Historical and political encounters with the nonhuman: Habitat II, the crisis of cohabitation, and the wit(h)nessing dogs

Abstract

This research addresses a set of questions regarding the agency of dogs, particularly the memory that the stray dogs of Istanbul may have historically performed during a specific episode of crisis and dislocation in the city — and how thinking of dogs as witnesses can help us in understanding wider social and political issues of displacement, inequality, exclusion and democracy. The thesis focuses on the weeks leading up to Habitat II: The Second United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, when the Istanbul local authorities, in preparation for the conference, decided to get rid of the stray dogs living on the European side of the city by poisoning them. The urge for national progress and the discourse of humanism that are manifested in the modernist interventions of Habitat II preparations are problematized. In the course of this research, I met participants from the conference organization who were involved in the ecological and political discussions surrounding it. I also looked at communities who were pushed out of the city center during the same period, including the “Saturday Mothers” and the transgender community. Human histories are always entangled with the histories of nonhumans. I tried to lay out a potentiality to think, recall, remember and wit(h)ness with the nonhuman. I argued that this potentiality for wit(h)nessing did already reverberate in the ways that we cohabit the Earth and dwell in neighborhoods. From this opening, I was able to frame the city space and its habitants differently in their plural relationality, in their ability to care and respond.