Animals as Signifiers: Re-Reading Michel Foucault’s The Order of Things as a Genealogical Working Tool for Historical Human–Animal Studies

Abstract

Michel Foucault’s work has lately been discovered for animal studies, yet it is hardly ever used as a tool for animal history. By making use of central concepts—such as heterotopia and heterochrony—this paper highlights the epistemic value of the ordering concepts for animal historians introduced in his early oeuvre. Genealogical readings of the creatures that encroach on his writing in The Order of Things especially provide historians with a framework for looking at animal symbolism and animal taxonomies. It helps them to identify the ordering of animals as historically contingent. Moreover, by a careful appraisal of the text, the textual agency of animals can be identified in Foucault’s way of thinking supporting the claim that the usage of animals as symbols is not so arbitrary as might seem at first glance.

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