Unruly Bodies: Queer Taxonomies and Trans-Species Becomings

This article considers the social impact of classification systems from a queer multispecies perspective and turns to speculative literary realms to shake the epistemic foundations of western taxonomy. By embracing a transecological ethics informed by critical animal studies, the article analyzes the creative works of Oliver Baez Bendorf, Callum Angus, and Nathan Adler and the ways in which they map a territory of interspecies kinship and queer liberation in relationally mutual terms. The article argues that these narratives of fluid transition across species lines evoke dreams of interspecies solidarity against epistemic oppression, enabled by shapeshifting motifs and a language of corporeal reciprocity, while also prompting readers to envision multispecies kinship as the future of humanity in its becoming.