Human-Animal Relations, Feminist Eco-Criticism and the Struggle to Recreate Subjects & Subjectivities

Although sometimes trivialized by those who see concerns for humans and for non-human animals in an oppositional light, the field of Human- Animal Studies has, over the course of the last two decades, produced rich and innovative work showing that an epistemology of connectedness may be much more fruitful. Based on over a decade of empirical and ethnographic study on the gendered and classed reconstruction of popular (rural-based) equestrian cultures in Brazil and recent study of literature that discusses the significance of human-animal relations in terms of theoretical paradigm changes in the social sciences, I offer considerations on the why and how of particular forms of bringing animals into current struggles to recreate subjects and subjectivities. I argue that such efforts may be constituted as emotional and reflexive responses to the impasse of contemporary societies and as attempts to overcome alienation and carve a path out of current environmental and social crises.