Cultural zooanthropology analyses human technological and cultural expressions from a new perspective, considering them the fruit of a hybridising relationship with the world.
Theoretical zooanthropology posits that non-human species have had a profound influence on our cultural dimension. According to this assumption, it is impossible to understand the multifaceted expressions of the human by solely analysing the qualities of Homo sapiens. For zooanthropology culture is a hybrid product, the result of the human encounter with other species rather than an autarchic human expression.
Cultural zooanthropology, therefore, rejects the traditional anthropological approach and its solipsistic view of human ontology.
Culture is the most explicit demonstration of how, far from being impermeable to nature, the human condition derives from an immersion and contamination with the world. Cultural zooanthropology, therefore, rejects the essentialist view that considers culture as the product of our ontological exceptionalism – hence, superiority.
For zooanthropology, all cultural phenomena, from art to technology, derive from a mutual encounter-confrontation with other animals. They are the fruit of the inspiration we have drawn from them and of the interest and wonder they have elicited in us.
Other species have been the pivot around which humankind has revolved for its technological and cultural development; without other species we would never have gone beyond our phylogenetic legacy. Singing, music, dancing, tattoos, hairstyles, makeup, religions, cults, technologies such as flight, and sports such as swimming or jumping were born out of our curiosity, observation, wonder, envy and ultimately the desire to emulate non-human animals.
