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Animal Biography pp 243–259Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Online Animal (Auto-)Biographies: What Does It Mean When We “Give Animals a Voice?”

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Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature ((PSAAL))

Abstract

This chapter looks at why and how animals are so prominently featured in social media today, and what the implications are both for those animals and for animals in general. It addresses the ways in which online animals serve as more than just the feline, canine, or porcine face and voice of a human writer, but can work to promote better treatment of animals. This chapter suggests that online animal biographies may create space for a new understanding of animal subjectivity which can lead to real changes for animals. By creating and following animals on social media, we give these animals a social presence which may result in concrete changes for the animals behind the profiles.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    See DiPerna, “Web connector”; Ellison, “Social Network.”

  2. 2.

    Golbeck, “On the Internet”; DeMello, “Identity”; Schally and Couch, “Creating Feline.”

  3. 3.

    Gardner and Gardner, “Sign Language”; Patterson, “Language Acquisition”; Herman and Austad, “Knowledge Acquisition”; Savage-Rumbaugh et al., “Ape Consciousness”; Pepperberg, Alex Studies; Slobodchikoff and Perla, Prairie Dogs.

  4. 4.

    See Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1869 essay, “Rights of dumb animals,” or Dumb Animals, the monthly newsletter published in 1868 by George Angell, the founder of the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

  5. 5.

    Tannen, Gender and Discourse.

  6. 6.

    Schally and Couch, “Creating Feline.”

  7. 7.

    Sanders and Arluke, “Speaking for Dogs.”

  8. 8.

    Ibid.

  9. 9.

    Personal communication.

  10. 10.

    Sewell, Black Beauty.

  11. 11.

    See “Strider” in Tolstoy, Shorter Fiction.

  12. 12.

    Donovan, “Tolstoy´s Animals.”

  13. 13.

    Anonymous, “Strange and Wonderful,” 147.

  14. 14.

    See “The Mouse´s Petition” in Barbauld, Poems, 36–37.

  15. 15.

    Milne, “Speaking Animal’s.”

  16. 16.

    Savvides, “Speaking for Dogs,” 233.

  17. 17.

    Ibid.

  18. 18.

    Ibid., 241.

  19. 19.

    Davis and DeMello, Rabbits Tell.

  20. 20.

    Laforteza, “Cute-ifying Disability.”

  21. 21.

    Adams, Neither Man.

  22. 22.

    Adams, Sexual Politics.

  23. 23.

    Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 190.

  24. 24.

    Fudge, Animal.

  25. 25.

    Zuckerman, “Cat Theory.”

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Canisius College, Buffalo, NY, USA

    Margo DeMello

  2. Animals & Society Institute, Ann Arbor, MI, USA

    Margo DeMello

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  1. Margo DeMello
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    André Krebber

  2. University of Kassel, Kassel, Germany

    Mieke Roscher

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DeMello, M. (2018). Online Animal (Auto-)Biographies: What Does It Mean When We “Give Animals a Voice?”. In: Krebber, A., Roscher, M. (eds) Animal Biography. Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98288-5_13

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