Indifference: An Imperative of Posthuman Life

Asking “what is wrong with animal rights?” Kelly Oliver argues that “ethics must go beyond rights” and proposes “a sustainable ethics,” in which our “ethical responsibility” is to remain “responsive and nourishing.” While supportive of this ethical turn in human–animal relations, this article questions whether response, respect, and care are the ideal guidelines for human–animal relations for the following reasons: (1) given the sheer number of animals, our resources and capacities for response, respect, and care are limited, requiring us constantly to relocate our efforts; (2) the need for response, respect, and care comes from anthropocentric human–animal relations, which means that it may not be sustained when the relations become nonanthropocentric. In response to the two reasons that question the emphasis on response, respect, and care, this article aims to supplement the current ethical turn by suggesting an ethics of indifference, according to which indifferent relations between human and nonhuman beings are “the default policy” while response, respect, and care are acts of exigency. Drawing upon Alphonso Lingis’s work, the article translates this policy into an ethics of indifference that stipulates the imperative of posthuman life.