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- [Review] Matthew Calarco. The Boundaries of Human Nature: The
Philosophical Animal from Plato to Haraway. New York: Columbia University
Press, 2022. 170 pp. ISBN9780231194730
Authors: Wendy Woodward
Abstract: [Review] Matthew Calarco. The Boundaries of Human Nature: The Philosophical Animal from Plato to Haraway. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 170 pp. ISBN9780231194730
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:29:19 PDT
- [Review] Krishanu Maiti, editor. Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and
Cultural Animals. Springer, 2021. Second Language Learning and Teaching:
Issues in Literature and Culture. 188 pp. ISBN 978-3-030-76159-2 (eBook)
Authors: Wendy Woodward
Abstract: [Review] Krishanu Maiti, editor. Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and Cultural Animals. Springer, 2021. Second Language Learning and Teaching: Issues in Literature and Culture. 188 pp. ISBN 978-3-030-76159-2 (eBook)
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:29:13 PDT
- [Review Essay] Animal Worlds after Uexküll: Ed Yong. An Immense World:
How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. New York: Random
House, 2022. 449 pp.
Authors: David Herman
Abstract: [Review Essay] Animal Worlds after Uexküll: Ed Yong. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. New York: Random House, 2022. 449 pp.
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:29:07 PDT
- Nothing More than ‘Anti-Cull Activists’: Accusations of Bias and the
Politics of Research that Advocates for Non-Human Animals
Authors: Jes Hooper et al.
Abstract: This paper explores the ethical quandary faced by researchers whose work advocates for non-human animals and whose results conflict with prevalent anthropocentric societal narratives. To problematise the concept of research bias, we qualitatively analyse contemporary political debates surrounding the treatment of animals to ascertain if, how, when, and by whom research can be conducted with scientific integrity whilst advocating for more ethical treatment of other animals. By taking a holistic approach to the issues of bias presented within the remit of human-animal studies (research concerning human-animal relations), this paper firstly addresses the historic ways in which accusations of bias are interwoven within the animal protection movement. We then explore the ongoing ways in which research concerning animal interests are politically targeted due to the threat such research presents to anthropocentric governing policies and societal practices. Finally, we analyse the legitimate causes of bias represented within the emerging field of human-animal studies. Overall, this paper highlights the pitfalls of research that advocates for animals whilst revealing the actual issues of bias that warrant further attention by the academic community.
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:28:55 PDT
- Simply Caring
Authors: Lisa Kemmerer
Abstract: Simply Caring
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:28:47 PDT
- The Mouse Colony
Authors: Katerina Tsiopos
Abstract: The Mouse Colony
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:28:38 PDT
- Can Animals Contract'
Authors: John Enman-Beech
Abstract: Animals are, or are like persons, and so should not be treated as mere property. But persons are not just non-property; they are contractors. They interact with property and with other persons. This article analyses the possibilities for a range of animals to fit within market liberal society as contractors from a legal disciplinary perspective. Some animals are capable of contract-like relationships of reciprocal exchange, and can consent, in a certain sense, to parts of such relationships. However, the dangers of the contractual frame, which is used to legitimate exploitation, may exceed the benefits. Some scholars have begun to explore these issues through the lens of animal labour, animals as workers deserving protections and benefits for their efforts. I analyse the application of contract to a variety of non-human animals and consider the discursive implications of this application, then draw out lessons for the ongoing use of animal labour framing. If we are to think through animals as workers, we should be careful to oppose the contractualization of that work – just as human worker advocates do.
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:28:30 PDT
- 'Pooped in my yard and ate my grass last night': Wild burros and
tales of belonging in Riverside County, California
Authors: Christian Hunold et al.
Abstract: Riverside County, California is home to several hundred free-roaming burros (donkeys) who frequent the open spaces surrounding and between the cities of Riverside, Moreno Valley, Loma Linda, and Redlands, as well as the public parks, private properties, residential developments and roadsides in these towns. Tales of more-than-human belonging (and not-belonging) in Riverside County render visible how multispecies places are mediated by infrastructures of consumption and infrastructures of reciprocity. Where infrastructures of consumption generate callousness, infrastructures of reciprocity sustain responsibility. We investigate these dynamics by tracing how two geographically close but infrastructurally distinctive spaces frequented by the area’s wild burros are storied. The semi-rural Reche Canyon Road connects California Highway 60 and the City of Moreno Valley to Riverside and San Bernardino County communities to the north. Burros who inhabit the canyon as their home range must contend with automobiles traveling at highway speeds and are frequently injured or killed there. The road’s design makes neither space nor time for the burros. In this setting, interspecies relationalities are embedded in, and curtailed by, the mundane violence of “roadkill” and its associated narratives of victimhood and tragedy. Infrastructural violence subsides notably in residential neighborhoods of the City of Moreno Valley frequented by the burros. How people and donkeys co-inhabit these neigborhoods is consistent with non-dualist practices of mutual accommodation theorized in multispecies urbanism literature. Here, more reciprocal infrastructures decelerate human and nonhuman animal mobilities, making both space and time for the emergence of more convivial patterns of multispecies cohabitation.
