WP+Book+3,+Ep +3+Animal+Studies

Book 3, Ep.
3 | Animal Studies Revisited

SPEAKERS
Marcelle Kosman, Hannah McGregor
(Witch, Please Theme Music plays) (Dance of the
Priestesses by Victor Herbert Orchestra)
Hannah McGregor 00:04
Hello and welcome to Witch, Please a fortnightly podcast about
the Harry Potter world. I'm Hannah McGregor.
Marcelle Kosman 00:10

And I'm Marcelle Kosman, suddenly realizing that I never
completed the part in the script where I transition smoothly from
my name to the sorting chat. So here we are.

Oh, how do we get here? Wow, magical.

This really speaks to where I'm at in the semester. I don't know
about you, Hannah. But if it doesn't look like a flashing glaring
error, I don't even see it.

Oh, I am barely holding it together. So what do you want to talk
about in this sorting chat?

Well, I thought that it might be fun since today, we are returning to
the topic of animals, if we considered what magical creature we
would love to encounter and why. And I'm thinking that the
magical creature in question could be from any genre, any series,
any franchise, you know, it could be the Hamburglar if you want,
like whatever. (Hannah and Marcelle laugh) Truly the
Hamburglar is the Robin Hood of the 20th century.
(laughs) Stealing from the corporation, distributing hamburgers to
the poor. No, actually, I have an answer to this. And this answer
comes with a very brief anecdote, which is that on Saturday, my
bubble couple, the couple that I am bubbled with, came over for
dinner.

I love the term bubble couple.

And we were talking about what to watch after dinner. And I was
like, oh, Have either of you seen Raya and the dragon? And they
had, but also Cynara was like, every time we come over here, you
try to get us to watch something with a dragon in it. And I was like
that can't possibly be true. (Marcelle laughs) And she was like,
Yes, you are always pushing dragon content. You always want to
watch things with dragons. And I was like, I don't think this is an
accurate characterization of my media consumption. But now that
I think about it, I fucking love dragons, man.
Oh, all of my favorite fantasy novels when I was a kid were the
ones that were setting worlds where you get to ride dragons. If
there is dragon riding, if there is forming a magical psychic bond
with a dragon, if there is some sort of anything where like you
made a dragon that dragon is like, I choose you and then you get
on that dragon and you fly into the sky. That's it. I want to be
friends with a dragon. (Soundbite of dragon roaring) (Marcelle
laughs) I especially love the dragons in How to Train a Dragon.
Because those dragons are like giant kitties. (Marcelle coos)
That you ride!

That's very cute. I have never read these stories. I will have to.
How To Train Your Dragon is based on books, but it is a movie.
It's a very sweet animated movie about resisting toxic masculinity
while also befriending dragons, so I think you should watch it.

I think I'm going to stop recording this podcast right now and
throw all of my grading out the window and go and watch it
immediately.

(laughs) What magical creature would you like to encounter?

(laughs) Well, I mean, I also really love dragons.

Yeah, dragons rule.

Dragons are awesome. I definitely have a real passionate interest
in unicorns. (Soundbite of unicorn running and neighing) But
to be frank, I don't especially want to meet a unicorn. I mean,
maybe that's just the Molly Grue in me because I never will,
because I missed that opportunity. But for some reason, like I was
thinking about this last night, the magical creature that came to
mind is Falcor the luck dragon from A Never Ending Story, which
by the way is too scary for children. Like, that movie traumatized
me for years. I tried rewatching it as an adult, one, it's very bad.
It's not a good movie. But it is also devastating. (laughs) It's too
scary and too sad for kids. But maybe that's why Falcor, the luck
dragon, really sticks out to me as the one like friendly part of the
movie.

(laughs) Of an otherwise harrowing film.
(laughs) Yeah, yeah, I don't know. For whatever reason, I just find
myself very charmed and enchanted by luck dragons, in
particular.

I feel like the favorite childhood movies of millennials really
prepared us for what the world would be like because they're all
devastating films about losing your innocence.

(laughs) Ohhhh…Touche.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Well, there's no dragons in this book.
But there's always dragons in my heart. So, shall we continue?

Oh, let's.
(Witch, Please Theme Music plays)

Do you ever find yourself partway through a story and you really
feel like you know where the plot is going, but you have no
recollection of reading it? Is it deja vu? Is it a popular storytelling
convention? Not today, Satan, it's revision, the segment where we
revisit what we've covered already, so we can build on that
knowledge with brand new content.

(laughs) Whew. So we're returning to animal studies in this
episode. I think this is the first time we've circled back around to a
theoretical field.

