Abject Animals: Discomfort in Human–Animal Companionship explores the emotional contradictions and ethical tensions at the heart of human–animal relationships through a cross-cultural, multispecies ethnography of cats and dogs in the UK, France, and South Korea. Framing cats and dogs as “abject animals,” Julien Dugnoille examines how the treatment of animals can generate discomfort—emotional, moral, and bodily—through their commodification in cafés, markets, shelters, and homes. Drawing on Kristeva’s theory of abjection alongside the ideas of Bataille, Blanchot, and Weil, the book interrogates the commodified intimacy of contemporary human–animal companionship, revealing how labor, cuteness, and care mask underlying hierarchies and exploitation. Through richly detailed fieldwork and autoethnographic reflection, it critiques normative ideas of “healthy” companionship, arguing instead for forms of interspecies attunement that embrace discomfort and resist instrumentalization. Abject Animals is both a theoretical intervention and a call for more ethical, ego-disrupting relationships with the nonhuman.
