Governing Pet Love: 'Crazy Cat Ladies,' Cultural Discourse, and the Spatial Logics of Inter-Species Intimacies
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| Category | Theses |
|---|---|
| Abstract |
Pet animals in the United States have been increasingly incorporated into relationships and spaces of intimacy. As a result, an intense set of discourses has emerged to delineate and govern what modes of interspecies intimacy are `normal' or `inappropriate.' The widely known stereotype of the `crazy cat lady' - often described as a reclusive, lonely, and single white woman locked away in a tiny house full of cats - represents a flashpoint in this system of governance. This thesis explores the normative discourses and daily resistances that envelop women who live with cats. I argue that the `crazy cat lady' serves to delimit the available possibilities for `proper' gendered, sexualized, classed, and raced subjectivity. In turn, these norms govern the possibilities for interspecies relationships between humans and pet animals, perpetuating and privileging some forms of intimacy - heterosexual interhuman love, marriage, and motherhood - while disparaging and neglecting queer modes of pet love. |
| Submitter |
Mason N McLary HABRI Central |
| Date | 2014 |
| Pages | 153 |
| Publisher | University of Washington |
| Location of Publication | Seattle, Washington |
| Department | Geography |
| URL | http://hdl.handle.net/1773/26273 |
| Language | English |
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