Undoubtedly, Creed herself strayed when she took the poignant phrase “I stray in order to be” (p. 8) from the English translation of Kristeva’s Pouvoirs de l’horreur: Essai sur l’abjection (1980) and refers to it without context. In the French passage, Kristeva invokes a linguistically complex mental state of delusion, “où je me perds pour être” (Kristeva 1980, p. 19) [“in which I lose myself in order to be,” or in the published English translation “in which I stray in order to be” (Kristeva 1982, p. 12). But through Creed’s abbreviated recitation, straying develops into a condition for existence, rather than dissolving in a psychological turmoil that may or may not lead to some existential insight.

I propose instead to regard straying as a conscious action that is neither existential nor essentialist. Instead, straying becomes a way of bringing about encounters, exploring new territories, and being brave in the process, for humans, materials and non-humans alike. 

I argue that artistic straying could be a contemporary practice that develops in response to the existence of stray animals. It is also a possibly feminist update of related (art) historically relevant exercises formulated by the flâneurs Charles Baudelaire and Walter Benjamin or the situationists Ivan Chtcheglov and Guy Debord. For example: The flâneur strolled through the cities of the twentieth century without a destination; he submerged himself unnoticed in the big city wandering wherever he wanted. He idly experienced his surroundings.