Driscoll, Kári. “Perpetrators, Animals, and Animality” (2020).

In “Perpetrators, Animals, and Animality,” Kári Driscoll approaches perpetrator studies from the angle of the animal; in the same way that asking the question of the perpetrator opens up our understanding of mass violence, asking the question of the animal opens up the confines of violence itself. Driscoll’s aim in this chapter is to show that centering animality in a discussion of Perpetrator Studies reveals something about humanity and how we relate to mass violence. His intervention is carried out on two different levels: first, on the level of discourse, by considering the language of dehumanisation and the reduction of cultural groups to ‘killable lives’ and nonhuman others in language and metaphor. Second, he focuses on the literal—the physical presence of animals in projects of mass violence and the question of their participation and agency in these scenarios.

Driscoll discusses critiques of critical animal studies, showing how the seemingly far-fetched idea of naming an animal a perpetrator in a human project of mass violence becomes a way to reconsider how we conceive of violence and both its human and nonhuman victims. Thinking with Derrida and Adorno, he draws attention to the anthropocentrism inherent in Perpetrator Studies, questioning the tropes of the discourse of genocide and the coupling of violence with notions of dehumanisation. Driscoll extends this line of thought to question the concept of genocide itself, and invokes non-Western relations to nonhuman entities as a challenge to terms such as genocide, ecocide, and speciocide. This line of argumentation works to return our attention to the humanistic ideology which drives notions of biopolitics and determines how the homo sacer, or expendable human, is constructed in opposition to the animal self. Further, he discusses the role and agency of the animal within systems of violence, presenting the reader with theories about different possible levels of animal agency. This focus on animals as possible perpetrators works to unsettle our own notions of violence as part of our ‘beastly’ nature.

This text is one of the few critical forays into the Perpetrator-Animal-Studies-nexus, providing a clear overview of the main insights that Animal Studies can bring to Perpetrator Studies. Readers who are interested in seeing how the existent categories and legal frameworks we have for dealing with violence reinforce anthropocentric ideals may find this text useful. This text is also a valuable resource for contextualising biopolitical and zoopolitical approaches to Perpetrator Studies.

Submitted by Flora Lehmann

Driscoll, Kári. “Perpetrators, Animals, and Animality.” In The Routledge International Handbook of Perpetrator Studies. Knittel, Susanne C, and Zachary J Goldberg, eds. 2020. London: Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, pp. 192-205.