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Animail:OctoberCfPedition2016 1
Animail:October(the‘CfP’Edition)2016DearAASAMembers,
The2017AASAconference–AnimalIntersections–isnowcallingforsubmissions–bothfortheConferenceandtheArtExhibition.ThankstoSusanHazel(UniversityofAdelaide)andtherestofhercommitteefortheirworkonthisandtoVictorKrawczykforcuratingtheExhibition.Ihopetoseeyouthere.Ifyou’dliketosharetheCfPs,youcanfindthemontheAASAwebsite:http://animalstudies.org.au/archives/5636BelowisfurtherinformationabouttheConferenceOrganisingCommittee(it’sabigone).Cheers,Fiona
ADELAIDEORGANIZINGCOMMITTEE
Dr Susan Hazel ([email protected]) - Chair - is a veterinarian who has taught animalbehaviour,welfareandethicsattheUniversityofAdelaidesince2006.Sheisinterestedinhuman-animal interactionsacrossallspecies.ProfAnnaChur-Hansen ([email protected])is a Registered Psychologistwith Endorsement inHealth Psychology,who holds a PhD inMedicalEducation.JoshuaTrigg([email protected])isapsychologicalresearcherattheAppletonInstitute,Australia, in the field of anthrozoology, where he works to understand how human-animalrelationships influence risk, welfare, and response during disasters. Dr Lisel O'Dwyer([email protected]) is a social scientist experienced in fields including ageing studies,childwellbeing, population studies, public and communityhealth, housing andurban studies, andhuman-animal relations.DonelleGadenne ([email protected]) isaVeterinarynurseandindependentscholaraffiliatedwithNZCHASwhoseresearchinterestsincludeCriticalAnimalStudies,Vegan Studies and Literary Criticism. Prof Rachel Ankeny ([email protected]) hasresearch expertise andprojects in history/philosophyof biological sciences particularly relating toorganisms, and food studies including animal welfare issues. Dr Monika Ferguson([email protected]) is a ResearchAssociate in theMentalHealth and SubstanceUseResearchGroup at theUniversity of South Australia.Monika’s PhD explored the topic of human-animalinteractionsinzoos.A/ProfessorAnneHamilton-Bruce([email protected])isaPrincipalMedicalScientistattheCentralAdelaideLocalHealthNetworkandanAffiliateAssociateProfessor at the University of Adelaide. With a neuroscience andmanagement background, herprincipal research interest is in translational cerebrovascular disease. She also has an interest inother interdisciplinary research, having collaborated with allied health and nursing on patientevaluation andmore recently participating in evaluation research with the School of Animal andVeterinary Sciences at theUniversity of Adelaide.Victor Krawczyk ([email protected]) is aPhD candidate. Victor's PhD project combines critical management studies, cultural studies andsociology to examine respectful engagementswith animals in organisational contexts. Dr JanetteYoung ([email protected]) is Program Director for the Bachelor of Health Sciences,UniversityofSA.Her interest is in the rolescompanionanimals/petsplay inandhumanwellbeingespeciallymentalhealth;andtheintersectionofhumanandanimalinterestsinleisuretheorising.
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ANIMALINTERSECTIONSJuly3-52017attheUniversityofAdelaide,Australia
Increasingly,AnimalStudiesturnstowardsthequestionofintersections:where,howandwhyhumanandanimallivesintersect.Intersectionalityoffersusawaytoexploreinterconnectednesstoadvanceourunderstandingofthecomplexwayswerelatetoandinteractwithotheranimalsandeachother.
Weinviteproposalsthataddressthefollowingbroadthemes:
• Health,wellness,illness,pathologies• Thesociallivesofanimalsandhumans• Theintersectionsofspecies,race,gender,ablismandsexualities• Industrialism,capitalism,geographiesandenvironments• Veg*nStudies• Religion,traditionandsecularity• Culture,symbologyandrepresentation
Keynotes
• ProfessorJamesSerpell:HumaneEthics&AnimalWelfare,UniversityofPennsylvaniaSchoolofVeterinaryMedicine
• ProfessorColinDayan:HumanitiesandLaw,VanderbiltUniversity• AssociateProfessorAnniePotts:CulturalStudiesandEnglishandco-directorofNew
Zealand,CentreforHuman-AnimalStudies(NZCHAS),UniversityofCanterbury• ProfessorFionaProbyn-Rapsey:HumanitiesandSocialInquiry,UniversityofWollongong• ProfessorRachelAnkeny:HistoryandPhilosophyofScience,UniversityofAdelaide• DrDineshWadiwel,SociologyandSocialPolicy,UniversityofSydney.
