Reading Postcolonial Animals with the Animist Code: A Critique of “New” Materialist Animal Studies

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 360-379
Author(s):  
Jason D. Price
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Reading Strategies ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Ethical Status

This article looks at the challenges that animist materialism offers to reading strategies in new materialist animal studies scholarship. Where Rosi Braidotti’s vitalist materialism calls for a neoliteral, anti-metaphorical mode of relating to animals, Harry Garuba identifies metaphor as a primary feature of animist materialist practice in African material culture. After critiquing Rosi Braidotti’s dismissal of the “old” metaphorical ways of relating to animals, the article offers a reading of animals and the animist code in two southern African novels, Alex La Guma’s Time of the Butcherbird (1979) and Mia Couto’s The Last Flight of the Flamingo (2000), to consider the potential of animist codings of animals for resisting colonial necropolitics. Animist materialism offers the potential to raise animals and humans into ethical status by affirming the very knowledges and worldviews that Cartesian, colonial humanism wrote off as nonsense and as a marker of inhumanity.

Animal Writing

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Danielle Sands
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Contemporary Fiction ◽  
Animal Life ◽  
Ethical Status

Reading contemporary fiction and philosophy alongside each other, Animal Writingproposes a thinking of and with animals which brings together critical and affective approaches. Aspiring to a critical distancing from the sometimes claustrophobic proximity of empathy – currently the prevailing mode in Animal Studies – this book interrogates the claims made of empathy without exchanging it for the kind of abstract, disembodied reason which has long disavowed the ethical status of nonhuman life. This book is particularly interested in the stories that we tell, and are told, by beings at the edges of animal life, insects, and the possibility that the indifference, even disgust, that these creatures evoke might form the basis for an ethics which is not bounded by empathy. Across five interdisciplinary chapters, it asks: is it possible to read, write and think non-anthropocentrically? How might we develop approaches to nonhuman life which are affectively and critically informed? It contends that reframing the human in relation to the elements of itself which it denounces as inhuman can inform a renewed attentiveness to nonhuman life.

Animal Studies and Ancient Judaism

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-111
Author(s):  
Beth Berkowitz
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Species Difference ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Future Directions ◽  
Ancient Judaism ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Ancient Israel ◽  
Literature History

Animal studies has its origins in philosophy but extends to all fields of the humanities, especially literature, history, and anthropology. The central concern of animal studies is how human beings perceive other species and themselves as one among them. Animal studies in ancient Judaism has generally not been undertaken in a critical mode, with notable and increasing exceptions. This article covers work from the past decade (2009–2019) that deals centrally with animals, from ancient Israel to late antiquity, spanning the Hebrew Bible, apocrypha and pseudepigrapha, library of Qumran, rabbinic literature, and material culture. Topics addressed are animal sacrifice and consumption; literary depictions of animals; studies of individual animal species; archaeology and art featuring animals; animal ethics, theology, and law; and critical theoretical approaches to species difference. The conclusion considers future directions for animal studies in ancient Judaism.

scholarly journals Images of Animals in Neolithic Chinese Ceramic

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-80
Author(s):  
Bogna Łakomska
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Human Life ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Decorative Motifs ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Animal Images ◽  
Early Modern Times ◽  
Rich Material ◽  
Neolithic Cultures

The images of animals or their (more or less) stylised motifs once depicted in the form of painting and sculpture, and nowadays through various media, have many stories to tell. Their ancient images point to the undeniably great role that animals played in human life. The rich material culture, as well as the written sources we have today, enables us to examine – both in physical and spiritual terms – the coexistence and co-creation of the worlds of people and animals in the region that we now call China. General animal research, especially within Europe, usually concerns spatial and physical differences; animals from ancient, medieval and early modern times are researched in the context of their utilitarian role, as well as their exoticism, discovering new species and deepening knowledge about those already known to man. Creating a picture of the animal images in Chinese Neolithic art, I hope to present various social and political practices that have influenced the acquisition of knowledge about animals, and thus to discover their role in human life. Chinese animal studies to date in pre-dynastic and dynastic eras regularly focus on animals as spiritual beings and sources of nutrition. It is worth looking at the significance of animals from a different angle – from the perspective of art, which can inform us about animals and people in the context of religion, magic, symbols, aesthetics and the spiritual life of both. My article focuses particularly on the decorative motifs appearing in ceramics of three Neolithic cultures: Yangshao 4000–3000 BC, Hemudu 5500-3300 BC and Longshan 2500-1900 BC.

The Oxford History of Hinduism: Hindu Law

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Historical Development ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Religious Studies ◽  
The Body ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Textual Tradition ◽  
Vernacular Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
Modes Of Life

The foundation of Hindu law is the voluminous textual tradition called Dharmaśāstra, the expert tradition on dharma. This book seeks to delineate the historical development of Dharmaśāstra, even though the tradition presented dharma as timeless and ahistorical. The volume establishes the importance of law for the history and study of Hinduism by providing interpretive descriptions of all the major topics of Hindu dharma according to this tradition. First, two broad introductions to the historical development of the textual sources of Hindu law suggest new ways to understand both the original texts (smṛti) and the later commentaries and digests. Next, groundbreaking research into the origin of the householder (gṛhastha), who is at the center of the Dharmaśāstric enterprise, provides new insights into both the origin of this genre and many of its topics, such as the āśrama system and married household life. The book devotes its central chapters to each of the major topics of Dharmaśāstra: epistemology of dharma, caste and social class, orders of life, rites of passage, Vedic student and graduate, marriage, children, inheritance, women, daily duties, food, gifting, funeral and ancestral offerings, impurity and purification, ascetic modes of life, dharma during emergencies, king, punishment, legal procedure, titles of law, penances, vows, pilgrimage, images, and temples. The final chapters then explore both the reception of Dharmaśāstra in other religious traditions, both Hindu and Buddhist, and the relevance of Dharmaśāstra to studies of critical concepts in religious studies—the body, emotions, material culture, subjectivity, animal studies, and vernacular culture.

Decellularized bone extracellular matrix in skeletal tissue engineering

2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 755-764
Author(s):  
Benjamin B. Rothrauff ◽  
Rocky S. Tuan
Keyword(s):  
Tissue Engineering ◽  
Bone Regeneration ◽  
Tissue Regeneration ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Tumor Resection ◽  
Regenerative Capacity ◽  
Skeletal Tissue ◽  
Large Bone

Bone possesses an intrinsic regenerative capacity, which can be compromised by aging, disease, trauma, and iatrogenesis (e.g. tumor resection, pharmacological). At present, autografts and allografts are the principal biological treatments available to replace large bone segments, but both entail several limitations that reduce wider use and consistent success. The use of decellularized extracellular matrices (ECM), often derived from xenogeneic sources, has been shown to favorably influence the immune response to injury and promote site-appropriate tissue regeneration. Decellularized bone ECM (dbECM), utilized in several forms — whole organ, particles, hydrogels — has shown promise in both in vitro and in vivo animal studies to promote osteogenic differentiation of stem/progenitor cells and enhance bone regeneration. However, dbECM has yet to be investigated in clinical studies, which are needed to determine the relative efficacy of this emerging biomaterial as compared with established treatments. This mini-review highlights the recent exploration of dbECM as a biomaterial for skeletal tissue engineering and considers modifications on its future use to more consistently promote bone regeneration.

The future of animal studies in psychology.

1992 ◽  
Vol 47 (12) ◽  
pp. 1679-1679 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glyn V. Thomas ◽  
Derek Blackman
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
The Future
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