Like, intentionally. (laughs)
Like, intentionally. Which means that we've got two main jobs in
the segment. One, a quick refresher on what we covered in our
first episode on animal studies and to an expansion of your,
Marcelle’s, extremely important magical creatures charts in light
of the new characters we encounter in Harry Potter and the
Prisoner of Azkaban.

I really appreciate your trust in me with doing all of the heavy
lifting for this episode by updating that chart. (Hannah laughs)
Alright, friends, as you may recall from episode three, animal
studies is a field interested in cultural representations of animals,
and what those representations tell us about how we're
understanding and constructing the category of the human. So
the idea that humans are not animals, that in fact we're defined by
our distance from animals is an ideology, one that produces
discourses, specifically forms of knowledge that distinguish
humans and animals that in turn are expressed as tropes that are
frequently used to dehumanize certain types and certain
categories of people by comparing them to animals.

So we looked at how feminist scholars like Donna Haraway have
challenged this divide by suggesting that humans aren't
autonomous separate creatures, but are rather entangled with
each other as well as with animals and technologies. We don't
really talk about cyborgs, but maybe one day we will. We also
touched on how Indigenous scholars like Billy Ray Belcourt have
critiqued the human animal divide as a colonial construct. And we
spent some time talking about the history of biological racism,
particularly how tropes of animality have been used and continue
to be used to dehumanize Black people.

Definitely. It's also probably worth harkening back to our
discussion of liberalism in episode nine about the Gothic. In that
episode, we talked about Aragog and the Basilisk and the
limitations of liberal tolerance, the idea that we should be
compassionate towards some forms of difference, but that other
forms of difference are way beyond the pale. And Hagrid functions
for us as the liminal figure who both is and is not of the wizarding
world, and the animal world, or the magical creature world and
whose judgment is often framed as being a little bit suspect when
it comes to dangerous creatures.

I mean, he assigns his students a book that bites, it's not great
judgment, always.

(laughs) It is, in fact, suspect.
Hannah McGregor 08:47S

It’s suspect, it's a little suspect. But before we dive further into the
field of animal studies, Marcelle, I need to hear about the new
critters we encounter in this book.

(laughs) Okay, before I tell you about the updates to the chart, I
really want to share that I was trying to come up with a new set of
terminology to distinguish humans from nonhumans. And the best
I could come up with was peeps and creeps. (Hannah laughs)
You know, like creepy crawlies. But there are so many humans
who are creeps in this series, that it just didn't seem like a useful
set of terms to categorize. So, perhaps listeners have some
suggestions, some useful suggestions for some fun ways that we
can rename these categories of humans and nonhumans. And
also, I have renamed human-adjacent to human-ish. And that was
another one that I couldn't think of a cute rhyming, like peeps,
creeps, and in betweeps, it's I don't know, I couldn't. It wasn't it
wasn't working for me.

It's cute terminology, but it's also incredibly not functional, or
functional. And I think it actually does the thing that we are
critiquing.

(laughs) Yeah, precisely. So I don't actually think that we
released the chart that I made the first time around. It wasn't very
good. So what I've done is I've borrowed from the style of the
character alignment chart to sort of simplify how people and
creatures, either magic or non magic are sort of mapped out in
relation to one another. And so what I have along the top axis, I
have magical, unclear and non magical. And then along the side
axis, I have human and to note that the categories within human
are not mutually exclusive, human-ish, and non human. So in the
not mutually exclusive human magical quadrant, I have you know,
Witch, Wix, Wiz for our magical people. Hag-

Hypothetically. Yeah, I don't think we ever meet a hag, but sure.

We never meet a hag, no. And then I have werewolf and animagi.
And so, werewolf has a double asterisk, because the double
asterisk notes the fact that JK Rowling says that this group of
people is not human. But we're confident that she's wrong. And
especially drawing on the bonus interview that we had with our
friend and listener, Lauren, who talked about hybrid vigor, and
shooting ahead to a book that we have not gotten to yet but the
fact that Lupin is able to parent a child, a human child, is
indicative of the fact that he is in fact, still human, JK Rowling.

De-categorizing them as human is, I think, troubling in a way that I
would love to spend more time talking about as we move forward.
Yeah, the idea that becoming a werewolf knocks you out of the
category of human is fucked up. It's fucked up. Yeah, that's the
one.

(laughs) That's the technical term.

Especially if you are claiming that werewolf-ism is metaphorical,
which is a claim that has often been made about this series.
Okay, so I don't think we have time to exhaustively go through
every category here. But can you point to some interesting ones,
or some that really stood out to you?

Yeah, for sure. Okay, so one of the big changes that happens in
this chart of characters and creatures is that we no longer have
an example of a magical rat, who we know by name. Again, it are
unclear if these creatures are magical, or if they are, I don't know
why put them in the human category Sorry, I'm sorry. I'm just
realizing right now as I'm looking at this that I've made a big goof
in the chart and I will fix it before we make it public. But anyway.

