Multispecies thought from the shadows: the associated worlds of dog-walking

Abstract

This paper develops the concept of multispecies thought through a study of dog-walking in a public park in Lancaster, England. It draws on cybernetic ideas from Bateson, Peircean semiotics and von Uexküll’s umwelten to explore how multispecies worlds come into being in the spaces of the park, and amongst humans, dogs, leads, toys and other things. It focuses on how an understanding of multispecies thought can be discerned that is not only specific to the situated relations in dog-walks, but also constituted through routines that foster new capacities between specific bodies. In this way, we come to understand multispecies worlds as located at the sites where specific, associated worlds are co-produced by dogs and humans yet reducible to neither. We use the examples of lead-walking and play with balls and frisbees to show how semiotic relations are co-produced across species. Building on previous work, we confront species-defined notions of capacity and thought and look instead at how the indexical relations of multispecies thinking offers liberatory potential.