• A Question of Sex: Cloning, Culture, and Legitimacy Among American Quarter Horses

    Author(s):
    Jeannette Vaught (see profile)
    Date:
    2018
    Group(s):
    Agricultural History, Animal Studies, Gender Studies, Science and Technology Studies (STS)
    Subject(s):
    Animals--Study and teaching, Science--Study and teaching, Technology--Study and teaching, United States, Area studies, Americans--Social life and customs, Twenty-first century
    Item Type:
    Article
    Tag(s):
    cloning, horses, sex, Animal studies, Science and technology studies (STS), American studies, 21st-century American culture, Gender and queer studies, Gender and sexuality
    Permanent URL:
    http://dx.doi.org/10.17613/M69S1KK0W
    Abstract:
    Quarter Horses are considered one of the earliest and most enduringly popular breeds of horse that is “native” to the United States. The American Quarter Horse Association formed as a breed registry in 1940, and set clear rules for what horses could be called Quarter Horses in its stud book. Recently, after several years of legal back-and-forth on whether to allow cloned horses to be eligible for AQHA registration, the AQHA denied that clones could be Quarter Horses, and rewrote its studbook parentage requirements to explicitly state that a registered horse must have two parents — one male, one female. Echoing the rhetoric of contemporary anti-gay marriage legislation such as the 1998 Defense of Marriage Act, the AQHA objected to the inherent queerness of cloning, and retreated to conservative ideas of an offspring’s legitimacy. This essay traces the contentious debate about the place of cloning in a breed-defining studbook -- one that is historically invested in American cultural traditions tied to conservative definitions of family and kin (whether human or animal) that support heteronormative sex. The example of Quarter Horse cloning situates this technology as a key marker of the biological Anthropocene, and illuminates cultural ideas that have shaped what it means to breed and to be a breed. Cloning cracks open the foundations — genetic and cultural — that have supported the ties between “America” and “America’s Horse,” and offers a broader examination of its redemptive potential in light of its challenge to conservative definitions of a life form’s legitimacy based on its parentage.
    Metadata:
    xml
    Published as:
    Journal article     Show details
    Publisher:
    DePauw University
    Pub. Date:
    September 12, 2018
    Journal:
    Humanimalia: A journal of human/animal interface studies
    Volume:
    10
    Issue:
    1
    ISSN:
    2151-8645
    Status:
    Published
    Last Updated:
    4 years ago
    License:
    All Rights Reserved

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