Presentationsshouldbe20minutesinlengthwithanadditional10minutesallocatedforquestions.Submissionsintheformof300-600wordabstractsshouldbeemailedto:[email protected],2017.
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‘AnimalIntersections’ConferenceExhibitionwithArtPanelDiscussion
Conference: ‘Animal Intersections’ University of Adelaide,
July 3 - 5 2017
Exhibition venue and dates: TBC
(expected run of a minimum of two weeks)
Exhibition curator: Victor J. Krawczyk
Tointersectmeanstocomeacrossanotherbeingontheircourse,tooccasionallyeveninterceptthisother.Anintersectionisthefactoractionofcrossinganotherortheplacewheretwobeings(orthings)comecrosseachother.Inourmultispeciesworld,itisinevitablethatanimalandhumanlifeintersect,sometimesinrathercalculatedways,sometimesinratherjoyouswaysandsometimesbyahaphazardchance.
Takingthewords‘intersect’and‘intersection’asconceptswecanorganizeourselvesaroundforcreativeworksandfruitfuldiscussion,thisimportantAustralasianAnimalStudiesAssociationconferencewillincludeacuratedexhibitionoforiginalworkincluding(butbynomeansexclusive)ofphotography,paintings,videowork,mixedmedia,prints,performanceartanddanceworks.
Emergingandestablishedartistswillbothbeconsideredforthisexhibition.Inadditiontothis,someartistswhoareselectedwillbeinvitedtoprovideanartist’stalkabouttheirworkattheexhibitionopeningormaysubmitanabstractfortheartpaneldiscussionthatisassociatedwiththisevent.
Expressionsofinterestareinvitedfromartiststosubmitworkthataddressesoneofthefourfocusconcepts,whichdrawtheirinspirationfromsomeofthethemesinConferenceCallforPapers(seefurtherdown):
§ Animalandhumanfriendships§ Animalsindustriesintheageofglobalcapitalism§ Thesacredanimal,theprofaneanimal
Image:RowanPootchemunka(WikIndigenousPeopleofQueensland,Australia).Echidna.1996-97,Syntheticpolymerpaint,ochreonwood,ArtGalleryofSouthAustralia,Adelaide.
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§ Onnoteating,wearingandusinganimals
CuratedExhibition:ExpressionofInterestEOImustbereceivedbyemailtoanimal.intersections.art@gmail.comnolaterthanMondaythe23rdJanuary,2017andshouldinclude:
§ Aone-pageCV/bio–pleaseincludeyourcontactdetails(email&phonenumber)§ A PowerPoint file or PDF showing 5 – 10 labelled examples of your work. Total file size
should be nomore than 10mb (youmay use Dropbox to share these images if they arelarger).
§ Anartist’sstatementofnomorethan300words§ Detailsofworktobeexhibitedincludingsubjectmatter,medium,approximatedimensions.
These may be pre-existing or proposed works. If pre-existing, please ensure they areincludedinyourPowerPoint/PDF.
§ Please document how you would like the work to be displayed, e.g., pinned on wall,positionedonaplinth,etc.
Thereisaverylimitedexhibitionbudget,alongwithlimitedspacesopleasekeepthisinmindwhenproposingwork.However,ifyouintendtopresentperformanceartand/ordance,thereisapossibilitythatwemightbeabletofindatheatrespaceforsuchwork.
Itislikelythatartistswillberesponsibleforthecostsassociatedwithfreightandpackingunlessotherfundingisfound.Artistsmayalsoneedtopaytheselectedgalleryarefundablesecuritybondtoexhibittheworkandifanartistintendstoselltheirwork,thegallerymayrequireacommissionfromthesale.
Artistinputinhangingand/orpresentingtheworkwouldbeideal.Pleaseconsiderbeingavailableonsitetohelpinstallyourwork,particularlyifyourworkhasspecialrequirements.Ifyourworkisfragileandrequirescarefulremovalandpackingattheexhibition’send,pleasetrytobepresentaswell.
