What is the human, anyway?

The “human” is a historically constructed category with political and social agency, and in Western science and culture sets up a hierarchical distinction from other animals and forms of life. In this process of differentiation, animality has been racialized, and used as a means of limiting freedom and protections to members of humankind that threaten a fantasy of white superiority. How do these hierarchies and distinctions persist in the shaping of policy and social relations? How might thinking across species reveal new opportunities for liberation work across different forms of oppression wrought by racism, sexism, ableism, imperialism, and capitalism? And, thinking beyond the animal, how might we turn to other forms of interspecies connections and multi-species agencies to recalibrate the meaning of the human for survival on our damaged planet?