Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being
Lecture from Naisargi N. Davé (University of Toronto)

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In Indifference, Naisargi N. Davé examines the complex worlds of animalists and animalism in India. Through ethnographic fieldwork with animal healers, animal activists, farmers, laborers, transporters, and animals themselves, and moving across animal shelters and dairy farms to city streets and abattoirs, Davé shows how human-animal relations often manifest through care and violence. More surprisingly, what Davé also finds animating interspecies relationality in India is an ethic of indifference---that is, an orientation of mutual regard rather than curiosity, love, desire, or animus. For Davé, indifference is a respect for others in their otherness that allows human and nonhuman animals to flourish in immanent encounters. Indifference, then, becomes the basis for an interspecies ethics and a method of care and practice in everyday life. With indifference, Davé describes both a mode of relationality in the world and a scholarly approach: seeking what is possible when we approach ethico-political concepts with indifference rather than commitment or antagonism. Moments of indifference, Davé contends, offer the promise of otherwise worlds.

About Naisargi Davé

My research concerns emergent forms of intra- and interspecies ethics, politics, and relationality in contemporary India. My latest book, Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being (Duke 2023), examines the complex worlds of animalists and animalism in India. 

My previous book, Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics (Duke 2012) examines the relationship between queer desires and queer political formations. I argue, in short, that activism is an ethical practice comprised of critique, invention, and creative relational practice. Queer Activism was awarded the 2013 Ruth Benedict Prize by the Association for Queer Anthropology. This year (2023-2024) I am a Martha LA McCain Faculty Fellow at the Queer and Trans Research Lab at the University of Toronto’s Bonham Centre, embarking on a book project titled Murder: The Social Life of Violent Death in Queer India.

Supported in part by grant funding from the U.S. Department of Education’s National Resource Centers Program. The content of this event does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education, and you should not assume endorsement by the Federal Government.