Not Coming to Terms: Nonhuman Animals and the Edge of Theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 309-328
Author(s):  
Juliane Prade
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Human Language ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Philosophy And Literature ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Anthropological Discourse

AbstractIn the emerging field of animal studies, criticism turns to questions of ethics and animal rights by reading representations of nonhuman animals in philosophy and literature. A rhetoric of coming to terms often shapes such readings and points to a lack of satisfactory answers to two questions: why read nonhuman animals, and why now? These questions are crucial to animal studies but can only be answered by understanding this critical approach as an element of the anthropological discourse, fundamental to philosophy. Examining Aristotle’s and Heidegger’s approaches to thinking about the human-animal relation, it seems that the interest in reading how animals are presented in philosophy is not in coming to definitive terms with this relation or in correcting earlier theories. Rather, it appears to lie in reading the concept of the Animal as marking a limit of terminological language, and thus of theory. The Animal marks the point at which philosophy touches on poetry and withdraws. Criticism is concerned with animals now because the concept of “the animals” keeps casting doubt on theoretical conceptions of the Human and of human language.

Canine Rescue as a Social Movement: The Politics of Love

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 670-687
Author(s):  
Anna L. Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
Public Sphere ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Animal Advocacy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Human Animal Bond ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Political Approach ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Politics Of Love

Abstract Canine rescue is a growing movement that affects the lives of tens of thousands of nonhuman animals and people every year. Rescue is noteworthy not only for its numbers, but also because it challenges common understandings of animal advocacy. Popular accounts often portray work on behalf of animals as sentimental, individualistic, and apolitical. In fact, work on behalf of animals has always been political, in multiple ways. It is characterized both by internal political tensions, especially between animal rights and welfare positions, and by complex relations to the broader public sphere. I analyze canine rescue, with a focus on pit bull rescue, to show that an important segment of canine rescue movements adopts an explicitly political approach which blurs the divide between rights and welfare, addresses the social context of the human-animal bond, and links animal advocacy to social justice.

Introduction: managing and experiencing an equestrian event.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Katherine Dashper ◽  
Guðrún Helgadóttir ◽  
Ingibjörg Sigurðardóttir
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Research Process ◽  
Background Information ◽  
Critical Examination ◽  
Active Involvement ◽  
Sports Events ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

Abstract This introductory chapter begins with a brief discussion of key findings in the wider field of event studies, focusing mainly on sports events as our case study is primarily an elite sporting competition. We then introduce the idea of multispecies events, drawing on insights from human-animal studies to consider how the active involvement of nonhuman animals shapes all aspects of the event experience. After discussing equestrian tourism and equestrian events more broadly, we introduce the case study event - Landsmót, the National Championships of the Icelandic horse - in more detail to provide the reader with important background information to the event which provides the empirical base and therefore unites subsequent chapters. The chapter ends with an overview of the research process underpinning the book and an outline of the chapter contributions that enable holistic critical examination of a multispecies event and cultural festival.

scholarly journals Visualizing Human-Animal-Technology Relations

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 225-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Bear ◽  
Katy Wilkinson ◽  
Lewis Holloway
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Dairy Farms ◽  
Visual Ethnography ◽  
Human Research ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Field Notes ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Robotic Milking

This paper explores the potential for less anthropocentric approaches to researching human-nonhuman relations through visual ethnography, critically examining the conceptualization of nonhuman animals as participants. Arguing that method in animal studies has developed more slowly than theory, it proposes visual approaches as a way of foregrounding nonhuman animals’ behavior and actions in “social” research. Questioning the meaning of “participation,” this challenges underlying anthropocentric assumptions of visual ethnography. The paper presents a comparison of approaches used in studying sites, moments and movements of robotic milking on United Kingdom dairy farms: field notes, still photography, and digital video. While visual approaches are not a panacea for more-than-human research, we suggest that they offer a means through which nonhumans might “speak for themselves.” Rather than presenting definitive accounts, including video in such work also leaves the actions of nonhumans open to further interpretation, destabilizing the centrality of the researcher.

