THIS IS NOT A HORSE237us to analyze, criticize, and overcome certain repetitional patterns in
human/animal relations.
THE BIOPOLITICS OF FURFurthering the retrieval of the dispositifs at play in It’s Hard to Make a
Stand through anthropogenic analytical lenses therefore entails extending
the analysis of power to the institutions that shape biopower in human/
animal relationships. Along with these considerations, predominantly re-
volving around the controlling spatializations of kennels, equine breeders,
fur-trade caging, and practices of rendering, also reemerges the central
conception of the docile body. Anatomo-political forces in the Anthro-
pocene substantially affect the bodies of animals bred, reared, and killed
for fur. These forces are exercised in two ways: through the limitations im-
posed by architectural spaces intentionally designed by institutions, and,
on the biological level, through practices of selective breeding. These prac-
tices fix biological, morphological, and behavioral traits in animal bodies
for the purpose of increasing capital gain. As a discursive practice operated
institutionally through the deployment and enforcing of scientific state-
ments, selective breeding not only plays a key role in the shaping of docile
bodies but simultaneously defines the subjective formations of the humans
involved in the relationships. The bodies of purebred horses, pedigreed
dogs, and fur-standard mammals are all equally and relentlessly optimized
for the purpose of crystallizing a status symbol of exclusive social value.
The fur trade substantially demarcated the colonial relations among
Britain, France, and North America.^53 Julia Emberly’s retrieval of past
cultural histories of fur brings to the surface a number of dispositifs in
which the rendered animal/material simultaneously is the product and
the currency of power relations shaped by complex legislation that in
Britain went as far as preventing poor social classes from wearing it.^54
As a status symbol of exclusivity, the fur coat was at the center of heated
controversy in Europe during the 1980s.^55 But the poor sales of fur in
the 1990s have been recently followed by a strong rebound. Most re-
cently, as reported by the International Business Times, fur sales have