Transformational Approaches: Equine Speciesism

2021 
By exploring the various approaches that artists employed to represent the equine species, Chapter Four will seek to identify how donkeys have been subjected to speciesism. Considered utilitarian, difficult to manage and legendarily stubborn, donkeys have been seen as less desirable aesthetically in stature, as pets, and in myth and lore, thereby being disposed to over work, arduous transport, and implorable human labor conditions. Demonstrating resistance versus yielding behaviors to various human endeavors, donkeys have been perceived as vacillating, weak-willed, corruptible, or cowardly, rendering them as marginalized and in gendered terms. The visual representation of donkeys contributed firstly to the cultural indifference toward them and secondly to their subjugation. Later, artists such as Theodore Gericault and Rosa Bonheur may have influenced the humane and ethical changes necessary for donkey reform in the romantic depictions of the equine species.
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