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.

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.

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 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.

Moby-Dick and Compassion

2004 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 19-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Shape Representations ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
Moby Dick ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Structures Of Feeling ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Nonhuman Species

AbstractBecause the notions of "anthropomorphism" and "sentimentality" often are used pejoratively to dismiss research in human-animal studies, there is much to be gained from ongoing and detailed analysis of the changing "structures of feeling" that shape representations and treatments of nonhuman animals. Literary criticism contributes to this project when it pays due attention to differences in historical and cultural contexts. As an example of this approach, a reading of the humanization of cetaceans in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick - and more broadly in nineteenth-century whaling discourse - demonstrates how radically human feelings for nonhuman species are affected by shifting material and ideological conditions.

scholarly journals Re-imagining Bleeders: The Medical Leech in the Nineteenth Century Bloodletting Encounter

2011 ◽  
Vol 55 (3) ◽  
pp. 355-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert G.W. Kirk ◽  
Neil Pemberton
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
History Of Medicine ◽  
Medical History ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Species Identity ◽  
Central Object ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Do So

While some historians have noted the absence of animals in medical history, few have made the animal the central object of their historical gaze. Twenty years ago W.F. Bynum urged medical historians to follow historians of science in paying attention to the role of non-human animals in the material practices of medicine. Yet few have responded to his call. In this paper we again ask the question: what work can the non-human animal achieve for the history of medicine? We do so in the light of the conceptual possibilities opened up by the rapidly emerging field of ‘animal studies’. This interdisciplinary and sophisticated body of work has, in various ways, revealed the value of the ‘animal’ as a tool for exploring the co-constitution of species identity. We asked ourselves, surely, in our present biomedical world, this must be an area that we as medical historians are best placed to comment on; and what better place to start than the well-known, yet surprisingly little-studied, medical leech?

scholarly journals George Herbert Mead on Humans and Other Animals: Social Relations after Human-Animal Studies

2013 ◽  
Vol 18 (4) ◽  
pp. 182-194 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rhoda Wilkie ◽  
Andrew Mckinnon
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Symbolic Interactionism ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
George Herbert ◽  
George Herbert Mead ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Human Animal

The turn towards nonhuman animals within sociology has shed a critical light on George Herbert Mead, his apparent prioritisation of language and the anthropocentric focus of Symbolic Interactionism (SI). Although Herbert Blumer canonised Mead as the founder of this perspective he also played a key role in excising the evolutionary and ‘more-than-human’ components in Mead's work. This intervention not only misrepresented Mead's intellectual project, it also made symbols the predominant concern in Blumer's version of SI. Since groundbreaking animal sociologists in America framed much of their thinking in opposition to SI's emphasis on language, because it excluded alingual animal others from sociological consideration, Mead's Mind, Self, and Society has largely functioned as a negative classic within this sub-field. Although some scholars recognise there is more in Mead's work that is potentially applicable to this interspecies area the attempt to recover what might be helpful has yet to begin (e.g. Alger & Alger 1997 ). This paper suggests that if the ambiguities and contradictions that exist alongside Mead's oft-quoted anthropocentrisms are also attended to this may open up a more positive reading and use of Mead's work for animal sociology.

Human-Animal Studies in Australia: Current Directions

2007 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jane Mulcock ◽  
Natalie Lloyd
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Study Group ◽  
Primary Research ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Future Challenges ◽  
Group A ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Effective Network ◽  
The University ◽  
Relationships Management

AbstractIn 2004, Natalie Lloyd and Jane Mulcock initiated the Australian Animals & Society Study Group, a network of social science, humanities and arts scholars that quickly grew to include more than 100 participants. In July 2005, about 50 participants attended the group's 4-day inaugural conference at the University of Western Australia, Perth. Papers in this issue emerged from the conference. They exemplify the Australian academy's work in the fields of History, Population Health, Sociology, Geography, and English and address strong themes: human-equine relationships; management of native and introduced animals; and relationships with other domestic, nonhuman animals—from cats and dogs to cattle. Human-Animal Studies is an expanding field in Australia. However, many scholars, due to funding and teaching concerns, focus their primary research in different domains. All authors in this issue—excepting one—are new scholars in their respective fields. The papers represent the diversity and innovation of recent Australian research on human-animal interactions. The authors look at both past and present, then anticipate future challenges in building an effective network to expand this field of study in Australia.

scholarly journals Siriusly Concerned: Animal Non-Belongingness in a Dichotomized Environment

2021 ◽  
pp. 69
Author(s):  
Jesús Fernández Caro
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Ideal Tool ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Many ◽  
Unique Species ◽  
The Ideal

This article approaches Sirius (1944), by Olaf Stapledon, from a perspective that brings together literary animal studies and ecocriticism. The eponymous main character of this science fiction novel is a genetically-modified dog who struggles between the human and the animal realms, being unable to belong to either urban or natural spaces. I argue this work of fiction carries out an exercise of blurring boundaries, thus proposing alternatives for harmful binaries such as human-animal, city-nature, or divine-mundane. Each of these binaries is explored in three trips of the many this character experiences throughout the novel. This allows the main character to reflect on his peculiar, unique species as the singularity he is. Sirius claims it is only empathy that can help in such a task; both human and nonhuman animals are then able to rejoice in biological, cultural, and spiritual differences. Sirius’s trips are analyzed in order to look closely at (1) the dog’s reflections on humankind while being in London, (2) his becoming a wolf, dog, and human at the same time in the woods, and (3) music as the ideal tool to articulate one’s spirituality based on a reconnection with an almost lost biodiversity.

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