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:28:21 PDT
- Cover Page, Table of Contents, Contributor Biographies and Editorial –
Dedication to Siobhan O’Sullivan (1974-2023)
Authors: Melissa Boyde
Abstract: Animal Studies Journal 2023 12(1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Contributor Biographies and Editorial – Dedication to Siobhan O’Sullivan (1974-2023)
PubDate: Wed, 28 Jun 2023 17:28:16 PDT
- [Review] Dominic O’Key. Creaturely Forms in Contemporary Literature:
Narrating the War Against Animals. Bloomsbury Pub., 2022. 202 pp.
Authors: John Drew
Abstract: [Review] Dominic O’Key. Creaturely Forms in Contemporary Literature: Narrating the War Against Animals. Bloomsbury Pub., 2022. 202 pp.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:37 PST
- [Review] Maren Tova Linett. Literary Bioethics: Animality, Disability, and
the Human. New York University Press, 2020. Crip: New Directions in
Disability Studies. 213 pages.
Authors: Wendy Woodward
Abstract: [Review] Maren Tova Linett. Literary Bioethics: Animality, Disability, and the Human. New York University Press, 2020. Crip: New Directions in Disability Studies. 213 pages.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:33 PST
- [Review] Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani, editors. Animalia: An
Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020.
240pp.
Authors: Peta Tait
Abstract: [Review] Antoinette Burton and Renisa Mawani, editors. Animalia: An Anti-Imperial Bestiary for Our Times. Durham: Duke University Press, 2020. 240pp.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:29 PST
- [Review] Tom Tyler. Game: Animals, Video Games, and Humanity. University
of Minnesota Press, 2022. 152 pp.
Authors: Michael Swistara
Abstract: [Review] Tom Tyler. Game: Animals, Video Games, and Humanity. University of Minnesota Press, 2022. 152 pp.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:25 PST
- [Review] Lynn Turner, Undine Sellbach and Ron Broglio, editors. The
Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies. Edinburgh University Press, 2018,
2019. 559 pp.
Authors: Wendy Woodward
Abstract: [Review] Lynn Turner, Undine Sellbach and Ron Broglio, editors. The Edinburgh Companion to Animal Studies. Edinburgh University Press, 2018, 2019. 559 pp.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:21 PST
- (Animal) Oppression: Responding to Questions of Efficacy and
(Il)Legitimacy in Animal Advocacy with a New Collective Action/Master
Frame
Authors: Paula Arcari
Abstract: Across the animal activist/academic community, there is an ongoing dissatisfaction with the movement’s achievements to date, or lack thereof – a sense that it has not achieved as much as expected, hoped for, and needed. While there have undoubtedly been positive changes, overall these efforts constitute a Sisyphean task given that nonhuman animals are entering the Animal-Industrial Complex (A-IC) in increasing numbers and faster than others are saved. Lack of unity, common goals, and related questions of (il)legitimacy are among some of the issues identified with ‘the movement’. In response, this paper proposes a new frame for animal advocacy that can offer a legitimising context for critical animal perspectives and bring a sense of unity to the movement’s fragmented and often inconsistent goals. First, questions of movement efficacy are examined with reference to a review of the websites of 21 advocacy organisations. Efficacy is then associated with (il)legitimacy, and (il)legitimacy with framing. An exploration of how frames are currently deployed in animal advocacy is then used to support the rationale for the proposed frame of ‘(animal) oppression’. Finally, this frame’s key features are clarified with suggestions for its deployment. Critically, this new frame describes the problem to be addressed, where existing frames focus primarily on solutions and motivations. Approaching animal advocacy through oppression evokes and explains the interwoven mechanisms of the entire injustice complex, of which the A-IC is one part, opening the way to challenge not only speciesism but all institutions of discrimination.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:15 PST
- Indigenous, Settler, Animal; a Triadic Approach
Authors: Fiona Probyn-Rapsey et al.
