Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :Loving Animals
I propose that all animals be placed on a subjective continuum based on our connection with them. This affective connection is constituted by stories we tell about them, by our affection for them and theirs for us, and by the various ways their characters inspire us.
We're sticking with narrative here. This is a short quote, but there's a lot going on here. A lot of implicit assumptions to unpack.
Let's start with this "subjective continuum" she talks about—whenever you see or hear the word "continuum" or a related term (scale, ladder, range, etc.) a thought bubble should immediately appear over your head—"Great Chain of Being!"
That's right, our ancient friend the Great Chain of Being. Remember him? The Great Chain is an ancient but very durable idea that we can rank beings (stones, plants, animals, humans for instance) on a scale. We can place them on a hierarchy: stones at the bottom, Gods at the top. This idea is still very much alive, as we can see with Rudy's "continuum." This is not to discredit her idea—we're always drawing on ideas that the ancients pioneered—but it is helpful to be able to categorize this kind of thinking.
Okay, so what's this scale based on? "Affective connections"—the emotional, sympathetic, and empathetic connections we form with other animals. Okay, sure, we connect more with some critters (dogs) and less with others (cockroaches). But so what?
Rudy goes on to say that we can figure out the degree of connection we have with other animals based on the narratives we tell about them, and the ways their characters inspire us. So, this is pretty interesting—Rudy's idea is that we can make sense of human-animal relations in the real world much the like the way that we read and understand narratives and characters in novels.