https://doi.org/10.25058/20112742.n57.11
Surama Lázaro Terol
Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia, España
Abstract:
This text explores the links between disability and animality drawing on ethnographic research at two animal sanctuaries.Practices aimed at obtaining animals hyper-capable of extracting raw materials produce bodies afflicted with severe or chronic conditions. Although disability is not necessarily linked to unproductivity—since animal extractivist practices are constantly being reworked—the various modes of animal production discard bodies that have become unproductive. Some of these animals arrive at sanctuaries, where their lives are re-signified in terms of intrinsic value. The life pathways of these animals in these spaces, together with the narratives of their caregivers, reveal insights and forms of wisdom that restore practices, bodies, and environments. Additionally, we observe that framing farm animals as resources produces an ableist framework that impairs the humans’ ability to perceive them and to establish alternative forms of relationship with them.
Keywords: disability, animality, animal sanctuaries, antiableism, antispeciesism.