scholarly journals Knocking on the Door of Human-Animal Studies: Valuing Work Across Disciplinary and Species Borderlines

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (4) ◽  
pp. 347-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lindsay Hamilton ◽  
Laura Mitchell
Keyword(s):  
Human Activity ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Inclusive Approach ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Interdisciplinary Scholarship

Abstract We argue that human-animal studies (HAS) literature is essential for theorizing work because it fosters a reflexive questioning of humanist power and a more sophisticated understanding of the co-dependency and co-creativity between the species. We highlight that the neglect of nonhuman animals in organization studies stems from a preoccupation with contemporary industrialization, human forms of rationality, and the mechanisms of capital exchange. Drawing upon the example of sheep and shepherding, we illustrate how a flexible approach to studying the value and worth of work is made possible by attending to other-than-human activity and value co-creation. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of work and its value needs a more species-inclusive approach to foster a less reductively anthropocentric canon of interdisciplinary scholarship in the field.

The Struggle for Compassion and Justice through Critical Animal Studies

2015 ◽  
pp. 188-207
Author(s):  
Carol Gigliotti
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Global Justice ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Frankfurt School ◽  
Environmental Damage ◽  
Industrial Complex ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Human Animal

Critical animal studies (CAS) is a critical approach to human-animal relationships and explicitly committed to a global justice for animals, humans, and the earth. This essay argues that the global animal industrial complex, as well as the increasing global cultural push to eat meat, are inordinately causing calamitous current conditions of human-caused climate change and species extinction, as well as increasing poverty, hunger, disease, environmental damage and unprecedented animal misery and slaughter. Influenced by critical theory from the Frankfurt School and feminism, among other sources, CAS specifically critiques capitalism and globalization in its role in the domination of people, animals and the earth, but also sees the intersections of all oppression anywhere and for whatever reason as motivation for employing the powerful forces of compassion and social justice.

scholarly journals Virtue Ethics and Laboratory Animal Research

ILAR Journal ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca L Walker
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Animal Rights ◽  
Laboratory Animal ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Animal Research ◽  
Moral Significance ◽  
Moral Framework ◽  
Animal Research Ethics ◽  
Human Animal

Abstract This article appeals to virtue ethics to help guide laboratory animal research by considering the role of character and flourishing in these practices. Philosophical approaches to animal research ethics have typically focused on animal rights or on the promotion of welfare for all affected, while animal research itself has been guided in its practice by the 3Rs (reduction, refinement, replacement). These different approaches have sometimes led to an impasse in debates over animal research where the philosophical approaches are focused on whether or when animal studies are justifiable, while the 3Rs assume a general justification for animal work but aim to reduce harm to sentient animals and increase their welfare in laboratory spaces. Missing in this exchange is a moral framework that neither assumes nor rejects the justifiability of animal research and focuses instead on the habits and structures of that work. I shall propose a place for virtue ethics in laboratory animal research by considering examples of relevant character traits, the moral significance of human-animal bonds, mentorship in the laboratory, and the importance of animals flourishing beyond mere welfare.

Bestiarium Judaicum

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Geller
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Sigmund Freud ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Visual Images ◽  
Heinrich Heine ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Close Textual Analysis ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

Given the vast inventory of verbal and visual images of nonhuman animals (pigs, dogs, vermin, rodents, apes, etc.) disseminated for millennia to debase and bestialize Jews (the Bestiarium Judaicum), this work asks: What is at play when Jewish-identified writers employ such figures in their narratives and poems? Bringing together Jewish cultural studies (examining how Jews have negotiated Jew-Gentile difference) and critical animal studies (analyzing the functions served by asserting human-animal difference), this monograph focuses on the writings of primarily Germanophone authors, including Sigmund Freud, Heinrich Heine, Franz Kafka, Gertrud Kolmar, H. Leivick, Felix Salten, and Curt Siodmak. It ferrets out of their nonhuman-animal constructions their responses to the bestial answers upon which the Jewish and animal questions converged and by which varieties of the species “Jew” were depicted. Along with close textual analysis, it examines both personal and social contexts of each work. It explores how several writers attempted to subvert the identification of the Jew-animal by rendering indeterminable the human-animal “Great Divide” being played out on actual Jewish bodies and in Jewish-Gentile relations as well as how others endeavored to work-through identifications with those bestial figures differently: e.g., Salten’s Bambi novels posed the question of “whether a doe is sometimes just a female deer,” while Freud, in his case studies, manifestly disaggregated Jews and animals even as he, perhaps, animalized the human. This work also critically engages new-historical (M. Schmidt), postcolonial (J. Butler and J. Hanssen), and continental philosophic (G. Agamben) appropriations of the conjunction of Jew and animal.