Yeah, it's really important that everybody knows that currently
Marcelle has put owls in under human-ish rather than
nonhumans.

Snakes, owls, cats, rats and toads are all in human-ish. (laughs)

Human-ish category. Whereas giant squids, which are
significantly more intelligent, are in the nonhuman category.
Listen.
Yeah, it's a goof.

I think what is interesting about the mental exercise of attempting
to categorize these different creatures is both how it helps us to
think through the very question of categorization, or uncategorize-
ability, and all of the things that sort of slip through any possible
categories, right, so we've got these really clear, like, Okay, you're
magical, and you're human, cool. You're a witch, a wizard, a Wix.
You're non magical and non human, you're a dog. But then in
between, there's all of these contested spaces of like, you know,
the human-ish, for example, where you've got goblins and
centaurs, where it's like, okay, you know, to what degree is
human-ish a legal and political definition that is being leveraged
within the wizarding world to strip goblins and centaurs and house
elves have their rights?

Yes, exactly. And how is it for example, that a centaur would be
less human than an animagi who is a human who in fact,
becomes a full animal when they transform. So these are all very
sort of complicated, complicated things that as I have categorized
them are really just here for conversation and not at all for
economic purposes. (laughs)

Just a decisive declaration. But the really neat thing I think about
what this book does to these categories is that it has introduced
all of these characters who you've had to put double asterisks
beside or cross out or they are not mutually exclusive because
animagi and werewolves, in particular, really mess with the whole
human, non-human, human/animal divide.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, so there's one. I think one final thing that I think
is worth mentioning about what we've added to the chart, at least
in this segment, we'll talk about other things later.

Flobber worms, right?

It is, in fact, flob- No, it's not. It's not flobber worms. So okay, we
have added a cat and a dog to the list of animals who we know by
name. Now the cat is, I think, further evidence that at least in the
series, all cats are magical. Because our only other named cat
who we know is Mrs. Norris. So now we have Crookshanks and
Mrs. Norris, both of whom are distinctly magical cats. And then we
have the addition of Ripper, Aunt Marge’s horrible dog, who is
definitely not magical, and is definitely an asshole. So I believe
that this is further evidence that all dogs are not magical.

(laughs) Them’s fighting words.

(laughs) An interesting point of contrast. Anyway, I'll leave the
chart there. And we'll come back to some of these things as we
move into further categories. I guess the only other thing worth
mentioning in this segment is something again, we'll come back to
it. But Defense Against the Dark Arts this year is largely focused
on creatures. And so then combined with Care of Magical
Creatures, we have a bunch of new creatures added to our list to
sort of complicate and trouble any kind of strict categorization.
Oh, sorry, any kind of strict CAT-igorzation.

And it's really interesting to see that all of those Care of Magical
Creatures, and all of those Defense Against the Dark Arts
creatures are all kind of in this magical nonhuman category, which
takes us back to that, like, what are the magical nonhumans that
get cared for? And what are the magical nonhumans that get
defended against? I'm excited to talk about this more. But before
we do, I think we could add a few more tools to our theoretical
animal studies toolkit. What do you think?

I think that sounds great. Let's do it.

Now that our backpacks are filled with all this new data-ooh,
backpacks, full of charts. We're heading directly to transfiguration
class, the segment where we transfigure what we thought we
knew into brand new sets of questions and ideas. Now, Marcelle, I
used the preparation for this episode as an opportunity to finally
read a book that I purchased several years ago, at a vegan store
in Portland. (Marcelle laughs) I picked it up because I thought
the title was read. And then it sat on my shelf, as do so many of
the books that I purchase, until finally the correct moment arrived
to read it. And that moment was this one, the book is called
Racism as Zoological Witchcraft, a guide to getting out it is by Aph
Ko. She is the founder of Black Vegans Rock, particularly, she's
sort of an activist and writer and thinker, doing organizing work
specifically around Black veganism, like working against anti
Black racism, and working for Animal Liberation are not only
intersecting struggles, but are actually the same struggle.
So that's sort of the whole premise of the book. It's a super

interesting book. And I would actually really recommend it to our
listeners. Like she opens it by talking about how there's a lot of
really interesting theory about all of these ideas about, you know,
the relation between the human and the animal and like, the
history of racial categories, and how so much of this cutting edge
theory is super inaccessible to people outside of the university.
And her whole project with this book is to sort of take these
theoretical conversations about animals and about white
supremacy, and bring them out of academia and make them more
accessible. And she particularly does that by continually tying
these arguments into popular culture, because her whole
argument is that big theoretical discussions become much more
accessible when we connect them to media and cultural
touchpoints. So I was like, Well, we are on the same page.

