Torn apart: Facing non-human pain

Pain can be isolating: the pain of others is hard to imagine. This difficulty can become more significant still when attempting to bear witness to the pain of groups deemed different, lesser or other, such as non-human animals. Exploring frameworks for pain which emphasize its relational and connective qualities, especially across species borders, as well as considering activism and illustration alongside each other as practices in which bodies are used to advocate for others, how might the application of queer and ecofeminist lenses to these disciplines reveal their affinities? This article experiments with the terms TRANSLATION, AMPLIFICATION and REFRACTION to describe modes of illustrative activism which implicate the body. Through such modes of creative and corporeal empathy, what can be imagined, reached for, or described of a non-human being’s suffering?