Applied ethics, Practical ethics, Animal ethics, Justice, Political theory, Human-Animal relations, Humanism, Language, Anthropocentrism, Anthropomorphism