Indifference

Why is moral attention to the animal so repulsive? What separates the perverse from the permissible, the bestial from the homely? Are animals truly innocent?

Indifference is the opposite of the desire for difference. Naisargi Davé reveals how curiosity does not kill cats alone. The tyranny of consistency demands the death of exceptions. Animals are neither voiceless nor innocent beings. Fueled by the perceived innocence of the silent Mother figure, cow-protectionism drives lynching: of Dalits and Muslims, vulnerable beings caught in the Hindu–Sikh–Jain dominated meat industry. Contrary to Hindutva and liberal belief, animals do speak—in queer tongues. In listening together differently, we hear the silent refusal of the object Other: women, queers, commodities, and other animals.

Indifference is the result of years of research, writing, thinking, reading, and feeling about human–animal relations in India and elsewhere. Davé writes in favor of indifference, not as a lack, but as a stance born of the queer desire and belief in an otherwise way of being.

Naisargi N. Davé is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto and author of Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics.