Cary Wolfe says, “It is crucial to pay critical attention to the discourse of animality quite irrespective of the issue of how nonhuman animals are treated… because the discourse of animality has historically served as a crucial strategy in the oppression of humans by other humans—a strategy whose legitimacy and force depend, however, on the prior taking for granted of the traditional ontological distinction, and consequent ethical divide, between human and nonhuman animals. … Even though the discourse of animality and species difference may theoretically be applied to an other of whatever type, the consequences of that discourse, in institutional terms, fall overwhelmingly on nonhuman animals” (Zoontologies, 2003: xx).