Does the “cow of the future” have a body? Somaforming possibilities in human-bovine co-domestication.

In the new climatic regime, cows are at the forefront of the stage both as agents responsible for producing greenhouse gases, and as victims of a rapidly warming earth. In this presentation, I propose to examine current scientific projects that aim to “adapt cattle to climate change” by (re)forming cows’ bodies that then become sites of intervention for environmental engineering projects. First, taking already published research in animal science and genomics, I propose to read them along and against the grain through the use of science fiction. How can SF be taken as a method for opening up other ways to transform bodies – or, to somaform as SF writer Becky Chambers suggests – in modes that take into account the long shared histories of human and bovine co-domestication? Secondly, I offer to embark you in my ongoing lab ethnography with biologists and geneticists, where I am looking for traces of this “cow of the future” through her multiple modes of existence. I take this as a chance to ask what happens when the question that we thought was the actors’ might actually be ours? What kinds of detours does searching for animal agency take you to?