Venue: Seattle, WA

Date: 9–13 November 2022

Participants:

• Muhammad Kavesh (University of Toronto, organizer)

• Petronella Vaarzon-Morel (New York University and Australian National University)

• Natalie Koehle (Hong Kong Baptist University)

• Mariana Bombo Perozzi Gameiro (IRD, Université Paris Cité)

• Wei Ye (University of Minnesota)

Roundtable Abstract: The special panel explores the effects of the legal and illegal trade of millions of donkeys to China and their use in the preparation of ejiao, a traditional Chinese medicine. It takes inspiration from Jacques Derrida’s (2009) suggestion that radically heterogeneous species, the infrahuman and the other human, create possibilities of difference and resemblance and in the process, change or transform. By explicating the role of the donkey (the infrahuman) and those who seek to facilitate or disrupt the trade (the human), the contributors examine the possibility of entangled transformation. Specifically examining different facets of the donkey commodity chain, changes in human-donkey relationships, understanding of work and co-workers, killing and killability, and values of care and attachment, the contributors discuss how the life and afterlife of donkeys change through their trade and farming. Developing on their ethnographic and critical works in the context of China, Kenya, Australia, Brazil and Pakistan, the panel discusses current and future (expected and emergent) political and ethical implications of donkey trade and farming on the animal’s wellbeing, the marginalized donkey keepers, the (un)licensed exporters, the factory importers, and the consumers of ejiao.