Organs or bodies? Toward an equitable, embodied, and animal-inclusive diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda

Abstract

This paper celebrates the turn toward embodiment. Drawing connections between embodiment and the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) agenda, this article notes that the axis of speciesism, or discrimination based on species membership, has not featured prominently thus far. The turn toward embodiment should not turn away from the billions of animal bodies, but nor should it include animals in less than equitable ways. The construct of speciesism is developed using the Žižekean concept of Organs without Bodies (OwBs) and its predecessor, Deleuze and Guattari’s Bodies without Organs (BwOs). It is argued that the exclusion of animals (unembodiment) is undesirable, but so too is the inclusion of animals as OwBs or BwOs, both of which are more inclusive but inequitable. This article advocates for fuller theorisations of animal embodiment, at similar levels of complexity and care to those given to human embodiments, theories of embodiment recognising animals as (dis)organised bodies.