Yeah, that! interesting, is also one of bell hooks’s big arguments
that popular culture is where pedagogy is. Yeah, love this.

So the project of this book is to further conversations about anti
racism and animal liberation by pointing out that they are not just
intersecting struggles, not like, oh, here are these two separate
struggles that have some interesting overlaps. Her argument is
that they're actually both responses to the violence of white
supremacy, which in her words, “uses both minoritized bodies and
animalady to communicate and reinscribe a mythical fantasy of
racial superiority,” end quote, so I'm not going to sort of describe
the entire book to you, she's got this whole really interesting
argument about witchcraft as a way of conceiving of how white
supremacy operates. And so she writes at one point, quote, “to
have the power to ingest someone's soul into restuff their essence
with your own is one of the unique tenants of racial terrorism, the
ways in which the dominant class gets to determine whose life
matters and who's doesn't, as well as who is human and who is
animal constitutes a zoological sport,” end quote, that's what has
been making me think about this whole, like, zoological
categorization of things, is by its very nature, an attempt to say
like, you know, who constitutes the human and who doesn't.
And we see that all over the place in these books, all over the
place in Hogwarts in terms of how it's structured, this constant
sort of conceptual dehumanization, which for Ko both analyzes
people of color, but also anchors animal oppression to race. So
basically, like animal oppression, is itself a sort of racialized power
dynamic. It's not just about sort of who's human and not human,
it's who's white, because whiteness, and humaneness become
overlapping categories, right? So who's on the inside, who's on
the outside, right? So the central argument that she's making is
that animals can't be read as a metaphor for people of color, or
vice versa, because their oppression is so intertwined. And she
goes on to argue, and I think this is really pertinent to what we are
doing in the project of this podcast. She goes on to argue that we
need to un-discipline our thinking by breaking out of these colonial
categories of race, gender, class, etc, she writes, “the social
categories, were born out of an oppressive system, the very
system activists are claiming to fight,” end quote. So, you know,
this is the thing we've come back to time and again, like, we tried
to talk about gender, and we're like, oh, yeah, absolutely cannot
talk about gender without talking about race and class, we tried to
talk about animals, and it's like, Oh, can't talk about animals
without also talking about race and colonialism and feminist
interventions.
And like, we're pulling out these conversations for functional

reasons, right? Because it's hard to talk about everything, always
at the same time. And so you pull out a thing like animal studies
and say, Okay, here's an interesting lens, or we, you know, pull
things into a chart and say, Oh, this is an interesting lens. But
there's this really important piece of doing any of this analytical
thinking, where you always have to be not only critiquing the
object of study, but also critiquing the very lenses through which
you are reading things, and what is visible or invisible, as a
function of those lenses.

Mm hmm. It's making me think about this thing that I'm constantly
telling my students, which is that it's always easier to see
someone else's ideology than your own. And so one of the
reasons why using this lens to look at Harry Potter is so effective
is because we can see how the ideological division between
human and non human functions at the level of Harry Potter in a
way that it's really hard for us to see in the world that we live in.

Yeah, exactly. So I mean, that's part of why cultural texts are so
good to think with, because they sort of externalize these things in
a way that we can look at them and understand how they're
operating a little bit better. And these kinds of disciplines of
knowledge are also good to think about, right? Animal studies
helps us see things we wouldn't have seen otherwise. And also
sort of invites us to keep coming back and being like, you know,
what do we miss when we use one lens and not another? For
example, you know, what do we miss if we go immediately to the
desire to think about magical creatures as metaphors for the
operations of race in the wizarding world, right? That when we
want to swap those things out and say, this animal isn't an animal,
the animal is a metaphor for humans, you know, are we missing
this way in which the whole point of how white supremacy
operates is that the minoritized human and the animal aren't
metaphors for each other, they are different iterations of the same
kind of system of power that says, we get to sort of label and
control and dominate everything that is outside of the dominant
ruling class.

Yeah. And we see through history that white people have treated
non white people as stock, like the same term that we would use
to describe, you know, cattle or horses. Ugh. Yeah, okay.

Yeah, there's an opportunity. And I think, particularly when
thinking about Buckbeak, and about Lupin, and maybe about
Sirius as well, but to think here about how sort of the animalized
other, like the monstrous, not quite human other points us in the
direction of thinking about how categorizing people as non-human
is an act of violence, and how that violence is expressed in terms
of both racial violence and violence against animals. That those
are sort of both systems of violence that are operating here, you
know, like, we don't have to think about Buckbeak as being a
metaphor, right? We can think about Buckbeak as an animal.

