Abstract: In this paper I seek to offer a reading of Butler’s investigation of grievability as a deconstruction of the human.  Judith Butler’s post-2001 work has engaged with ethical and political questions related to precariousness, vulnerability and grievability.  Politically contextualising her inquiry into grievability, Butler argues that in order to make ethical claims about the rights of protection, entitlement, persistence and flourishing it is necessary first to reconsider the human subject and the grievable life.  Her work on grievability has focussed on the regulation of affect, and while this enquiry has mostly engaged with the differentiation of grievability between human lives, I seek to explore what contribution her enquiry might offer for ethics in the human-nonhuman relationship.  From this lens I will explore what conceptual resources Butler’s account might offer to inform ethics in the human-nonhuman relationship.  I offer an ecofeminist reading of Butler’s understanding of construction that links her discussion of abject bodies to nonhuman lives.  In offering a reading of Butler’s work on grievability as a deconstruction of the human, I explore the regulation of grievability with respect to nonhumans, calling into question the implications of her investigation for recognising grievability in the nonhuman sphere.