ArtPanelDiscussion:CallforPapers
Thereisapossibilitythatadistinctconferencepanelwillbeformed,possibilitytwopanelsdependingonamountandqualityofsubmissions,whichfocusesonanimalandhumanintersectionalityasrelatedtothearts,tobefollowedbyaroundtablediscussion.Presenterswouldlikelybeartists,writers,arteducators,arthistoriansandotherprofessionalsintheartsthatareconsideringanimallivesintheirwork.PleaserefertotheGeneralConferenceCallforPapers(seebelow)forthethemesorusethemesfortheexhibitionitself(seeabove)asreferencepointsfordevelopingyourabstracts.
Ifyoubelievethatyourworkhasastrongartfocusandwanttobeconsideredaspartofthepaneldiscussion,youwillneedtodotwothings:(1)Pleaseincludethefollowingintheheaderofyourabstract:Forconsiderationinthegeneralstreamand/orartdiscussionpanel(2)Attheendofyour
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abstract,pleaseincludean80-wordbiographicdescriptionaboutyourself.Sendto:[email protected]@gmail.com
Image:EadweardMuybridge.AnimalLocomotion,Plate686.1887,Collotype,SACDMuseumofArt,Savannah,USA.
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MemberProfilesCompiled by Rick De Vos
Dinesh Wadiwel
I work as a lecturer in human rights and social justice at The University of Sydney, and direct the human rights degree for the Department of Sociology and Social Policy. My training was in philosophy, political theory and cultural studies, and I have spent much of my working life outside of universities, engaged with anti-poverty and disability rights work in non government organisations.
I started thinking about animals intellectually in the midst of writing my doctoral dissertation in the early 2000s at the then Centre for Cultural Research, Western Sydney University. My PhD explored theories of political power, with a focus on economies of violence and pleasure, and at the time I was very interested in critical race theory and queer theory, which both informed my approach. I was also particularly interested in the work of Michel Foucault and Giorgio Agamben. It was the latter
two thinkers that really got me thinking about animals.
I had made some personal decisions around animals as a young person (including giving up meat eating after I was taken on a fishing boat in my late teenage years). I also read early animal rights theory, including Carol J Adams’ The Sexual Politics of Meat which had a strong impact on me in the early 1990s. However it was only when I started reading Foucault and Agamben on biopolitics that I began to develop my own politics for thinking about violence towards animals, in particular noticing that there were some very different and potentially productive ways to think about animals as political subjects.
In 2002 I published my first essay on animals and biopolitics in the then new electronic publication Borderlands e-Journal. At the time, the essay seemed like a side project. But I continued to develop those initial ideas and, particularly after reading Foucault’s Society Must be Defended Lectures in the mid-2000s, I realised that I had the framework for a new approach to thinking about the structural problem of violence towards animals, which I eventually published last year in my book The War against Animals. I am really proud of the book. My goal was to provide a way for people engaged with pro animal thinking and activism to discuss and question the way we frame current debates, and think again about how we work towards change. While the book is far from perfect, it has been really lovely so far to have had such a positive reaction, particularly from animal rights activists who have been keen to engage with the ideas I have been developing.
At present I am writing a new monograph, which is something of a second volume to The War against Animals. One of the problems I left unattended in The War against Animals was capitalism and its particular relationship to animals. At present I am reading a lot of Karl Marx, whose value theory I have found curiously useful, and also unexpectedly compatible with the frameworks I have been developing utilising Foucault and Jacques Derrida. I have been doing some other work too: with my colleague Matthew Chrulew I have been working on an edited collection Foucault and Animals for Brill Press that will be
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released in November 2016. I also work on a number of human rights oriented disability projects, including at the moment pulling together a national roundtable on the application of international torture obligations to the treatment of people with disability.
I live in a daggy red brick flat in inner west Sydney which is a bike ride from my workplace and is close to school for my 13 year old daughter (who is smart, strong and inquisitive, and so fun to hang out with). I am also close to the interesting explosion of vegan food that is happening around inner Sydney, but also proximate to the south east asian and south asian grocers where I pick up a lot of my food from. When I am not working I love spending time with people I am close to, or engaged with music in one form or another. I feel amazingly lucky that I have spent so much of my life working on things I am passionate about.
