Man Is a Political Animal
Man Is a Political Animal
Self-Discipline and its Beastly Other
This chapter examines the creative potential of autonomy by exploring ways that the impulse for self-governance can produce new forms of subjectivity and ethical challenges to the power relationships that shape the present. The self-critical impulse encouraged by the discourse of autonomy can have effects that challenge as well as enforce existing relationships of power. Critique may reveal the contingency of current relationships and thus open up the possibility of choosing to act differently. Animal rights provide one opportunity for this analysis as the distinction between human and animal has been one of the most important means of measuring the autonomy of human subjects. However, animal rights may challenge human sovereignty only if it challenges the assumption that human and animal are so easily distinguished.
Keywords: self-governance, creative potential of autonomy, animal rights, human subjects, human sovereignty, power relationships, ethical challenges
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