I finished reading Adam Hine’s (2010) Duncan the Wonder Dog (Show One) today, and one of the things it does is not only to have animals to talk but actually to center the “values” of the story from the animal point of view. (I have a longer review of the book here; there are some spoilers.) In one long section, a human diary details various life problems and tangentially addresses things going on with one of the house pets, a dog named Bundle. As Bundle becomes ill, the house’s cat berates Bundle’s human “mom”, who works at a shelter for lost animals:
The poorest most pathetic humans live like gods compared to any animal. It doesn’t matter who you were with, they won’t get rounded up and burned in an oven if they walk the long way through somebody’s back yard! You wear clothes and Bundle wears a collar that you gave him to match your carpeting and all he wants is for you to be here. He’s dying and he just wants you to be here with him. Who cares about the fucking shelter! (315, emphasis in original)
The book in general goes a long way toward making unambiguous the terrible (or at best, ambiguous) plight of animals in our human culture, but I saw clearly how this attached to the issues of slavery (resegregation and mass incarceration) and adoption as well (as human trafficking).
In particular, the way that the status of house pets, adopted children, and modernized slaves intersect and diverge interests me. For example, the trafficking of pets and adopted children (both domestically and internationally) differs from how incarcerated slaves are trafficked (but not how former domestic and international slaves were trafficked). How pets and slaves were subjected to breeding regimens, while adopted children are not is another variation (though all three were subject to sexual predation). All three are subject to RAD reactions. And so on.
What are other interconnections and disconnections you find and/or have experienced about this triad?
Transracialeyes 
I would argue that most animals especially pets have it better than most humans on the planet. It creeps me out to see things in the States like specialty pet stores, hotels and spas for dogs, etc. The amount of energy that goes into feeding captive animals is pretty obscene. In New York, I’ve seen people crying over dying pigeons in front of homeless people; I’ve seen people walking their dogs demand right of way from the down-and-out on the street.
Having said that, I remember when I started up a category of DAMN! at Mediarama called “Adoption Alternatives”. I would repost online ads and the like that advertised pets, suggesting that an animal adoption might go farther toward the “need” for someone to take care of something else. I quickly found out that the similarity in language between animal and human adoption was truly disturbing, and furthermore that the mentality behind both was absolutely the same.
This mentality has roots in a salvationist sentiment combined with a perception of someone or something weak and/or in need, that will be silent, obeying, obsequious, needy, and dependent. You reinforce this with trade, purchase, and “ownership papers”. You lord it over the newly bought object, and the reminder of his constant allegiance is demanded. The similarities between adoption and slavery are a given, since one came out of the other. The connection to subjugation of animals is new-ish.
I would throw out there as well that the conquest of nature (animal and plant kingdoms) and the conquest of peoples are rooted in similar frameworks, religious and political. Much has been written about this; it is a rich vein to expand on, for sure.
The New York Review of Books [ link ] has in a recent issue an article entitled “What Makes Dogs Dogs”. Some choice quotes that back up the basic premise of this post:
Subservient. Dominated. Domesticated. The allowance of entry into the world of bourgeois humans via adoption into the Master’s house.
You could argue, though, that the description given for pet-“parent” relationships is the same for any baby-parent relationship.
Babies certainly do make us seem like nicer people, at least at first glance.
Parents do, in a matter of speaking, cater to the “pedigree” of their future child in picking a partner with particularly admirable or useful qualities to pass on to the next generation.
Certainly, most of us do not have children because one fine day we thought “goodness! I’ll do such a wonderful job serving a small human being and expect no emotional benefit in return.” We, as a species, tend to have children because we want them (although there are significant alternatives to this concept (social or physical force, for example)). Children, therefore, also “come into our world for our pleasure.”
They certainly “exist under our control” (well, we can try!), and we, as their caretakers, have in our jurisdiction the choices of food, exercise, housing, clothing and training/schooling. As you very rightly said, “it is a power relationship.”
