Animality is
not a revolution in a commonly held political sense of the term—with its
markers of social contract and that which is held in common. It is not a
revolution as a reasoned and enlightened consciousness of the masses. Animal
resistance is through their comportment and bodily being in the world. In the
long now of evolutionary time, animals are fitted to their environments.
However, the speed and invasiveness of human dwelling is ill aligned to
nonhuman ecological temporality. These two temporalities and ways of being jam
in contention. Perhaps the word revolution is only a poor anthropomorphic
metaphor and approximation for this event and rupture to human expectations and
human progress of civilization by non-teleological animal activity. It is not
enough to say animals resist—as if they were a minor resistance movement to the
major force of humanity. Rather, great and small, microbial to megafauna,
animals overturn the architecture of civilization. Such an overturning which
reframes the world according to a differend and knocks down the structures and
habits of human dwelling is a revolution. Incidents of such activity are
rampant as we shall see. While many animals and species may die, in a much longer
temporality the animals will live on beyond the human.
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