scholarly journals Reading Blood Work is an Art Form: Toward an Embodied Feminist Practice of Veterinary Science and Care

2017 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Christian Gundermann
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Advocacy Network ◽  
Clinical Control

What are the advantages of a concrete, embodied relationship between human subjects and their non-human objects of care for the veterinary process of knowledge production? The scientific reductionism that frames formal studies makes much of the knowledge gained in those studies questionable or severely limited, since many important factors of real life illnesses and their causation and cure are excluded from consideration for the sake of clinical control and traditional scientific objectivity. This essay narrates my experience with my mare Lilly who suffered from a rare auto-immune disease; at the same time, it describes and analyzes the history and strategies of the world's largest internet-based equine patient advocacy network on metabolic illness, a network that supported my journey of knowledge acquisition and contribution, through our case history, to a larger alternative veterinary cause of knowledge production. Located between Feminist Science Studies and Critical Animal Studies, this project explores the notion of touch and raises questions about the biomedical field's present-day heavy reliance on visual diagnostics. What is the relation between visual technologies and the detached, disembodied knowledge "from nowhere" that conventional science believes in? How much of the alternative to this way of knowing lies in touch, embodied assistance, relationality, and intuition?And finally, in observing and documenting the relationship at the heart of this venture around knowledge, my essay also suggest that this is a queer project where queerness is understood as the careful but radical reconfiguration of kinship in the context of Haraway’s recent call to “make kin, not babies.” 

The “bander’s grip”: Reading zones of human–shorebird contact

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 732-760 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenny R Isaacs
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Human Contact ◽  
Hands On ◽  
Reduction Strategies ◽  
Conservation Research ◽  
Colonial Histories ◽  
Nonhuman Agency

This article applies Mary Louise Pratt’s “contact” perspective within a multispecies ethnography of conservation encounters on the Delaware Bay. Using critical insights from decolonial feminist science studies, environmental geography, and critical animal studies, the article deconstructs technoscientific environmental knowledge production within a more-than-human contact zone. The tools, technologies, and “conspicuous innocence” of hands-on shorebird conservation research practices are described. Re-inscribing nonhuman agency and colonial histories of place, it argues that certain elements of conservation research may be fairly read as “violent” expressions of “animality/coloniality” and “anti-conquest.” It concludes by offering some harm reduction strategies for improving conservation and critical environment studies.

scholarly journals Foucault’s Fossils: Life Itself and the Return to Nature in Feminist Philosophy

2015 ◽  
pp. 122-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lynne Huffer
Keyword(s):  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Geological Time ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
New Materialisms ◽  
Life Itself

This essay asks about the return to nature and “life itself” in contemporary feminist philosophy and theory, from the new materialisms to feminist science studies to environmental ethics and critical animal studies. Unlike traditional naturalisms, the contemporary turn to nature is explicitly posthumanist. Shifting their focus away from anti-essentialist critiques of woman-as-nature, these new feminist philosophies of nature have turned toward nonhuman animals, the cosmos, the climate, and life itself as objects of ethical concern. Drawing on Foucault, the essay probes the ethical meanings of the term “life itself” invoked in many of these renaturalizing projects. Focusing especially on the archival matter that guides Foucault’s thinking, I suggest that we rethink “life itself” not as a transhistorical substance but as the unstable materiality of history. I then reframe Foucault’s archival, genealogical perspective through the lens of the Anthropocene and geological time. Reconceiving our archive as a fossil record, I suggest that Foucault has much to contribute to environmental challenges to human exceptionalism and the anthropogenic destruction of other species and ourselves.

