David A. Varela Trejo
Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia, México
Abstract:
This article explores, drawing on a life story, the relationship of affinity, familiarity and interspecies kinship between Mauro — an elderly human with Parkinson’s neurodegenerative disease — and Chabela, a dog racialized as a Miniature Schnauzer race. In the first section, we will discuss the theoretical-political framework within which this work is placed. In the second section, we will introduce the story of Mauro and Chabela understood as an interspecies event of caring, companionship, and love. Finally, we will carry out an exercise of interlocution with Chabela to unveil her power to affect, the importance that bodies acquire, and to radically transform the affective arrangements or the loving order of the human she lives with. This allows us to think multispecies futures in a counter-speciesist key and speculate with what we call xeno-families.
Keywords: Multispecies family, affection, counter-speciesism, xeno-families.