Right. And I think there are ways in which the novel invites us to
set up Buckbeak and Sirius as not being metaphors, one for the
other, but rather as two subjects on the receiving end of a violent,
oppressive system of power.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, I really want to dig deeper into that. Before we
do, I want to add one thing, which is that Ko acknowledges
throughout the book that there are lots of reasons why,
particularly people of color push back against these kinds of
linkages between racial violence and violence against animals.
Including things like how readily a lot of white activists and white
theorists leap to trying to sort of rehumanize both animals and
things, like the object world at the expense of actually doing
meaningful work on racial justice. How much easier it is
sometimes for white people to imagine humanizing a lamp than to
imagine actually fighting actively for the rights of people of color,
and how often white veganism has been used as a tool to justify
violence against Black people and Indigenous people and people
of color.
We particularly see that in PETA’s campaign against the seal

hunt, which has systematically deprived Inuit people of one of
their traditional forms of making money, just one of their traditional
economies and practices and has vilified them in a way that is just
fundamentally colonial and racist. So like, there is a reason why
this work has sometimes been at odds. And I think it is really
important to keep that in mind. And I also think, you know, her
book is really interesting, and I think, invites some rethinking that I
think might help us understand pieces of this book in different
ways.

I love that. I think that's a really useful reminder. Especially
because when we turn to Buckbeak and Sirius to look at them a
bit more carefully, we should also remember that Buckbeak who
is a creature and Sirius who is a white person, can neither of them
stand in as metaphors for people of color.

Yes, precisely. Alright, shall we dive deeper into this book?

Let's do it.

You know, we love any excuse for a sound effect. Cat!
(Soundbite of cat meowing)

Werewolf! (Soundbite of wolf howling)

Capitalism! (Soundbite of a high pitched note)

Old man white literary critic! (Soundbite of old white man
saying bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla)

Thank goodness, it's time for OWL’s! (Soundbite of an owl
hooting) A very serious segment in which we put our updated
theoretical knowledge into practice. It is not at all an excuse for
silly not-serious sound effects.

Absolutely not. This is a serious podcast. There's no whimsy
here.

Absolutely not.

So what we really want to ask is how the new creatures that we
encounter in Prisoner of Azkaban put pressure on our previous
cat-egories of magical and non magical creatures.

I raised this point when we were talking about the chart, but just
as a quick example, we now have two cats. We have Mrs. Norris
and we have Crookshanks, both of whom are distinctly smarter
than my cats.

Yeah, my cats. (laughs) My cats are not helping bring people to
justice by stealing lists and bringing them to people, like no.

So we return to the question, are all cats magical in this universe?
Or are these two cats endowed with magical powers that our very
bad cats are not?

It's such an important question. And it's, so when we see other
magical creatures, we encounter them in the wizarding world, we
don't encounter any banal creatures that turn out to have magical
abilities. I'm saying this very slowly, because I'm trying to test it in
my head. Like, we think Scabbers is an ordinary rat, because he's
distinguished from those other rats at the magic pet store that do
cool tricks. But it turns out that he's the opposite of an ordinary
right. He is, in fact, not a rat at all.

Right? He is a metaphorical rat.

He's a real rat, that guy. (Marcelle laughs) And then we think that
we see an ominous dog. But that dog also turns out to just be a
guy.

Mm hmm. Yeah. (laughs)

And when we encounter regular animals, quote, unquote, regular
animals, mundane animals, Harry can talk to the snake, but the
snake is still a snake. Like Aunt Marge’s dogs seem to just be
dogs. But we don't meet any mundane cats, nor do we meet any
mundane owls. And so I think it remains very unclear textually
whether all cats and all owls are magical and muggles just don't
notice. Or these are special magical owls and cats. I would say
that the presence of magical rats at the pet store would suggest
the ladder. That they're different, that they've somehow been
imbued with magic. Because there's a distinction made between
like a regular rat, you get at a pet store and then the magic rat you
would get in Diagon Alley?

Mm hmm. Yeah. But is it still only certain types of animals that can
be magical? You know, like, I'm thinking about Fang, who has
Hagrid’s boarhound. And I don't know if any of you listeners out
there knew this. But like boarhound is just another word for Great
Dane and I don't.

Oh, that's news to me. That's news to me as of this second right
now.

(laughs) And so like, not only is Fang a regular dog breed that
you can get anywhere. But he's the only example of a dog that is
a dog in the magical world.

Just a big good dog.

So again, is it that dogs are already like maybe sufficiently
connected to humans that they don't need to be magicalized? I
don't know.

I really don't know. (laughs)

Okay, listen, these questions are too hard. Let's move on to
something easier. Let's talk about the characterization of the
different human/animal relationships.

