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.

scholarly journals Репрезентация животных в рассказе Севера Гансовского Зверек (1969)

2020 ◽  
pp. 191-201
Author(s):  
Karolina Gansovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Cognitive Model ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Human Existence ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Mediating Role ◽  
The World ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
The Creation

The literary works of Sever Gansovsky are an excellent example of modern eco-literature. For many years, the writer worked with the genre of eco-science fiction, which is engaged into the study of the nature of human existence and the interaction of humans with non-human animals. The methods of Human-Animal Studies, applied to science fiction works, allowed us to analyze the writer’s novels in the context of the latest research in eco-literature and bioethics. The object of this study is the novel Little Animal, written in 1969. The novel tells a story of a small boy who is particularly cruel to animals. Little Animal represents the creation of a man as an exponent of a new eco-culture. The novel shows the formation of a new cognitive model of the world, in whichanimals are playing a mediating role between the man and the nature that is beyond the limits of human experience.

scholarly journals The Concept of “Thrownness” in Algis Budrys's Short Story “Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night”

2021 ◽  
Vol 40 (45) ◽  
pp. 111-121
Author(s):  
Svetozar Poštič
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Short Story ◽  
Meaning Of Life ◽  
Literary Analysis ◽  
Being And Time ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Physical Frailty ◽  
New Horizons ◽  
German Philosopher

This paper analyses the concept of thrownness and the related notions of immediacy and actuality in a 1961 short science fiction story “Wall of Crystal, Eye of Night” by Algis Budrys. It first defines the concept of thrownness (Geworfenheit), created and coined by the German philosopher Martin Heidegger in his classic book Being and Time, and it explains how this notion can be employed in literary analysis in general and applied to this work in particular. The article then analyses how certain stylistic devices in the short story, namely similes, change of pace and the presentation of an inner conflict in the main character, contribute to the feeling of authenticity. In other words, it attempts to exhibit the means used in a prose work to make it seem more realistic and immediate. Finally, the work also argues that science fiction is in many ways more real than other fictional works. Although it belongs to the genre that has traditionally been denied serious literary merit, the novel view and interpretation of this story aims to disclose new horizons of artistic expression that illuminate human mental and physical frailty and stimulate a valuable inquiry into the meaning of life.

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.

scholarly journals Die werking van die musiekmotief in De koperen tuin van Simon Vestdijk

Literator ◽  
1994 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 107-120
Author(s):  
B. Van der Westhuizen
Keyword(s):  
The Netherlands ◽  
Narrative Form ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Main Emphasis ◽  
The Future ◽  
The Many ◽  
Literary Awareness

Simon Vestdijk is one of the most prominent figures in the literary awareness of the Netherlands. From an intertextual study between De toekomst der religie (The Future of Religion) and De koperen tuin (The Copper Garden) it emerges that the postulated view of reality is transposed in narrative form in the text-internal vision of reality in the novel. This transformation is concretized and manifested in visible terms in the character portrayal, especially with regard to music as the passion to which the main character dedicates himself. The many references to music in the novel gradually gain importance as a motif that becomes a symbol of different kinds of love. In the course of the narrative, and especially towards the end of it, there is a substitution of religious value contents in the main character who is led to humanistic love through music, so that this process of transvaluation of religion (in the wider sense of the word) becomes the main emphasis of the discourse of the novel, albeit in veiled form.

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.

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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