Naisargi N. Davé’s Indifference argues for an interspecies ethics premised on mutual regard, one in which care is born not of love, but of indifference. Indifference as an ethos relies on a playful assault on curiosity, one of the foundations of the anthropological endeavor. In this talk, Davé explores personhood beyond the human, and ethics beyond curiosity.
Naisargi N. Davé is Professor of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her work concerns intra- and interspecies ethics, politics, and relationality in contemporary India. Davé is the author of two award-winning books, Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being and Queer Activism in India: A Story in the Anthropology of Ethics, both from Duke University Press. She is currently working on a third book, Murder: The Social Life of Violent Death in 21st Century India.