Biology is a feminist issue: Interview with Lynda Birke

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 413-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cecilia Åsberg ◽  
Lynda Birke
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Human Animal ◽  
Feminist Technoscience ◽  
The One ◽  
Materialist Feminist

This is an interview with Professor Lynda Birke (University of Chester, UK), one of the key figures of feminist science studies. She is a pioneer of feminist biology and of materialist feminist thought, as well as of the new and emerging field of hum-animal studies (HAS). This interview was conducted over email in two time periods, in the spring of 2008 and 2010. The format allowed for comments on previous writings and an engagement in an open-ended dialogue. Professor Birke talks about her key arguments and outlooks on a changing field of research. The work of this English biologist is typical of a long and continuous feminist engagement with biology and ontological matters that reaches well beyond the more recently articulated ‘material turn’ of feminist theory. It touches upon feminist issues beyond the usual comfort zones of gender constructionism and human-centred research. Perhaps less recognized than for instance the names of Donna Haraway or Karen Barad, Lynda Birke’s oeuvre is part of the same long-standing and twofold critique from feminist scholars qua trained natural scientists. On the one hand, theirs is a powerful critique of biological determinism; on the other, an acutely observed contemporary critique of how merely cultural or socially reductionist approaches to the effervescently lively and biological might leave the corporeal, environmental or non-human animal critically undertheorized within feminist scholarship. In highlighting the work and arguments of Lynda Birke, it is hoped here to provide an accessible introduction to the critical questions and challenges that circumvent contemporary discussions within feminist technoscience as theory and political practice.

Sexual Difference, Gender, and (Microscopic) Animals: A Commentary on Ebeling’s “Sexing the Rotifer”

2011 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 316-322
Author(s):  
Cecilia Åsberg
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Sexual Difference ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Human Animal

AbstractIn this commentary, the microscopic animals of the genus Rotifera, or “rotifers,” emerge as a theory-provoking nonhuman animal. Rotifers embody otherness in ways that may intrigue scholars within both Human-Animal Studies and feminist science studies. In their encounter with rotifers, such fields of research (and others) might also engage each other in new, unexpected, and fruitful ways, as is here argued.

Intimate Bureaucracies: Roadkill, Policy, and Fieldwork on the Shoulder

Hypatia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 651-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Koelle
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Road Ecology ◽  
Painted Turtle ◽  
Environmental Groups ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
The World ◽  
Tribal Governments

Over the last twenty years, wildlife biologists and transportation planners have worked with environmental groups and state and tribal governments to mitigate the effects of human transportation arteries on animal habitats and movements. This paper draws connections between this growing field of road ecology and feminist science studies in order to accomplish two things. First, it aims to highlight the often unacknowledged roots that the interdisciplinary field of animal studies has in feminist theory. Second, it seeks to contribute to conversations in the humanities and social sciences on roadkill and on wildlife biology by steering us into a world of practice that foregrounds mundane details. I approach this topic through interdisciplinary methods, including interviews with tribal and state wildlife biologists and participation in fieldwork on a western painted turtle tagging project. Although engaging in science and formulating policy are often understandably regarded by nonspecialists as practices that distance observers from their topic, in the world of roadkill prevention, I argue that the opposite is the case. What I call “intimate bureaucracies” are formed: arrangements of papers, policies, and people that bring a world of counting, and accountability, into being.

scholarly journals Post-truths, Common Worlds, and Critical Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Haifa Giraud ◽  
Sarah-Nicole Aghassi-Isfahani
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Science And Technology Studies ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Environmental Politics ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Contemporary Context

The emergence of so-called post-truth politics has seen popular calls to return to the “facts,” accompanied by frequent attacks on gender studies, postcolonial theory, and science and technology studies, all of which have been portrayed as somehow responsible for destabilizing truth. This article intervenes in debates arising in response to these developments, with a focus on a promising “third path” proposed by Bruno Latour. In a proposal framed as a departure from his previous work, Latour argues for the importance of centralizing climate change as a common concern that can orient knowledge production and political action. This stance has gained purchase in both academic and wider popular commentaries. The article argues, however, that Latour’s stance does not mark a break from his previous arguments but is instead a continuation of his long-standing condemnation of critique. Building on work within feminist science studies, the article elucidates how, in the contemporary context, this renewed “critique of critique” marginalizes precisely the perspectives that are most under attack in the current political moment. The article ultimately argues that although Latour’s examination of the relationship between populism and environmental politics is critically important, space needs to be maintained for divergent voices that are currently in danger of being excluded in calls to reclaim “common worlds.”