Yeah. So I think this is really interesting when we're thinking about
the relationship between the human and the animal and how
connection to animals is often treated as suspect, in a way that I
think is interesting, particularly in the light of Ko’s ideas about
domination and white supremacy. And so we repeatedly see
these characters who like animals a little bit too much, or who,
you know, humanize their animals a little bit too much, or who
don't properly understand how animals at the end of the day are
not humans, and treat them with according suspicion. And so
we've got you know, a little bit of that with like, Hermione likes
Crookshanks a little too much because she's willing to let her cat
murder her friend's pet.

(laughs) She does lack some boundaries, I would say.
Yeah, some lack of boundaries with that cat. Right. And then Ron,
also, you know his relationship with Scabbers ends up being cast
as a little suspect, because Scabbers does turn out to be an adult
man.

Yeah. That's awkward.

It's a very sinister turn of events. And then, you know, Filch with
Mrs. Norris and Aunt Marge with Ripper. Like, these are all
examples of characters who it's like, Oh, you like an animal too
much. That means there's something off about you. And, you
know, I think our biggest example of that is Hagrid, you know, he's
a good guy. He's a lovable character. He's one of the heroes, but
he is as we saw in the last book, he is constantly framed by the
text as trusting animals too much, as having poor judgment when
it comes to what animals are safe and which ones are dangerous,
as like, not knowing where to place those boundaries.
And I think there's frequently an implicit and it becomes

increasingly explicit as the series goes on. connection between
his over trusting of animals and his being half giant. Because
giants are cast in the wizarding world as non-human. So Hagrid is
not quite human. And so that ties into his being overly
sympathetic towards the nonhuman. And the text does this thing,
you know, like we talked about in episode nine, where it's like,
sometimes that's good. But there can be too much of a good
thing. Sometimes it's dangerous and silly. And our good,
reasonable white men characters are good at recognizing those
boundaries. Right? And know where to, like properly erect the
boundary between the human and the nonhuman and know how
to have, you know, Harry knows how to have a pet, you know, he
and Headwig, their relationship is the right way.
You know, and, Dumbledore knows, you know, and Lupin knows,
you know, what animals you need to defend yourself against and
which ones you don't, so there is, I think, something happening in
not just in the way the book itself categorizes these creatures, but
in the way that it tells us to trust or not trust characters by their
successful upholding of these proper and naturalized categories.
And sometimes that is about being more compassionate, right?
Sometimes it's about the fact that like, Harry, you know, treats
house elves well, and that he talks to goblins and that he, you
know, like he doesn't do some of these things, but again, it's like
Harry treats house elves properly. Hermione takes it too far.

Yeah. So this conversation about Hagrid is making me want to
revisit the scene in Book Two when Harry and Ron, so they're in
the Forbidden Forest, and they're meeting Aragog and Aragog
looses his millions of offspring on them. And so this, I think, in line
with what we're saying about how the book wants us to judge
Hagrid, is supposed to provide us with evidence that like Hagrid is
mistaken. But I think if we resist that framing, we might think
about why Hagrid is able to have this relationship with a spider
who would otherwise allow his millions of offspring to feed on the
bodies of two tween boys.
(laughs) So I think with these tools, we can resist the narratives

that the text is giving to us and think about, like, how might we
question the assumptions that we make as we're reading and as
we're sort of like, Ooh, yeah, Hagrid takes it too far. And ooh,
yeah. Hermione is taking it too far. So examining those sort of
knee jerk reactions that we have, and maybe pushing our ideas a
little bit on that front.

Yeah. For those who don't know what we're talking about, we're
referring forward in the series to SPEW and Hermione's house elf
activism, which we will talk about so much more when we get to
the appropriate books. But I do think this conversation about
Hagrid, and the question of him taking it too far in terms of his
trust of potentially dangerous creatures, leads us, I think, to a
conversation about Buckbeak.

I think that's a great idea.

You know, that initial encounter we have with the Hippogriff 's
invites us to think about these creatures as dangerous if
interacted with improperly, fine, if respected. And very clear that
like Draco brings it on himself, he is not listening to instructions,
he is not being respectful. He mishandles this potentially
dangerous creature, he gets hurt as a result. And then what
Buckbeak is subjected to is sort of the immediate retaliation of the
state, which is very clearly figured in the book as an extension of
white supremacist and capitalist power in the form of the Malfoy
family, right, that we constantly see the way that they are able to
just reach into and extend the state as an arm of their own power.
And so Buckbeak immediately gets sort of sucked into this

system that's like a one way track to a public execution for this
Hippogriff. And so this is where I was like, okay, thinking about
Ko’s sort of pushing back on the metaphorical. And thinking then
instead about how, like Buckbeak is not necessarily a metaphor.
Right? For the, for example, the state's violent power against
people of color, that if we say, No, it's not metaphorical. He is an
animal. And so what we are seeing here is sort of the way that the
state as an arm of white supremacy gets to reach out and be the
ultimate determinant of what animals are safe and what animals
are not, of what a proper relationship is, of what gets to be inside
and what gets to be outside.
And so I'm thinking this through, out loud, because this is what
the segment always is, for me at least. But there's something
interesting there in that, like, we are encouraged to respect the
characters who know how these boundaries should work, and
who can navigate them and uphold them properly, these
boundaries between the human and the animal, while
simultaneously being shown that the state should not be allowed
to make those choices.