scholarly journals Framing Animal Rights in the “Go Veg” Campaigns of U.S. Animal Rights Organizations

2010 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carrie Packwood Freeman
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Environmental Responsibility ◽  
Factory Farming ◽  
Animal Product ◽  
Product Consumption ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Problems And Solutions ◽  
Human Animal

AbstractHow much do animal rights activists talk about animal rights when they attempt to persuade America’s meat-lovers to stop eating nonhuman animals? This study serves as the basis for a unique evaluation and categorization of problems and solutions as framed by five major U.S. animal rights organizations in their vegan/food campaigns. The findings reveal that the organizations framed the problems as: cruelty and suffering; commodification; harm to humans and the environment; and needless killing. To solve problems largely blamed on factory farming, activists asked consumers to become “vegetarian” (meaning vegan) or to reduce animal product consumption, some requesting “humane” reforms. While certain messages supported animal rights, promoting veganism and respect for animals’ subject status, many frames used animal welfareideology to achieve rights solutions, conservatively avoiding a direct challenge to the dominant human/animal dualism. In support of ideological authenticity, this paper recommends that vegan campaigns emphasize justice, respect, life, freedom, environmental responsibility, and a shared animality.

scholarly journals Daphne the Cat: Reimagining human–animal boundaries on Facebook

2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (6) ◽  
pp. 1290-1306
Author(s):  
Verónica Policarpo
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Media Studies ◽  
Narrative Analysis ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Companion Animals ◽  
The Social ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

How are companion animals, and cats in particular, built as Otherness, on social media? And how are human–animal boundaries reconfigured along the flow of online digital interactions? This article tries to answer these questions drawing on the story of female cat Daphne, as reported on the official Facebook page of a Portuguese animal shelter. Based on both narrative analysis and categorical content analysis of the posts and comments around the story, the article discusses the social construction of nonhuman animals, bringing together concepts from human–animal studies, science and technology studies, and media studies. It argues that, through digital practices on social media, animals are done and undone. Two emergent and conflicting versions of the same animal, Daphne, are constructed throughout the unstable and contingent flow of digital exchanges: the-animal-victim and the-animal-maladjusted. As such, digital practices become also animal practices, contributing to normative definitions of what an animal ‘is’. As a result, human–animal boundaries are reinstalled and reinforced, and the animals themselves become, once more and paradoxically, invisible.

Embodied Violence Towards Nonhuman Animals in Anne Brontë’s Agnes Grey

2021 ◽  
Vol 29 (7) ◽  
pp. 679-694
Author(s):  
Valerie L. Stevens
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Upper Class ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Close Relationship ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Agnes Grey ◽  
Animal Violence

Abstract Aware of her pupil’s plans to torture and kill a nest of birds, and with no authority to stop him based on her class, gender, and professional positions, the governess-heroine of Anne Brontë’s (2010/1847) Agnes Grey kills the nonhuman animals to keep them from needless suffering. Building on Brontë scholarship as well as animal studies understandings of violence and embodiment, this article considers expectations that Victorian sympathy will be a simplistic and pretty play on reader emotions to argue that nineteenth-century sympathetic feeling was more theoretically and ethically complex than we might imagine. Agnes Grey demonstrates how human-animal violence was thought to be an acceptable expression of middle- and upper-class masculinity, while proper women were expected to be complicit with this treatment of nonhumans. By looking at the close relationship between wanton and merciful embodied violence, the article shows how grotesque Victorian human-animal sympathy could be.

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