Looking Back With Logos the Cat: Unsettling the Gaze in Multispecies Research.

Abstract

In this article, we reflect on the preparatory phase of a multispecies research project focused on dog-human care relationships. Playing with creative posthumanist methodologies that seek to decenter the human, we attached light-weight videorecording devices to our companion animals' collars. As we approach a dogs-eye view of our everyday lives and interactions, we think with Jacques Derrida to ask: What does it mean to respond when met with the animal's gaze? Through unsettling our gaze, the videos take us somewhere else entirely, raising another question: What do attempts to tangibly and imaginatively see with the dog do? The unsettling of our own reflections-on the question of the animal and the gaze of the "Other"-offers a space for enacting Haraway's conception of response-ability, for moving with our impetus to respond despite our current situated involvement in neoliberalism and settler colonialism with their commodification and domestication of more-than-human life.