Right. So one of the things that's happening with Hagrid, as the
Care of Magical Creatures instructor or professor, is that he
knows that hippogryphs are capable of significant damage. And
when he introduces the students to the hippogryphs, he's very
clear like so the students are afraid, and rightly so. Because
humans exist in the world with these creatures, we don't have
authority over them. And so Hagrid is introducing the students to a
way of respectfully engaging with these creatures, because they
don't have authority. And so they can't control the behavior of the
creature. While it does result in injury, this is, I think, actually a
really valuable lesson for these students, which is that you can't
just act any way you want, like using real Alberta, Canada
example.
You can't go hiking in the wilderness with a backpack full of

peanut butter sandwiches and a hunk of roast beef, and not
expect to be in danger if you encounter a bear or if you encounter
a cougar, right? So like, there are quite real limits to the
expression of human authority over the animal. And so being
educated in safe relational practices makes a lot of sense. And so
then what we see happen is Draco does not listen. He is
deliberately disrespectful to Buckbeak, he gets injured. And rather
than having to face the consequences of his own hubris, he being
representative of white supremacy and his family are able to then
reach out and define this otherwise autonomous creature as
being dangerous, even though we know that he's not dangerous if
you interact with him respectfully. Ugh.

Yeah. (laughs) It's interesting, I think to note how continually the
question of like, interacting with them respectfully interacting with
them,not respectfully, like how that is so constantly filtered for us
through you know, these white male characters who do it right or
wrong, right. You know, and thinking about other pieces of the
franchise, right? Like we've got Newt Scamander as this model of
like, when you've got the right attitude, all these magical creatures
that might seem dangerous are actually you're friends, but like,
you know, what that right attitude is, is a sort of like, zoo a logical
comprehension and categorization of those animals. Right? A sort
of ability to control them. And part of that control entails respect,
but it is still a certain kind of dominance. Right? So it's like, do we
have any models in this book of people who are like, throwing out
the whole premise of hierarchy and dominance? Or do we only
have models of people who use their dominance well, or use their
dominance badly?

Hmm, that's a really good question. My immediate thought is no,
that there's always the assumption of control. And like, learning
the tools to control.

I mean, I think the closest thing we have is Hagrid. Right? Who is
somebody who really seems, you know, to the greatest degree of
any characters we see, seems to be disinterested in hierarchies
and dominance, disinterested in categorizing some things as too
dangerous or to beyond the pale and some things as safe. You
know, that there's a sort of seed of something quite radical in how
Hagrid approaches the world. But the narrative tells us over and
over again that he is wrong.

Mm hmm. What about and this is maybe going to take us away
from Buckbeak.
I'll allow it.

(laughs) But what about thinking about Sirius, James and Peter
and their friendship with Lupin? So can we think about their
willingness to learn how to transform into animals as a way of
keeping their friend who cannot help but turn into an animal? Like
keeping their friend company, like being companions? Can we
think about that maybe in terms of a radical rejection of hierarchy,
and instead, like a willingness to approach animality as a kind of
new way of being?

Yeah, I really like that. I think that there's something really
interesting in that, that, you know, when this thing happens to their
friend, that certainly within the wizarding world is framed as, like, it
turns you into a monster who cannot be in society with other
people. That's, you know, very clear at the end of the book, when
it comes out that Lupin’s a werewolf, he has to leave.
And there's a little bit of Lupin sort of saying like, actually, yes,
that is true. I am too dangerous, which I don't think is fair, but
could just be sort of internalized. Like the internalization of these
oppressive narratives. But, you know, despite that being the
dominant understanding of werewolves in wizarding society, his
friend's response is not to cast him out or reject him or to,
necessarily chained him up or control him, but to transform
themselves in a way that lets them understand him better, and
lets them be closer to him. That is really interesting. And it's a
thread that is sort of picked up and then dropped, right? Like the
fact of Harry's father being an animagus. The idea of taking up
this powerful magical possibility and transforming yourself never
comes up again in the rest of the series, really.

Yeah, it really doesn't.

