Machinic Alliances (2008)

Descartes said that animals were like machines, mechanical clocks without reason. Today we have travelled far from this view in our assertions of species continuity between animal and man. Continuism is always in danger of occluding the network of power relations, which traverse it. As opposed to 19th Century theories of devolution - where the situating of the animal on the lower end of a hierachy that placed man at the top justified all kinds of cruelty - politically correct continuism would seem to be an advance. Nevertheless, continuism promulgates the same notions of superiority, except that now the top of the hierachy is sensitive to the rights of those on lower levels of the scale. Animals become passive receivers of human generosity rather than being considered in terms of their powers and biodiversity.

extract from text If I could talk to the animals by Maria Walsh

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