Animal Interface: The Generosity of Domestication

The chapter engages with historical processes and contemporary conditions of animal domestication, arguing that domestication might best be seen as at least as much an emotive or affective process as an instrumental one. It draws on the notion of `corporeal generosity’ to suggest that there are ongoing, generative and unpredictable flows between human and animal bodies that live in close proximity, and that animal domestication has resulted in unforeseen transformations in the bodies of both human and animal participants. It is also argued that pathogen exchange between different species is one of the most important unforeseen outcomes of domestication- and should be viewed both as a destructive and a generative process.