Yamini Narayanan
Two years ago, a friend's post about tortured bunnies in cosmetics testing appeared on my Facebook feed. This was not the first time she had posted on animal cruelty; however it was the first time that I froze in shock. A rabbit with a large patch of her fur scraped raw, burnt and stitched sat huddled at the very far corner of a shoebox of a wire cage. The terror in her wide eyes, and her attempt to avoid the camera's gaze was unmistakable. She had nothing in that stark cage, not even a small bowl of water behind which she could cower. Shortly afterwards, I witnessed one of PETA's most agonising exposes - the ripping of rabbit fur from screaming live bunnies by Chinese rabbit farm workers for the angora industry, and I wept openly in a busy central Melbourne cafe where I was writing. I had lived with thirteen rabbits as a child, and knew them to be cheeky fiery personalities. An undeniable connection had been made.
LEFT: Yamini with a male temple calf in Visakhapatnam, India. The calf was donated to a temple which would then route the male calves to slaughterhouses. In this case, this calf was rescued. As legal slaughter is prohibited, it is carried out using temples as a façade for trafficking and slaughtering.
This was the beginning of a conscious exploration and active seeking out of production processes involved in the consumption of any animal or animal product. As a vegetarian born and raised, I had blithely assumed - indeed, had not even considered otherwise - that my footprint of animal abuse and violence might remotely match, indeed, possibly even exceed an omnivore with a simpler lifestyle that didn't involve leather boots and bags, and a fondness for chocolate. At the very least, this was an astounding insight into the sheer, insidious scale of animal violence that had managed to invade
almost every corner of even a vegetarian home. Every feminist principle I mistakenly assumed I stood by lay exposed for its hollow foundations. Sexual violence to both male and female of all species runs rampant throughout animal industries, and every animal product is a product of gendered and/or explicitly sexual violence.
At a professional level, it became impossible for me to disconnect the animal reality from my work. Overnight, I switched focus and fields from a decade in sustainable development and feminist planning, to critical animal studies. I did not even have a CAS bibliography, I knew no theories, foundational works, or names in this area. However never have I felt more at home or authentic in any discipline, and in the last
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two years, I have developed a focus on the nexus between animals and urban planning, and animals and religion.
My work on cow protectionism in India brings these two threads together. Cow protectionism is enshrined in the Indian Constitution as the fundamental duty of Indian citizens, and cow slaughter is prohibited in most states in the country. However India today is the world’s leading exporter of beef, including of carabeef or buffalo beef. Unpacking what cow protectionism means for the cows and indeed, the entire animal advocacy movement in India has become my large research agenda. My work in this space has begun to be published in various journals including Environment and Planning D, Society and Animals, Sustainable Development, and a number of media forums.
My work on bovine exploitation takes me to some of the darkest spaces of fear, terror and chilling indifference. I returned to Melbourne with a desperate need to ‘do penance’, and be rescued myself – I needed to do something, get some animals out these holes of horror,
and the most obvious candidates in my limited backyard space were industry chickens. My husband and I were as mesmerised by the girls as any new parents when they first arrived, exclaiming in delight over everything they did! This was salvation, but also again an entire firsthand spectrum of education, as I became intimately acquainted with the multitude of violences inflicted on chicken bodies, in stark contrast with their supremely intelligent, quirky and affectionate personalities. I am convinced that chickens are so intelligent that they even have a sense of humour. My next research project, I already know, will be on the wonderful world and nation of chickens!
Member News
Jessica Ison has guest edited, with Joe-Lee Schatz, a special issue of Green Theory & Praxis Journal entitled ‘Queer-Eco-Feminist Perspectives’:
http://greentheoryandpraxisjournal.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Volume-9-Issue-3-October-2016-1.pdf
Recent Publications
Melissa Boyde, ‘”Peace and quiet and open air”: The Old Cow Project’, in Meat Culture, ed. Annie Potts. Brill, 2016.
Deirdre Coleman, ‘Insect Itineraries: From Sierra Leone, West Africa to Sydney, New South Wales’, Humanities Australia, No. 7, 2016, 46-54. http://www.humanities.org.au/Portals/0/documents/Publications/HumanitiesAustralia/Issue_7/HumanitiesAustralia-07-2016-Coleman.pdf
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Jessica Ison and J. L. Schatz, ‘Introduction: Queering the Ecofeminist Tradition’, Green Theory & Praxis Journal, 9 (3) October 2016, 4-13. (See Member News)
Annie Potts, ‘What is Meat Culture?’ in Meat Culture, ed. Annie Potts. Brill, 2016.