It really doesn't. But I think you're right. I think that the presence of
these animagi who's specifically use their magic to have a
friendship with a werewolf, points us towards how the animagii is
an acceptable form of human/animal boundary crossing can
challenge the vilification of werewolves and other kinds of magical
creatures, that it does fuck with that boundary. And it does it in all
kinds of ways, like the heightened relationship with Crookshanks
that Sirius has, you know, his ability to sort of really see the
potential that Crookshanks has, you know, even the link that is
made between Sirius and Buckbeak and both of them escaping
from this oppressive system. There's something interesting there.
I don't think the text really takes us all the way.

Definitely not. No. But too, if we think about the fact that Animagi
still need to be controlled by the Ministry.

Documented. Yeah.

Yeah, you're expected to register with the Ministry so that the
Ministry will know who has the ability to become an animal. And
the fact that these three kids didn't, is wonderful. Never, like not
even when they graduated from Hogwarts, they're just like, uhuh,
no thank you. None of your business.

You know, their refusal of the state's power in that sense, and the
refusal of sort of, you know, the coercive desire of the Ministry to
be surveilling everyone, you know, extends to how being an
animagus helps Sirius to survive Azkaban. Because when he
changes into a dog, the Dementors can't hurt him as much. You
know, so there is something like and eventually he's able to get
out because he can transform. And because he has this
transformation that they did not know he was capable of before
they put him in there. Hypothetically, they would have put him in
like a-

(laughs) I don't know, a dog house.

A cell with narrower bars? I don't I don't, I don't. I don't know. I
don't know, I think when we start to unpack these things, and see
how entangled they all are, that like, the whole question of the
animal, and like the otherness and the danger of the animal is
like, in divisible in these books from questions of the power of the
state, surveillance technologies, violent forms of punishment.
They're so tangled up together.

Mhm. Oh, my goodness.

Maybe the last thing that I would like us to contemplate a little bit.
The curricular decisions that place some animals in Care of
Magical Creatures, or some creatures in Care of Magical
Creatures, some creatures in Defense Against the Dark Arts and
some creatures in herbology.

Yeah. Like the mandrakes.

I mean, so on one level, I want to ask who decides what's what?
And then on another level, I want to be like, the answer to that is
less important than the question. Right? It's less important to say,
at the end of the day, who decided that a Mandrake is a plant and
not an animal, then to point out that Hogwarts itself is an
institution that categorizes creatures into certain domains of
knowledge. And that sort of coercively frames your relationship
with them by telling you before you encounter them, this is a
creature that you care for. This is a plant that you harvest. This is
a dark thing you defend yourself against.

Yeah, yeah, it would be really, really interesting to have a case
where both Care of Magical Creatures and Defense Against the
Dark Arts are introducing students to the way that you engage
with the same creature. You know, imagine Hagrid introducing
students to boggarts and being like, boggarts are actually not
anything to be afraid of. You just have to know how to de-escalate
the situation. Right, like when they turn into your greatest fear,
you just have to resist that trap. And then they'll go away.
(laughs)

They just want a backpack full of peanut butter sandwiches and
roast beef and they'll leave you alone.

But like let's go back to the Mandrake though. Okay, because the
Mandrake is like, as long as you're wearing earmuffs, the
Mandrake can't hurt you. And so I understand why it's in
herbology. But I don't understand why we would also not
encounter it in these other classes.

Probably because you can do something useful with it, right? So-

Because you can harvest it, as you said.

You can harvest it. Yeah. And maybe that's also the case with
Care of Magical Creatures, is that at the end of the day, if there is
use value, then it's worth learning how to use these things, you
know, Buckbeak does end up having use value. And if there isn't,
then what you learn to do is get rid of them.

That's right. That's right, because it's Care of Magical Creatures
and not “magical creature wizard relations.”

Yes, yes.

Hmm. Okay.

Well, I feel like we've wrapped that up. No questions remaining.
So many questions remaining.

(laughs) Oh, my gosh, is it weird that Lupin keeps a grindylow
prisoner in a fish tank in his office, is that weird? Or is that? Is it
like having a fish?

Is it weird to have a fish? Listen, I don’t have all the answers, I've
only more questions.

(laughs) That is indeed our MO. No answers.

Only questions.

Thank you, witches, for joining us for episode 16 of Witch, Please.
You can find the rest of our episodes by heading over to
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At the end of every episode we’ll shout out everyone who left us a
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It could be ham-OC but I like hammock. I mean, I also like you,
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Book 3, Ep.

3 | Animal Studies Revisited

Marcelle Kosman 00:10

Hannah McGregor 00:25

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So that's sort of the whole premise of the book. It's a super

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And like, we're pulling out these conversations for functional

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