Criminology and animality: stupidity and the anthropological machine

Abstract

Although a relatively small, yet growing group of scholars have been lamenting the exclusion of nonhuman animals from the scope of criminology for over thirty years now, animals have been historically present in criminological theorizing, legal practices, and research. However, this presence has not been of the form advocated for by scholars who variously identify themselves as non-speciesist criminologists, green criminologists, or ecological criminologists, who have been arguing largely for recognition of harms perpetrated against animals, or ‘zoological crime’. Instead, the longer history of animals in criminology is as offenders or as prototypes of criminality. In this article, we are concerned with the production – vis-à-vis the anthropological machine – of the ‘stupid’ animal and subhuman within criminology and criminal justice. Guided by the political philosophy of Giorgio Agamben, we trace the animal through criminological thought from the premodern period to Lombroso to contemporary criminological scholarship illustrating how the animal has been (ab)used to shore up the classifications between humans, between humans and animals, and the intelligent and the stupid. We also examine how historically through criminal trials of animals and the feebleminded, criminal justice has played an active role in buttressing these classifications and acting on these classifications to produce bare life, that is, life without form or value.

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