Abstract: In his Indigenous critique of the field of animal studies, Billy-Ray Belcourt (Driftpile Cree Nation) describes it as having an analytic blind spot when it comes to settler-colonialism, a blind spot that manifests through universalising claims and clumsy arguments about ‘shared’ oppressions, through assumptions that settler colonial political institutions can be a neutral part of the solution, and through a failure to engage with ‘Indigenous studies of other than human life’ (20). In the same article, he calls on decolonial projects to do more to include animality within their purview, to include critiques of animal agriculture and to incorporate critiques of anthropocentrism as ‘a key logic of white supremacy’. Belcourt’s critique of both Animal studies and decolonial projects on the basis of an unequal but mutual marginalisation is an important starting point for research projects like ours that hope to bring Animal studies and Indigenous studies approaches into dialogue about the cultural impacts of introduced animals. Our approach sets out to be ‘triadic’, always involving at least three sides; Settler- Coloniser, Indigene and Animal.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:09 PST
- ‘Cultured’ Food Futures' Agricultural Power, New Meat Ontologies, and
Law in the Anthropocene
Authors: Kelly Struthers Montford
Abstract: Animal agriculture in the US and Canada is a colonial geography borne of imported ontologies of property, life, land, and food shaped by and reproducing agricultural power. This article primarily examines the ontologization of in-vitro meat (IVM) and, to a lesser degree, plant-based synthetic meat relative to our current food ontologies. IVM is positioned as the pragmatic solution to food-driven climate catastrophe in that it will supposedly allow consumers to eat meat without the ethical, environmental, safety, or health concerns associated with agriculturally produced meat. I show that arguments for and against new meat technologies pivot on ontological claims about its realness. Those in favour claim that ‘real meat’ is nothing more than a specific chemical composition that can be divorced from the animal body and current production methods. Those against IVM claim that it cannot be separated from meat as the fetishization of meat renders these technologies intelligible in the first place, and that current production methods rely on ‘livestock’ and the slaughterhouse. IVM then represents a modified form of agricultural power in which the point of application moves from the animal body to the animal cell, and synthetic meat is an articulable invention due to the material and symbolic place of animal flesh in colonial orderings of life. The regulation of these new meat technologies will likely continue to ontologize farmed animals as meat, thereby continuing dominant relationships between agricultural power and food law. I conclude by considering whether new meat technologies ought to be ontologized as food.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:03 PST
- Cover Page, Table of Contents, and Contributor Biographies
Authors: Melissa Boyde
Abstract: Animal Studies Journal 2022 11(2): Cover Page, Table of Contents, and Contributor Biographies.
PubDate: Tue, 13 Dec 2022 14:23:00 PST
- [Review] Mieke Roscher, André Krebber, and Brett Mizelle, editors.
Handbook of Historical Animal Studies. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2021.
637 pp.
Authors: David Herman
Abstract: [Review] Mieke Roscher, André Krebber, and Brett Mizelle, editors. Handbook of Historical Animal Studies. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2021. 637 pp. In their introduction to the volume under review, ‘Writing History after the Animal Turn' An Introduction to Historical Animal Studies’ (1–18), which uses Harriet Ritvo’s 2007 article ‘On the Animal Turn’ as a key reference point, the editors describe as follows the main goal of and broader rationale for the book: "the discourses of human-animal studies and historical animal studies, just like all the other disciplines involved in the reevaluation of the lives of animals and our relationship with them, past and present, are not identical. Rather, they inform one another. What we aim at with this handbook, then, is to gather and make accessible the contribution of historical research to the field of human-animal studies as well as the contribution of human-animal studies to the study of history. History as a discipline and scholarly venture, in other words, can no [more] ignore animals than animal studies can history." (3–4). As the editors and also a number of the contributors underscore, however, to bring about this rapprochement between animal studies and history, it is not enough to study ‘the lives, experiences, and deaths of animals [as] a powerful lens to understand and explain human histories, ideas, and practices’ (3), even if in the recording and interpretation of history humans remain ‘an omnipresent factor’ (4). Rather, animals’ own histories must take centre stage, to the fullest extent possible – given that the discourse of historiography is inescapably mediated by human perspectives.
PubDate: Thu, 16 Jun 2022 19:18:50 PDT
- [Review] ‘Every Moving Thing Shall Be Meat for You.’ A review of David
Brooks. Animal Dreams. Animal Publics series, Sydney University Press,
2021. 290 pp.
Authors: Michelle Hamadache
Abstract: [Review] ‘Every Moving Thing Shall Be Meat for You.’ A review of David Brooks. Animal Dreams. Animal Publics series, Sydney University Press, 2021. 290 pp. Animal Dreams is David Brooks’s third book assailing the vast edifice of the human-animal’s obdurate refusal to rethink its relationship with other animals. It is an erudite and searching contribution to the field of animal studies, and a passionate, persuasive appeal to the mind, heart and senses to change the way of human being-in-the-world that is pushing so many species to extinction and exploiting and truncating the lives of individual animals. Brooks is ‘on the side of the animal’, but experience and insight into the workings of the human animal leads him to argue not just for and on behalf of nonhuman animals, but that human animals too will benefit from ceasing to abuse other animals. In this vein, Brooks argues that the human animal is wounded in a primal, yet repressed manner by its complicity and active role in causing the ‘tide of suffering’ of other animals. This is an idea explored in the opening essay ‘The Smoking Vegetarian’ and drilled to the quick in a later essay on Derrida, ‘The Wound’. Given the human propensity for self-centredness, this is a strategy in the defence of animals, rather than a display of empathy for the human animal. It is Brooks’s steady gaze into the heart of darkness, combined with the unflinching pen, that makes Animal Dreams so eloquent a critique of the human animal and so eloquent and urgent a defence of animals.
PubDate: Thu, 16 Jun 2022 19:18:46 PDT
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