A long time coming before I reply; sorry for that.
I feel a little confused; I think your points dovetail quite tidily with Daniel’s, even though you seem to be offering something of a, “Yes, but …”
Regardless, you’ve definitely pulled the themes together. I would add that adolescence then seems not a (necessary) developmental phase but an (inevitable?) reaction by the child brought about by the (neurotic) parental power-imposition in the first place. Adolescence is not simply “discovering yourself” but a kind of “speaking truth to power” (child to parent). In cultures without this delusional power-fantasy by parents, I’d expect not to find what Kiell (1964) and Mead tried to characterise as the “universal” experience of adolescence.
From the great blog “Economics of Imperialism”, an entry entitled: “Cats, Dogs and People in the Imperialist World Economy” [link]:
Just some (pet) food for thought.
In the recent Reuters series on “re-homing”, comparison is made to pet announcements in terms of how children are advertised online. I also came across this page [link], which states:
It would seem animals actually have more protection than we do as adoptees.
This is not the first time. I’ve heard that manuals on horse-breaking during the Renaissance (in England) had kinder and gentler methods (not that they were kind and gentle) than much of the child-rearing advice.
Commercials to adopt a pet, adopt a star, signs to adopt a highway, and pleas to adopt legislation all made my hair stand up on the back of my neck. Thank you for this post. Researching the origin of the word “adopt” led me on a path of finding horrible things about adoption, and led me to some interestingly comforting findings. I so appreciate you//adoption honesty.
You’re welcome and thank you 🙂
Quoting: In this paper, I argue that the enduring figure of the child, understood as a subhuman animal, is the foundation upon which European slavery and colonialism themselves are rooted. In the first section, I show that the colonial structures of social death and violence exacted on black (and also native) peoples are instantiations of the Hellenistic/Christian/Enlightenment subjugation of children. In the formation of the European worldview, the figure of the child features as the ontological Other for whom violence and subjugation are the natural condition. Modelling the peoples of Africa and North America after the irrational, criminal, and sub-human child made possible the institutions of slavery and settler colonialism that advanced into modernity. In the second section, I show that it was not until the late 19th century that western societies began sparing their young from the violence of childhood, usually by positioning children — white youth — as partially benefitting from the mature and therefore fully-human legacy of European civilization. Black and native peoples, on the other hand, remain globally prefigured as children. As a consequence, Black and native youth remain condemned to the status of bestial child from which white children have been partially removed.
SL: This came through at Acadamia.edu and I thought you would find it of interest:
https://www.academia.edu/16278324/DRAFT_-_Why_is_the_Child_Crying_Slavery_Settler_Colonialism_and_the_Ontological_Misfortune_of_the_Child?auto=view&campaign=weekly_digest
Hi Daniel:
I thought you wrote the paper, but no? I also think you could have, even if no.
I certainly agree wholeheartedly that the child represents the original slave (not the woman, as Gerda Lerner maintained). And in regard of sparing the white child violence, there is now that body of putatively scientific evidence that people don’t finish cognitively developing their moral brain centers, even into their twenties.
Supposedly, this should spare criminal prosecution of children (as cognitively disabled moralists), but I doubt this plays out without reference to race, of course. But it means, in principal, that (white) children are equivalently still animals into the early twenties (if not later). This doesn’t seem like progress to me, much less a step in a desirable direction. It seems, rather, having tarred-and-feathered Africans (and non-whites) as children for so long that it is time to “widen the reach” of that slander, white supremacist culture now directs that paternalistic “childifying” gesture to (white) children in our own backyard. Just as neoliberalism finally came home to roost (from its South American atrocities) with Reagan in the 1980s.
Not my writing, but I am intrigued very much by the article, as it maps onto how society at large even begins to see others as politically embodied humans or not. Overlaps here with the language of animal adoption are also disturbing, but now make sense….