Peta Tait, ‘Dressing for War and Unnatural Poses: Human–Animal Acts at the Turn of the Twentieth Century’, Humanities Australia, No. 7, 2016, 22-34. http://www.humanities.org.au/Portals/0/documents/Publications/HumanitiesAustralia/Issue_7/HumanitiesAustralia-07-2016-Tait.pdf
Nik Taylor and Jordan McKenzie, ‘Rotten to the Bone: Discourses of Contamination and Purity in the European Horsemeat Scandal’ in Meat Culture, ed. Annie Potts. Brill, 2016.
Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel, ‘Counter-Conduct and Truce.’ In Philosophy and the Politics of Animal Liberation’, ed. Paola Cavalieri. Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. 187-237. http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137521194
Jacqueline Dalziell and Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel, ‘Live Exports, Animal Advocacy, Race and “Animal Nationalism”’, in Meat Culture, ed. Annie Potts. Brill, 2016. 73-89.
Yvette Watt, ‘Down on the Farm: Why do Artists Avoid “Farm” Animals as Subject Matter?’ in Meat Culture, ed. Annie Potts. Brill, 2016.
Animal Rights in Sydney (ARiS) Convenors: Siobhan O’Sullivan, John Hadley, Dinesh Wadiwel
Animal Rights in Sydney (ARiS) aims to bring together scholars, practitioners and activists to engage with animal rights theory and explore new directions for pro animal change. ARiS is
creating a regular space to engage with both classic animal rights theory and new emerging perspectives. ARiS will host national and international visitors and will initiate discussion and reading groups that allow participants to engage with key debates and develop connections between scholars, practitioners and activists. Keep an eye out for future events - we are hoping this will become a regular fixture.
NEW BOOK RELEASES Compiled by Annie Potts New Book Releases October 2016 (alphabetical order by author/editor) Experimental Animals: A Reality Fiction by Thalia Field (published by Solid Objects, 2016)
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Experimental Animals is, partly, the story of Claude Bernard, a 19th-century French physiologist and vivisectionist who introduced the scientific method to medicine, and his disastrous marriage to Fanny Martin, an animal rights activist avant la lettre. On a larger scale, the Bernard marriage represents cultural riffs about the ethics of using animals in the laboratory—issues that obviously have not been settled. It is also a study of the history of science, a modern novel of animal activism with roots in the Victorian anti-vivisection novel, told almost entirely in the words of real people. With the exception of Fanny, every word is drawn from letters, pamphlets, newspaper articles, and other writing of the time. This is a massive feat of research—20 years and hundreds of thousands of pages—and of translation (from French) by Field. This is an exploration of what realism and experimentalism means now—and in the past in the hands of writers such as Balzac and Zola. At the time, scientists and activists on either side of the issue of lab experimentation martyred themselves—
they saw their lives as something to give away to a larger issue. Thalia Field is a professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. Experimental Animals is her sixth book. She has published three collections with New Directions: Point and Line (2000), Incarnate: Story Material (2004), and Bird Lovers, Backyard (2010). Her performance novel, Ululu (Clown Shrapnel), was published with Coffee House Press, and she has two collaborations with French author Abigail Lang: A Prank of Georges (Essay Press, 2010) and the forthcoming Leave to Remain. Before writing books, Thalia worked in theaters in Paris, Berlin, and New York. Praise for Experimental Animals “Field’s novel is an experiment which illuminates the history of experimentation; it’s a wise and brilliant work of compassionate destruction.”
—Paul La Farge, author of Haussmann, or the Distinction “A beautiful and thought-provoking collage of a tale of rescued history and a sobering tribute to some of its victims.”
—Karen Joy Fowler, author of We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves “Difficult moral questions always exist—for those willing to tackle them. Fanny Bernard, wife of Claude Bernard, endured at the intersection of the oppression of women, human slavery, war, and most of all, Claude’s victimization of live animals at the altar of science. Hers is a fascinating tale, elegantly told.”
—Joyce Tischler, Founder, Director, Animal Legal Defense Fund “Advancing what she started twenty years ago with her earliest explorations of essayistic fiction, Thalia Field has now composed what very well might be her life’s work—a tragic, comical, and utterly fascinating tale of a marriage that vividly encapsulates not only the origins of experimental medicine, but an entire age that spirited experiments in literature, science, engineering, and film. It’s nothing less than a history—gorgeously fictional, purposefully essayistic—of how we got where we are.”