Experimenting at the Threshold: Sacrifice, Anthropomorphism, and the Aims of (Critical) Animal Studies

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 548-555 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kimberly W. Benston
Keyword(s):  
Animal Models ◽  
Biomedical Research ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Nonhuman Animal ◽  
Species Boundaries ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Field Of Inquiry

Of all the beings that are, presumably the most difficult to think about are living creatures, because … they are in a certain way most closely akin to us, and … are at the same time separated from our ek-sistent essence by an abyss.—Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism”Heir to the divided aristotelian vision of nonhuman creatures as, alternately, mute foils (Politics 9; BK. 1, Sec. 2) and behavioral mirrors (Parts 138–39, bk. 2, sec. 4) of “man,” the properly “political” animal, animal studies has displayed uncertainty about how and where to draw species boundaries. Among the provinces of this field of inquiry, none is more defined by this tension than laboratory biomedical research, where physiological correspondences underwrite animal models of human maladies, while presupposed ontological distinctions justify the consignment of nonhuman animals to treatment considered improper for human subjects. Conventionally, those distinctions have centered on a cluster of intellectual capabilities—reasoning, speaking, intending, remembering—the dearth or deficiency of which abrogates the nonhuman's right to dissent and legitimates the human claim of priority. “Animal studies” in this sense, designating a wide range of investigative operations employing nonhuman animal bodies, posits material resemblance and metaphysical incompatibility between researcher and the object of research.

’Animal Studies‘, Disziplinarität und die (Post-)Humanities

2013 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Cary Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Social Communication ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Human Subjects

Der Text von Cary Wolfe ist eine gekürzte Übersetzung des Kapitels »Animal Studies«, Disciplinarity, and the (Post)Humanities aus der Monographie What is Posthumanism? (Minnesota 2009). Wolfe diskutiert die Beziehung zwischen (Trans-)Disziplinarität und Posthumanismus im Rückgriff auf Konzepte von Derrida, Foucault und Luhmann, die eine Form von gesellschaftlicher Kommunikation zu denken erlauben, an der menschliche Subjekte zwar noch teilhaben, aber deren souveräne Urheber sie nicht mehr sind </br></br>The paper by Cary Wolfe is an abridged translation of the chapter »Animal Studies«, Disciplinarity, and the (Post)Humanities from the monograph (Minnesota 2009). Wolfe discusses the relation between (trans-)disciplinarity and posthumanism with reference to concepts by Derrida, Foucault and Luhmann, allowing to consider a form of social communication in which human subjects still may participate, but no longer are their sovereign initiators.

Troubling Figures

2020 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Logan Natalie O'Laughlin
Keyword(s):  
Critical Discourse Analysis ◽  
Science Studies ◽  
Critical Discourse ◽  
People Of Color ◽  
Careful Examination ◽  
Environmental Toxicants ◽  
Environmental Racism ◽  
Feminist Science Studies ◽  
Feminist Science ◽  
Do So

This essay examines the figure of the pesticide-exposed intersex frog, a canary in the coal mine for public endocrinological health. Through feminist science studies and critical discourse analysis, I explore the fields that bring this figure into being (endocrinology, toxicology, and pest science) and the colonial and racial logics that shape these fields. In so doing, I attend to the multiple nonhuman actors shaping this figure, including the pesky weeds and insects who prompt pesticides’ very existence, “male” frogs who function as test subjects, and systemic environmental racism that disproportionately exposes people of color to environmental toxicants. I encourage careful examination of galvanizing environmental figures like this toxic intersex frog and I offer a method to do so.

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