scholarly journals Both Like and Unlike: Rebirth, Olfaction, and the Transspecies Imagination in Modern Chinese Buddhism

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (6) ◽  
pp. 364
Author(s):  
Lina Verchery
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Chinese Buddhism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Moral Cultivation ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Ethnographic Data ◽  
Ontological Turn ◽  
Contemporary Chinese

This essay considers the importance of the transspecies imagination for moral cultivation in contemporary Chinese Buddhism. Drawing on scriptural, theoretical, and fieldwork-based ethnographic data, it argues that olfaction—often considered the most “animalistic” of the human senses—is uniquely efficacious for inspiring imaginative processes whereby Buddhists train themselves to inhabit the perspectives of non-human beings. In light of Buddhist theories of rebirth, this means extending human-like status to animals and recognizing the “animal” within the human as well. Responding to recent trends in the Humanities calling for an expanded notion of ontological continuity between the human and non-human—notably inspired by critical animal studies, post-humanism, the new materialism, and the “ontological turn”—this essay contends that Buddhist cosmological ideas, like those that demand the cultivation of the transspecies imagination, present resources for moral reflection that can challenge and enrich current mainstream thinking about humanity’s relation to the nonhuman world.

Posthuman Curriculum Studies: The Twilight of Humanism

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Weaver
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Affect Theory ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Curriculum Studies ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
New Developments ◽  
Human Exceptionalism ◽  
The World ◽  
Intellectual Movements

Although humanism still prevails in much of Western thought, it is being challenged in numerous intellectual fields, political realms, economic policies, and cultural activities. Posthumanism is beginning to emerge within the area of curriculum studies. Posthumanism questions the binary mode of thought that human exceptionalism rationalizes. Posthumanism introduces new approaches to thinking about humans within the world that are emerging: these include postcolonial thought, new materialism, the non-human turn, critical animal studies, affect theory, disability studies, and to some extent environmental studies. The term “posthumanism” doesn’t cover just the intellectual movements listed above. To use “posthumanism” as a catch-all term would ignore the nuances of each of these new developments, and it would erase the limitations of posthumanism itself. Posthumanism intersects with other movements, but to fairly cover these other recent intellectual developments, they should be treated on their own terms and not within the confines of just posthumanism.

scholarly journals Bem-viver-interespécies: reflexões iniciais

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 57
Author(s):  
Luciana Cristina Godoy
Keyword(s):  
Animal Studies ◽  
Living Animal ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Basic Form ◽  
Buen Vivir ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Critical Studies ◽  
Social Classification ◽  
Salient Points ◽  
Good Living

ResumoEste ensaio propõe-se a apresentar o Bem-Viver-Interespécies, como anúncio de uma ética de solidariedade, empatia e alteridade entre Seres-Humanos e Seres-Animais. Para tal, concebemos a possibilidade da interconexão conceitual entre Bem-Viver e os Estudos Críticos Animais. Nosso objetivo é destacar os principais pontos que levam à defesa de outros modelos descoloniais da forma básica de classificação social, inclusive da espécie, no eixo de poder na relação interespécies (humanos e animais). Reconhecemos, por certo, a existência da pluralidade conceitual e política no campo de ativismo relacionado à causa animal. Deste modo, nosso entendimento atual deve ser interpretado como uma conjectura, e não propriamente a uma proposição teórico-conceitual, uma vez que ainda estamos nos estágios iniciais de nossa pesquisa.Palavras-chave: Bem-Viver. Estudos Críticos Animais. Estudos Descoloniais. Good-living-interspecies: initial reflectionsAbstractThis essay strives to introduce the Good-Living-Interspecies, as an announcement of an ethics of solidarity, empathy and otherness between Human-Beings and Animal-Beings. With this subject, we conceive the possibility of the conceptual interconnection between Good-Living and Critical Animal Studies. Our goal is to highlight salient points that lead to the defense of other descolonial models of the basic form of social classification, including species on the axis of power in the interspecies relationship (human and animal). We certainly recognize the existence of the conceptual and political plurality in the field of animal activism. Thus, our current understanding must be construed as a conjecture rather than a proposition, given we are still in the initial stages of our research.Keywords: Good-Living. Animal Critical Studies. Descolonial Studies.Buen-vivir-interespecies: reflexiones inicialesResumenEste ensayo se propone presentar el Buen-Vivir-Interespecies, como anuncio de una ética de solidaridad, empatía y alteridad entre Seres-Humanos y Seres-Animales. Para ello, concebimos la posibilidad de la interconexión conceptual entre Buen-Vivir y los Estudios Críticos Animales. Nuestro objetivo es destacar los principales puntos que llevan a la defensa de otros modelos descoloniales de la forma básica de clasificación social, incluso de la especie, en el eje de poder en la relación interespecies (humanos y animales). Ciertamente reconocemos la existencia de la pluralidad conceptual y política en el campo de activismo relacionado con la causa animal. De este modo, nuestro entendimiento actual debe ser interpretado como una conjetura, y no propiamente a una proposición teórico-conceptual, puesto que aún estamos en las etapas iniciales de nuestra investigación.Palabras clave: Buen-Vivir. Estudios Críticos Animales. Estudios Descoloniales.