—John D'Agata, Director, Non-Fiction Program, University of Iowa The Political Turn in Animal Ethics edited by Robert Garner and Siobhan O'Sullivan (published by Rowman & Littlefield, 2016)
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This edited collection of original essays focuses on the political dimension of the debate about our treatment of nonhuman animals.
The debate about our treatment of nonhuman animals has been traditionally dominated by moral philosophers, and the crucially important role of politics has been hitherto neglected. This innovative edited collection seeks to redress the imbalance by interrogating some vital questions about this so-called ‘political turn’ in animal ethics. The questions tackled include: What can political philosophy tell us about our moral obligations to animals? Should the boundaries of the demos be expanded to allow for the inclusion of animals? What kind of political system is most appropriate for the protection of animals? Does the protection of animals require limits to democracy, as in constitutional devices, or a usurping of democracy, as in direct action? What can the work of
political scientists tell us about the governance of animal welfare? Leading scholars in the field explain how engaging with politics, in its empirical and normative guises, can throw much needed light on the question of how we treat animals, and how we ought to treat them. Reviews: This excellent volume highlights the arrival of a 'political turn' in theorizing about human-nonhuman relations, with contributions that discuss state power, democratic contestation, regulatory processes, and social movement strategy. These wide-ranging and fascinating essays not only enrich our understanding of animal ethics, but also challenge us to rethink political theory from the ground up in full recognition that we inhabit more-than-human societies and polities. Garner and O'Sullivan's volume is a superb place to start to explore both the political turn in animal ethics, and the animal turn in political theory. Sue Donaldson, Queen's University, Canada The volume addresses a question that has been unduly side-lined in Western political theory: How to include nonhuman animals in our political structures in a manner that acknowledges their mental capacities and moral value? It provides fresh and well-developed perspectives, brought forward by some of the brightest thinkers in the field, and is thus a highly valuable source for anyone interested in human-nonhuman politics. Elisa Aaltola, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Eastern Finland "This much-needed collection offers useful entry points into key debates in animal politics – e.g. must property in animals be abolished? do animals need to be citizens to be represented? – but more than this, it suggests how to think and act in more textured ways about the hard work of achieving justice for nonhuman animals."
Stefan Dolgert, Assistant Professor, Political Science, Brock University
Table of Contents
1. Introduction / 2. Labour Rights for Animals, Alasdair Cochrane / 3. Animal Ethics and Human Institutions: Integrating Animals into Political Theory,Friederike Schmitz / 4. Animals and the Politics of Equity, Siobhan O’Sullivan / 5. A Public Philosophy for the Liberal Animal Welfare State,Kimberly Smith / 6. Putting Pluralism First, Tony Milligan / 7. Animals, Politics and Democracy, Robert Garner / 8. Deliberative Democracy and Animals: not so strange bedfellows, Lucy Parry / 9. Understanding Animal Liberation, Steve Cooke / 10. Animal Welfare Policy in Australia: Pace, Race, and Shelf-space, Peter Chen / 11. Animal Protection in the UK: From Symbolic Politics to Democratic Representation, Dan Lyons / Bibliography / Index
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Authors:
Robert Garner is Professor of Politics at the University of Leicester. His books include Animals, Politics and Morality (1993 and 2004), Animal Rights: The Changing Debate (1996), Political Animals: Animal Protection Politics in the USA and the UK (1998), Animal Ethics (2005), The Political Theory of Animal Rights (2005), The Animal Rights Debate (with Gary Francione, 2010) and A Theory of Justice for Animals (2013).
Siobhan O’Sullivan is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of New South Wales. She is the author of Animals, Equality and Democracy (2011).
