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The Greening of the Humanities

Wednesday, 22 October 2008

UWC Professor Pioneers a New Field in Animal Studies

Professor Wendy Woodward’s new book The Animal Gaze
is being hailed among academics as a breakthrough for
animals and a move towards a world beyond speciesism.
Here Professor Woodward, who is widely published in
the fields of gender and colonialism, talks to Animal Voice:

Animal Voice: At the launch of your book in September 2008, Dr Sandra Swart of the History Department at the University of Stellenbosch said that having been freed from the manacles
of racism, humans were perhaps ready now, to discover a world beyond speciesism. She said The Animal Gaze took a significant step in this direction.
WW: Yes, I hope so. Just as it took likeminds to get together to acknowledge Feminism, in The Animal Gaze, I explore like-minds in a southern African context, to bring about a recognition of
our need to acknowledge animals not as objects but as subjects in their own right.
Animal Voice: In South African law, animals are recognized as our property or, in the case of wild animals, they are ‘resources’ to be used in a sustainable manner. This is part of what you refer to in your book?
WW: Yes, I am ever mindful that animals are not recognized by our Constitution and even the fact that they are sentient is not acknowledged. This is political expediency and we must change it. Animals are capable of a huge range of emotions - ecstasy, mourning, altruism and so on. I believe that animals are now insisting that we recognize them.
Animal Voice: You say that we can learn from historical African culture when it comes to our kinship with animals?
WW: Yes, traditional African emphasis is on the kinship between humans and animals. Westernization classifies the human as superior. Yet traditional African legends and contemporary novels reveal the active healing force of kinship with animals. They were not
seen as ‘other’ but rather, as ‘another’. This is an important distinction.
Animal Voice: Why did you look at southern African narratives in your book?
WW: Because I believe in the power of stories to teach and to entertain. All the novels, stories and wildlife texts I write about portray close relationships between humans and other animals
and show that animals are part of culture just as humans are; some stories even suggest that they are moral and/or spiritual beings.
Professor Woodward is with the Department of English at the University of the Western Cape.
The Animal Gaze is published by Wits University Press ISBN 978-1-86814-462-4

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