scholarly journals Versions of the Natural

2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 445-456
Author(s):  
Sarah Kay ◽  
Nicolette Zeeman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
History Of Ideas ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Science History ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
French And English ◽  
History Of

This volume explores new ways of understanding medieval and early modern conceptualizations of nature in light of current developments in critical animal studies, ecocriticism, new materialism, as well as our expanding knowledge of premodern philosophy, medicine, and encyclopedism. The articles engage numerous disciplines, including philosophy, history of science, history of ideas, and Anglo-Saxon, French, and English literary studies; their approaches represent a broad range of Anglophone and Continental European academic traditions. Collectively, the volume brings to light tensions and contradictions in premodern ideas of “nature” and “the natural.” The “versions of the natural” that emerge are more ecological and less anthropocentric than in much previous work in this area, their emphases correspondingly more philosophical, scientific, even secular, than religious or theological. All contributions combine the detailed study of specific texts and problems with wider historical, theoretical, or philosophical inquiry.

scholarly journals Including the animal standpoint in critical public relations research

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 139-161
Author(s):  
Núria Almiron ◽  
Laura Fernández
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Public Relations ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Essential Step ◽  
Challenges And Opportunities ◽  
Discourse Studies ◽  
Theoretical Paper ◽  
Short Explanation

In this paper we argue that adopting critical animal studies perspectives in critical public relations can not only be very fruitful, but that it is also a necessity if the aims of the latter are to be achieved. To this end, this text introduces the challenges and opportunities that the field of critical animal studies brings to critical public relations studies. First, a short explanation of what critical animal studies is and why it can contribute to critical public relations studies is provided. Then the main fields of research where this contribution can be most relevant are discussed, including ethics, discourse studies and political economy. The final aim of this theoretical paper is to expand research within the field of critical public relations by including a critical animal studies approach. Eventually, the authors suggest that embracing the animal standpoint in critical public relations is an essential step to furthering the study of power, hegemony, ideology, propaganda or social change and to accomplishing the emancipatory role of research.

The Head, the Hand, and Matter: New Materialism and the Politics of Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Vol 35 (7-8) ◽  
pp. 49-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Rekret
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Social Constructivism ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Political Agency ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Counter Narrative ◽  
Karen Barad ◽  
Material Turn ◽  
Material Conditions ◽  
Do So

This article seeks to examine the political connotations of a recent ‘material turn’ in social and political theory and its implications for theorizations of political agency. ‘New materialist’ theories are premised upon transcending the limits which social constructivism places upon thought, viewed as a reification of the division of subject and object and so a hubristic anthropocentrism which places human beings at the centre of social existence. Yet new materialist theories have tended to locate the conditions of the separation of mind and world they seek to overcome upon the terrain of epistemic or ethical error. By taking the work of Quentin Meillassoux, Jane Bennett and Karen Barad as exemplary, this article contends that new materialist theories not only fall short of their own materialist pretensions insofar as they do not interrogate the material conditions of the separation of the mental and material, but that the failure to do so has profound repercussions for the success of their accounts of political agency. This essay seeks to offer a counter-narrative to new materialist theories by situating the hierarchy between thought and world as a structural feature of capitalist social relations.

scholarly journals What Can Play: The Potential of Non-Human Players

2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Kara Stone
Keyword(s):  
Game Design ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Game Studies ◽  
The Other ◽  
New Materialism ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Cause And Effect ◽  
History Of ◽  
Post Humanism