http://www.rowmaninternational.com/books/the-political-turn-in-animal-ethics Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals
by John P. Gluck (published by Chicago University Press, 2016) The National Institute of Health recently announced its plan to retire the fifty remaining chimpanzees held in national research facilities and place them in sanctuaries. This significant decision comes after a lengthy process of examination and debate about the ethics of animal research. For decades, proponents of such research have argued that the discoveries and benefits for humans far outweigh the costs of the traumatic effects on the animals; but today, even the researchers themselves have come to question the practice. John P. Gluck has been one of the scientists at the forefront of the movement to end research on primates, and in Voracious Science and Vulnerable Animals he tells a vivid, heart-rending, personal story of how he became a vocal activist for animal protection. Gluck begins by taking us inside the laboratory of Harry F. Harlow at
the University of Wisconsin, where Gluck worked as a graduate student in the 1960s. Harlow’s primate lab became famous for his behavioral experiments in maternal deprivation and social isolation of rhesus macaques. Though trained as a behavioral scientist, Gluck finds himself unable to overlook the intense psychological and physical damage these experiments wrought on the macaques. Gluck’s sobering and moving account reveals how in this and other labs, including his own, he came to grapple with the uncomfortable justifications that many researchers were offering for their work. As his sense of conflict grows, we’re right alongside him, developing a deep empathy for the often smart and always vulnerable animals used for these experiments. At a time of unprecedented recognition of the intellectual cognition and emotional intelligence of animals, is a powerful appeal for our respect and compassion for those creatures who have unwillingly dedicated their lives to science. Through the words of someone who has inflicted pain in the name of science and come to abhor it, it’s important to know what has led this far to progress and where further inroads in animal research ethics are needed. http://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo23671366.html
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(One for Hayley Singer!) Through Vegetal Being: Two Philosophical Perspectives by Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder (published by Columbia University Press, 2016)
Blossoming from a correspondence between Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being is an intense personal, philosophical, and political meditation on the significance of the vegetal for our lives, our ways of thinking, and our relations with human and nonhuman beings. The vegetal world has the potential to rescue our planet and our species and offers us a way to abandon past metaphysics without falling into nihilism. Luce Irigaray has argued in her philosophical work that living and coexisting are deficient unless we recognize sexuate difference as a crucial dimension of our existence. Michael Marder believes the same is true for vegetal difference.
Irigaray and Marder consider how plants contribute to human development by sustaining our breathing, nourishing our senses, and keeping our bodies and minds alive. They note the importance of
returning to ancient Greek tradition and engaging with Eastern teachings to revive a culture closer to nature. As a result, we can reestablish roots when we are displaced and recover the vital energy we need to improve our sensibility and relation to others. This generative discussion points toward a more universal way of becoming human that is embedded in the vegetal world.
Luce Irigaray is director of research in philosophy at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique in Paris. She is the author of more than thirty books, the most recent of which are Sharing the World and In the Beginning, She Was.
Michael Marder is IKERBASQUE Research Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU), Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain. Among his books are Plant-Thinking: A Philosophy of Vegetal Life and The Philosopher's Plant: An Intellectual Herbarium.
https://cup.columbia.edu/book/through-vegetal-being/9780231173872
Conflict, Negotiation, and Coexistence: Rethinking Human-Elephant Relations in South Asia edited by Piers Locke and Jane Buckingham (published by Oxford University Press, 2016).
Edited by Piers Locke (Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Canterbury) and Jane Buckingham (Department of History, University of Canterbury), this new book arises from an international symposium that took place at the University of Canterbury in 2013. It brings together anthropologists, biologists, ecologists, geographers, historians, political scientists, and Sanskrit literature specialists in order to explore humans, elephants, and environments in South Asia from the multispecies, interdisciplinary perspective of ethnoelephantology. This book may be considered the first book on human-elephant relations that seeks to integrate the expertise of academics from the social sciences, natural sciences,
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and humanities. The chapters in this book carry several policy implications, useful for government agencies and environmental activists concerned about environmental preservation in general and elephant welfare in particular. Conflict, Negotiation, and Coexistence also offers a critique of anthropocentrism and explores the ethics of animal rights and multi-species ethnography. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/rethinking-humanelephant-relations-in-south-asia-9780199467228?lang=en&cc=us The Pig in Thin Air: An Identification by Alex Lockwood (published by Lantern Books, 2016)
In this searingly honest account of how he came to terms with his destructive habits and changed his relationship with his own body, Alex Lockwood—writer, educator, and activist working in the fields of literature, creative writing, media, and the environment—critically explores the relationship of the body to animal activism. Looking at academic scholarship and animal advocacy organizations, Lockwood explores the dimensions of embodiment from his own body to those of the animals he bears witness to, from bodies of knowledge and those who place themselves in the way of the machinery of death, through to our physical efforts to make sense of a world where so much is desensitized, disembodied, and fragmented. In exploring different modes of activism throughout North America, The Pig in Thin Air asks how animal advocacy and
environmental activism can best join forces to tackle these interconnected crises in such a way that we might develop deeper, more authentic compassionate relationships with all other animals, including ourselves. https://lanternbooks.presswarehouse.com/Books/BookDetail.aspx?productID=479879
CONFERENCES & EVENTS Themed Issue of Image & Text: Image & Text no. 30 December 2017 Issue Editors: Dr Benita de Robillard and Dr Ruth Lipschitz Article submission: 30 April 2017 Publication: 30 December 2017 – January 2018 Length: 5000-7000 words
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All submissions and general enquiries should be sent directly to both of the issue editors: [email protected] [email protected] Themed Issue: “Visual Cultures of Race and Animality”
Art and Sustainability in the Anthropocene
We welcome papers that analyse the effectiveness of addressing sustainability and climate change within the art world through case studies of contemporary art. Must an artist also be a political activist to have an impact, or can an effective work be primarily aesthetically driven? How do we gauge effectiveness
July 12-14, University of Glasgow. The panel is part of “Building Bridges: New Points of Intersection Between Art and the World,” a symposium organized by Christie’s Education and the Council for European Studies at Columbia University.
