Abstract

This is an accepted article with a DOI pre-assigned that is not yet published.

Methodologies of intimacy, where research is embedded in the business of caring in day-to-day life and death, provide unique access to how animals are and how they relate and make meaning. This article tells the story of my encounter with a pig, who came into our lives bearing in his body and way of relating to others the legacy of violence, but who found a way of reoccupying his world as he discovered the ability to move through space on his own terms and in good realtonships.  Exloring ideas around the ethics of encounter, entanglement and relational autonomy, it takes inspiration from Ursula Le Guin’s short story, “She Unnames Them” to recount how this pig acquired a name correlated with good and enabling, rather than dominating relationships. Staying close to the marks of harmful relationships embedded in this pig’s, it traces how he and those around him sought out and crafted ways of finding a ‘good place’ even with inescapable scars. Finally, it reflects on the responsibilities and dilemmas for humans who stand in intimate relationship with animals as they come close to death.

Keywords: Multispecies ethics, animal death, Le Guin, animal ethics, intimacy