“But Where's the Bloody Horse?”: Textuality and Corporeality in the “Animal Turn”

Abstract

Summary In the last decade, “animal studies” has arisen in belated parallel to other counter-hegemonic disciplines. In order to discuss this new departure of considering animals in the humanities rather than solely the natural sciences, we use the case study of the horse. We discuss what the “animal turn” might mean in disciplinary terms. We show that there is a significant move towards embracing new subject matter, and concomitant new sources, in history writing in southern Africa. We argue, however, that it is difficult to label it a new “paradigm” as it remains largely in the social (or socio-environmental) history camp. Instead, it encompasses a continuing process of inclusion and measured mainstream acceptance of the animal as subject, object and even perhaps agent. The “animal turn” (and, indeed, “green social science”) is not founded on any one method or approach, instead it remains diverse in terms of its methodology and raison d’être, mirroring the multiplicity of its object of study. We discuss changes within socio-environmental history that might permit a transformed understanding of the horse as historical actor with the acceptance of the animal as subject, object and even agent-in short, how academics in the humanities might find the “bloody horse”.

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