Contact details for further information: [email protected]
Deadline for submissions: January 15, 2017
‘Hearing’ 19 and 20 May 2017 at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow With confirmed plenary speaker Cary Wolfe (Rice University)
As well as being a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the first ever British Animal Studies Network meeting, this is our final engagement with the senses in Glasgow: following ‘Looking’, ‘Feeling’, ‘Tasting’ and ‘Smelling’, ‘Hearing’ will turn attention to noise, listening, ears, music, and other wonders. If you are interested in giving a paper addressing the topic from whatever disciplinary perspective please submit your title, with an abstract of no more than 200 words and a brief biography (also of no more than 200 words). These should be included within your email – i.e. not as attachments. Please send them to [email protected]. The deadline for abstracts is Friday 20 January 2017. Presentations will be 20 minutes long and we hope to include work by individuals at different career stages. Sadly we have no money to support travel, accommodation or attendance costs.
Topics covered at this meeting might include (but are not limited to)
· The representation and comprehension of animals’ auditory capacity
· Animal noises as music and song:
· The use and/or imitation of animal sound in human art and culture
· Listening to animals; recording animals; tracking animals
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· Comprehending animal vocalisations
We would welcome papers that deal with such issues in contemporary and historical settings, and would especially like to see papers that address these issues from contexts outside the UK, including the Global South. Papers are welcomed from across animal studies, including disciplines such as (but not limited to) geography, anthropology, sociology, literary studies, art history, history, science and technology studies, ethology, psychology, behavioural sciences and ecology.
http://www.britishanimalstudiesnetwork.org.uk/FutureMeetings/Hearing.aspx
Consuming Animals Conference
Friday 17th- Saturday 18th March 2017
Kings Manor, University of York, UK
Keynote speakers include: Professor Diana Donald and Professor Timothy Morton
This two-day interdisciplinary conference is designed to bring together those in the humanities whose work explores humanimal relations during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In particular, it seeks to investigate the various, and often ambiguous, ways in which animals were consumed by humans symbolically and materially. Through various methods of consumption, typically characterised by exploitation and violence, human society and accepted definitions of what it means to be human, have nevertheless been fundamentally shaped by animals. Whether on the end of a gourmand’s fork or a whaler’s harpoon, on the lap of an aristocrat or by the side of a beggar, conjured as majestic and wild by the artist’s brush or as haggard and caged by the eyes of the menagerie visitor, in private homes and city streets, in the artistic or literary imagination, the bodies of animals (alive or dead) were ubiquitous during this period. Indeed, they provided both the fashionable feather and the faithful companion; they were, simultaneously, consumed, feared, defended, caged and loved. The minds of Georgians and Victorians were filled with treacherous tigers and devoted dogs with whom they forged complex relationships and encounters - and to whom they were much more than mere material bodies.
Conference themes include, but are not limited to, the following topics
• Confinement and Exhibition • Art, Film, Literature and Music • Animal welfare and animal rights • Gender, Race, Sexuality, Religion, and • Class • Violence and Killing • Food • Sentience • Commodification • Science, Evolution and Vivisection • Hunting • Imperialism and Exploration
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Proposals are invited for short papers (20 minutes)
Abstracts of up to 250 words, along with a short 50 word bio, should be sent to:
Deadline for abstracts: December 14th 2016
https://consuminganimalsconference2017.wordpress.com/