Thank you for taking the time to respond! I appreciate your interest in discussing my reading and hoping to bring clarity to the ideas set forth.
In as far as your first point regarding the "becoming canine" within Levine's work: my argument partly extends into the ways in which furries (including ourselves) often see the animal as merely a vehicle for human knowledge or data, and how the animal body can easily be made a prosthetic for human identity while ignoring what intelligence and experience said animal positions may bring. In this light, I argue that we don't really know what animals think or know themselves, so when Jason's father decides to become a dog, he chooses to move from what he knows into an entirely new set of terms or means of experience, one not entirely accessible by human knowledge nor exceptionalism. While I didn't mean to again rectify taxonomies of separation as done by Western, colonial language, I ultimately hoped to start discussion on how seeing the animal as human can often be a means of colonizing its truth, unlike Jason's father who gives himself over to the dog that he is to be.
To touch on the next point, which you highlight so well: Justice and the work of Indigenous studies so brilliantly offer the tools of destabilizing concepts or readings upheld as fact, showing how they are rather only icons of Western cosmologies and readings of bodies as product. I haven't read Tuck and Yang's work myself, so I'll be making my way to the text soon after this, but my main reason for using Justice and his work is to question how we, even as we'd like to think of ourselves as supporters of animals and their environments, again often attune ourselves more to understandings placed on the animals that no less take away from what can truly be offered when they're not seen as, say, a fox or poodle being a "bottom." In this way we once again become consumers and even colonizers of the animal rather than trying to understand and even see what it may provide. We alas thus fall to histories of consuming bodies as product, as seen in Nicole Shukin's work and developing vegan theory. While I held no intent on directing settlers toward a romantic or innocent view of decolonization, my hopes were to instead reorient readers on how furry fiction can often be violent unless we start thinking otherwise and looking beyond the animal as an empty source for knowledge on queer sexuality.
Again, thank you for the brilliant response! Discussion of ideas via text can be difficult, so do message me further if you wish to discuss and or develop further ideas that may add to future essays for yourself.
Brandy J. Lewis
Science Fiction Studies, Comic Studies, and Fan Culture History
Thank you for taking the time to respond! I appreciate your interest in discussing my reading and hoping to bring clarity to the ideas set forth.
In as far as your first point regarding the "becoming canine" within Levine's work: my argument partly extends into the ways in which furries (including ourselves) often see the animal as merely a vehicle for human knowledge or data, and how the animal body can easily be made a prosthetic for human identity while ignoring what intelligence and experience said animal positions may bring. In this light, I argue that we don't really know what animals think or know themselves, so when Jason's father decides to become a dog, he chooses to move from what he knows into an entirely new set of terms or means of experience, one not entirely accessible by human knowledge nor exceptionalism. While I didn't mean to again rectify taxonomies of separation as done by Western, colonial language, I ultimately hoped to start discussion on how seeing the animal as human can often be a means of colonizing its truth, unlike Jason's father who gives himself over to the dog that he is to be.
To touch on the next point, which you highlight so well: Justice and the work of Indigenous studies so brilliantly offer the tools of destabilizing concepts or readings upheld as fact, showing how they are rather only icons of Western cosmologies and readings of bodies as product. I haven't read Tuck and Yang's work myself, so I'll be making my way to the text soon after this, but my main reason for using Justice and his work is to question how we, even as we'd like to think of ourselves as supporters of animals and their environments, again often attune ourselves more to understandings placed on the animals that no less take away from what can truly be offered when they're not seen as, say, a fox or poodle being a "bottom." In this way we once again become consumers and even colonizers of the animal rather than trying to understand and even see what it may provide. We alas thus fall to histories of consuming bodies as product, as seen in Nicole Shukin's work and developing vegan theory. While I held no intent on directing settlers toward a romantic or innocent view of decolonization, my hopes were to instead reorient readers on how furry fiction can often be violent unless we start thinking otherwise and looking beyond the animal as an empty source for knowledge on queer sexuality.
Again, thank you for the brilliant response! Discussion of ideas via text can be difficult, so do message me further if you wish to discuss and or develop further ideas that may add to future essays for yourself.
Brandy J. Lewis
Science Fiction Studies, Comic Studies, and Fan Culture History