What can post-humanism teach us about game design? This paper questions the line drawn between what species and matter can play and what cannot play. Combining works by scholars of feminist post-humanism, new materialism, and game studies, primarily Jane Bennett, Donna Haraway, and T.L. Taylor, it proposes that play is a form of communication not only between animals and humans but also between plants and cyborgs, insects and atoms. Beginning by interrogating the borders of the human that have been built on ableist and racist discourses, this paper moves towards considering the human as interspecies and outlines that we must reassess the ways in which a multiplicity of species experience the intra-action that constitutes “play.” With a brief look into the history of defining play in both game studies and animal studies and their small crossover, play is reconfigured into an outlook or an approach rather than a set of rules. It is a drive that all species and matter experience, including insects, bacteria, and metal. This moves us beyond considering solely the materiality of our bodies at play by reconsidering the objects of play as our co-players, as matter with agential force. I argue that we need to reconsider the videogame player as an interspecies being, an assemblage of human and non-human bodies. The de-anthropocentricization of the popular notions of player agency allows for a multiplicity of reactions not created in the linear cause and effect course, the belief in ultimate player control within procedural systems, which dominates game studies. This paper concludes by submitting possibilities of what considering the non-human through a feminist and anti-ableist lens can offer game designers, players, and critics, such as considering the material platform’s impact on play, reforming the individualistic agency of players, and designing for the Other(s).

scholarly journals Akbar, My Heart: Caregiving for a Dog During Covid-19

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-29
Author(s):  
Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Neurological Disease ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Homo Sapiens ◽  
The Other ◽  
Fatal Disease ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
An Inconvenient Truth ◽  
Relational Frame ◽  
Point Of Departure

Covid-19 originates with humans’ instrumentalization of other animals, an “inconvenient truth” elided by scientists procuring a vaccine while refusing to contend with the captivity, slaughter and encroachment on wild animals’ habitats that brought the fatal disease upon us. The interlocking of homo sapiens’ and other species’ suffering is, of course, glaringly evidenced by disproportionate Black and brown death due to Covid-19 worldwide, itself intensifying the foundational pandemic of anti-Black violence. “Akbar, My Heart” contemplates transpecies loss in a relational frame, attending to the entanglement of white supremacy with anthropocentrism at the same time that I reflect on caregiving for my canine companion, Akbar, during his decline from neurological disease. My elderly friend’s worsening symptoms coincided with the pandemic’s spread, the Summer’s uproar against anti-Black violence and California’s wildfires. The vortex of these events is a point of departure for meditating about carceral logic, animalization and the seeming “end of days” together with another kind of ending, one centered on providing comfort and an honorable death. Mourning for Akbar through the preparation of this piece, I have called upon the wisdom of critical animal studies scholars as well as Sufi poets and even the texts of my dreams. Deciphering this bewildering time of transformation has been an invitation to imagine another world while abiding with Akbar in the threshold, attempting to see through the smoke, so to speak, to the other side of this scorched earth.

Colonizing Animals

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Saha
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
British Colonialism ◽  
British Imperialism ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
British Colonization ◽  
History Of ◽  
Historical Methodology

Animals were vital to the British colonization of Myanmar. In this pathbreaking history of British imperialism in Myanmar from the early nineteenth century to 1942, Jonathan Saha argues that animals were impacted and transformed by colonial subjugation. By examining the writings of Burmese nationalists and the experiences of subaltern groups, he also shows how animals were mobilized by Burmese anticolonial activists in opposition to imperial rule. In demonstrating how animals - such as elephants, crocodiles, and rats - were important actors never fully under the control of humans, Saha uncovers a history of how British colonialism transformed ecologies and fostered new relationships with animals in Myanmar. Colonizing Animals introduces the reader to an innovative historical methodology for exploring interspecies relationships in the imperial past, using innovative concepts for studying interspecies empires that draw on postcolonial theory and critical animal studies.

LEARNING FROM NONHUMAN ANIMALS: TOWARDS AN ETHICS OF POSTHUMANITIES

Ensemble ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-27
Author(s):  
RINU KRISHNA K ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Animal Studies ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Critical Animal Studies ◽  
Donna Haraway ◽  
Open Network ◽  
European Model ◽  
Nonhuman Animals ◽  
Education In India

Throughout the debated discourse of humanism, humans were considered as the only species endowed with reason and moral values. The result was an andro/anthropocentric humanism that divided everything into hierarchies and confined everything within boundaries. European model of higher education has undoubtedly been an enforcement of humanist ideas and ideologies which established certain humans as exceptional and superior to other ‘non-privileged’ humans and nonhuman animals. In this era of posthumanism all the imposed and imbibed boundaries between the human and nonhuman are being questioned, challenged and eliminated to create an open network of cross-species encounters. In this context this article through the theories of Posthuman philosophy and Critical Animal Studies proposes a shift towards posthuman ethics of inclusion and understanding in the field of classical humanities in India. This can be achieved by employing postontological methods to create and understand nonhuman representations. Theories and studies by posthuman scholars like Donna Haraway, Rosi Braidotti, Cary Wolfe, Graham Harman form the basis of this paper. This article is an acknowledgement as well as an advocation of the shift happening across disciplines from humanities to posthumanities, which however is yet to make a movement in education in India.

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