Abstract

QUINTERO VENEGAS, Gino Jafet  and  LOPEZ LOPEZ, Álvaro. Animal Geography: Philosophical Construction of a Scientific Subdiscipline through its History. Cuad. Geogr. Rev. Colomb. Geogr. [online]. 2020, vol.29, n.1, pp.16-31. ISSN 0121-215X.  https://doi.org/10.15446/rcdg.v29n1.78653.

Animal geography, a subdiscipline that cuts across different specialties of human geography, reflects on spatiality in the interactions between human and non-human animals. However, the understanding of these interactions depends on whether humanism or post-humanism serves as the philosophical basis for analysis. In humanism, zoogeography and cultural geography observe "animals" from an anthropocentric perspective, to the point of considering them "natural resources". In post-humanism, the "new geography of animals" and the "critical geography of animals" study the spatial relation between human and non-human animals, assuming that neither is essentially superior. This leads to the aspiration for different relations of interaction within a new ethics of environmental responsibility that asserts the capacities of "sentience" and self-awareness of the animal world as a whole. On the basis of a hermeneutic methodology, the article analyzes the discursive transformations that have led to the constitution of animal geography from both the humanist and the post-humanist perspectives. It concludes that animal geography is already consolidated academically and that there is an increasing tendency to include non-anthropocentric ethical aspects in its analyses.

Main Ideas: Review paper based on diatopic hermeneutics that discusses the discourses that make up animal geography: "zoogeography" and "cultural geography", both based on humanist philosophy, and the "new geography of animals" and the "critical geography of animals", grounded in post-humanist philosophy.

Keywords : human animals; non-human animals; animal geography; humanism; post-humanism; sentience.

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