An Address from Elsewhere: Vulnerability, Relationality, and Conceptions of Creaturely Embodiment

Abstract

How do our conceptions of embodiment shape the prospects of thinking relationally about humans and other living beings? This chapter pursues this question in the form of a critical engagement with the idea of ‘Vulnerability’ and its role as a conceptual bedrock in which a distinctly post anthropocentric ethics can be grounded. While the lens of vulnerability enables us to articulate a critique of anthropogenic violence against other creatures, my concern is with the specific form of embodied relationality suggested by a perspective that is centered on the negative aspects of exposure, injurability, and finitude. I argue that, in order for us to envision a more affirmative ethics of human-animal relationality, we need more lively corporeal ontologies and an idea of vulnerability that emphasizes the richness of bodily life as a radically ambivalent openness to the world and other bodies instead of a restrictive focus on the shared passivity of bodily exposure.