THIS IS NOT A HORSE233of human/animal relations operating at the extremes of biopower, such
as in factory farming and slaughterhouses. In such objectifying spatial-
izations, the anatomo-political power operated upon the animal body is
of the greatest intensity: the technologies of the self available to animals
are drastically reduced and are allowed only as far as they might result in
a monetizable contribution to the growth of capital.^40
However, as an analysis of It’s Hard to Make a Stand through anthro-
pogenic lenses reveals, relationships of domination and violence can
be inscribed in relationships of domestication, even when on the surface
they appear to be based entirely on compassionate companionship. The
docility of the body can be achieved equally on the anatomo-political
level and on the level of the technologies of the self. Thus, domestication
can be understood as a progressive molding of body and behavior, or as a
process defined by a highly regimented program of training simultane-
ously inscribed in the practice of selective breeding or biotechnology.
Much of the productive opportunity provided by the concept of dis-
positif within a human/animal studies analysis lies in its ability to enable
the recovery of incongruous and contradictory intermingling between
practices, discourses, institutions, and the biopower relationships that shape
them. Most importantly, the allure of It’s Hard to Make a Stand deliberately
gestures toward a dangerous continuity between the anatomo-political
elements of power technologies and those of the docile bodies. Where
does domestication discursively begin and domination end? Which bio-
power relationships between human and animal are at play in both con-
structs? How much do these power relations overlap and where do they
differ in order to remain relatively ontologically distinct from one an-
other (so to be differently named)? And most importantly, what are the
implications involved in the intrinsic impossibility of clearly distin-
guishing between the underlying discourses that perpetrate these types
of relationships?
HUMAN/ANIMAL PROSTHETIC RELATIONSHIPSSteve Bishop’s use of fur carries a political proposal: the fur coat in It’s
Hard to Make a Stand simultaneously inscribes the totalizing extreme of