Query: Conceptions of (Human) Animality in the 19th-Century United States

Dominik Ohrem Discussion

Dear all,

I'm currently working on a dissertation chapter on the "Zooanthropology of American Frontiers," which is supposed to address possible ways in which nineteenth-century American westward expansion (the focus is on the antebellum era) and frontier geographies informed contemporary discourses of human-animal difference and human animality. Since my argumentation needs to be situated within the broader context of contemporary thought/theories about animality and humanity, I'm still looking for literature which deals more or less specifically with conceptions of human animality from the mid- to late-1700s up until the 1860s. The focus is not necessarily on scientific ideas but also on "popular" or "folk" thought on the topic, although the former has obviously (?) received much more attention. 

I've already had a look at Merle Curti's work on American historical thought on "human nature," there are a few books/chapters on Jefferson and his "anthropological" ideas, on Lewis Henry Morgan and the rise of American anthropology, and, of course, on Darwin and pre-Darwinin evolutionary thought and its reception in the U.S. context. 

I'd be extremely grateful for further reading suggestions (primary sources are also very welcome). Thank you!

All the best,
Dominik Ohrem

4 Replies

Post Reply

Dominik -

I have done a decent amount of work on livestock and colonialist expansion in the west - particularly in regards to the use of sheep, and specifically about cultural identity and human-animal relations in regards to the Navajo. If you would like me to get you any info, please feel free to email me at leonaime@msu.edu

Cheers,
Aimee

Hi Dominik,

Try Mia Bay's book, The White Image in the Black Mind, ch. 4:
"'Us is Human Flesh': Race and Humanity in Black Folk Thought," the latter part of which contains a discussion of 19th century African American ideas about what it was like to be animalized by whites.

I think that in the public debate around slavery in cartoons and other periodical material, often the issue of slaves as "livestock" who were never paid came up over and over again. see for instance: http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-fba1-a3d9-e040-e00a18…

Also, the famous "letter from Jordan to his Old Master" (reproduced in Lydia Marie Child's Freedmen's Book, p. 285) where he talks about how in slavery there was "no pay day for the negroes any more than the horses or cows."

There will be many dozens of other examples of this kind of discourse, I am certain.
- Susan

Many thanks for your replies, Aimee and Susan!

There's indeed quite a lot of source material and literature on race and animality in the nineteenth-century United States, especially in the context of slavery (and its justification). I read Bay's book a while ago (way before I became interested in animal studies), but will definitely reread the chapter you mentioned, Susan - thanks for pointing me to this!

In the time period you’re looking at, there was a fair bit of overlap between conceptions of childhood and animalhood that shouldn’t be overlooked.

I would absolutely take a look at Kenneth Kidd’s “Making American Boys: Boyology and the Feral Tale,” especially his chapters on wolf-boys and “street rats” as Charles Loring Brace used to call children before he sent them out into the country on the “orphan trains.”

I’m pretty sure I recall Spencer Keralis (who is on the network) speaking about children and pets at a conference a few years ago—not just pets, mind you, but animals. And there’s rumblings about a forthcoming edited collection from Routledge about childhood and pethood as well.