Michaela Castellanos | Mid Sweden University (original) (raw)

Publications by Michaela Castellanos

in What is Zoopoetics? Texts, Bodies, Entanglement. Eds. K.Driscoll and Eva Hoffmann. Cham: Palgr... more in What is Zoopoetics? Texts, Bodies, Entanglement. Eds. K.Driscoll and Eva Hoffmann. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan 2018, 129-147.

This is the first installation of a new series called COMpostINGS. Two at a time, the essays in t... more This is the first installation of a new series called COMpostINGS. Two at a time, the essays in this series will explore concepts that influence how we think about our myriad relationships with our animate and inanimate nonhuman others. They will do so, for example, by reflecting on unwieldy and polysemous concepts in a way that appreciates their complexity. Will Abberley's essay on biological mimicry starts off the series in this spirit. The COMpostINGS series also emphasises transcultural flows in environmental thinking. Jonathan Beever's essay points out a connection between American conservationist Aldo Leopold and Estonian-born biologist Jacob von Uexküll.

America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment, 2016

America After Nature Democracy, Culture, Environment U niversitatsverlag WINTER Heidelberg Biblio... more America After Nature Democracy, Culture, Environment U niversitatsverlag WINTER Heidelberg Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibllothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet iiber http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. UMSCHLAGBILD

Organizing by Michaela Castellanos

With the formation of the interdisciplinary field 'Animal Studies,' animals are increasingly movi... more With the formation of the interdisciplinary field 'Animal Studies,' animals are increasingly moving into the purview of literary and cultural studies. In the environmental humanities, an animal oriented perspective is beginning to establish itself as a dynamic and productive sub-field. Greg Garrard, for example, devotes an entire chapter to animals in Ecocriticism (2012). The way humans read animals shapes culture just as much as culture shapes the way we read animals (Baker in Garrard, 153). This mutually constitutive relationship makes 'animal' a central trope in environmental thinking and discourse. In this workshop, we want to take a closer look at how Ecocriticism and the theoretical and methodological concerns of Animal Studies can interact productively with each other. What links Ecocriticism and Animal Studies is the concern with the politics of representation that shape human interactions, material and discursive, with animals. The conceptual separation of the human animal from non-human animals is at the center of most mainstream environmental and philosophical thinking. In continental European thought, human exceptionalism is based on a variety of concepts, such as that of an immortal soul, existential freedom, or symbolic language. With its roots in the Enlightenment tradition, human exceptionalism still informs most scholarly practice in the humanities and underwrites even theoretical approaches that are interested in conceptualizing nonhuman forms of subjectivity, as posthumanist scholar Cary Wolfe points out in his seminal monograph Animal Rites (18). In this tradition, the ways in which humans relate to animals are predominantly shaped by a presumed hierarchy in which animals rank below humans. From the prevalent utilitarian perspective, animals are regarded primarily as a resource for human use, which finds expression in cultural practices like animal husbandry (esp. raising animals for human consumption) or the display of animals in zoos but also in the ways humans relate to animals through language. During this workshop, the linguistic, textual, and visual expressions of animal imaginaries that illustrate and comment on, and at the same time influence and shape, human-animal-relationships are at the center of our concern.

Conference Presentations by Michaela Castellanos

The perception of whales, dolphins, and porpoises (collectively known as cetaceans) has undergone... more The perception of whales, dolphins, and porpoises (collectively known as cetaceans) has undergone an astounding transformation over the course of the last century and a half. No longer considered “monsters to be feared and hunted” (Lawrence and Phillips 2004, 695) cetaceans are now regarded as the “soulful, musical friends of humanity, symbols of ecological holism, bellwethers of environmental welfare, and even totems of a movement to transform the world and our attitude towards it” (Burnett 2012, 2). Ecocritic Lawrence Buell suggests that following the realization that ocean ecosystems may be at the brink of collapse, the world’s oceans became de-mythologized; now, a “re-mythologization” of the ocean realm is in process, and it is “marked by the creation of icons of endangerment” (201). Indeed, cetaceans signify endangerment not only in American nature writing of the late twentieth century from which Buell derives his argument but also in U.S. American films released after the turn of the millennium. This makes risk theory a promising theoretical framework for approaching representations of cetaceans in film.
From the perspective of relational risk theory, cetaceans fit the definition of objects at risk, i.e. objects “constituted around traits such as value, loss, vulnerability, and need for protection” (Boholm and Corvellec 180). When an observer perceives a relationship of risk between a risk object that threatens to cause putative harm to an object at risk, both risk object and object at risk are created as such in the process. (Hilgartner, Boholm and Corvellec). For my Ph.D. research project, I compile a corpus of recent U.S. American cetacean films, i.e. fiction and nonfiction films in which cetaceans are prominently featured, in order to analyze how such films construe relationships of risk involving cetaceans. The aim of the project is to identify and describe the film-specific risk rhetorics involved in constructing relationships of risk more generally, and to produce insights into the heuristic frameworks within which cetaceans are ascribed value more specifically. Risk rhetoric, I argue, disrupts preconceived notions about human-animal difference and opens up possibilities for representing cetaceans as more than passive objects without moral relevance.

Placing the human at the center of global ecological crisis, the hotly debated idea that we are l... more Placing the human at the center of global ecological crisis, the hotly debated idea that we are living in the Anthropocene inspires questions about the impact of homo sapiens on nonhuman animals. This paper examines how the categories “human” and “animal” are negotiated in contemporary US documentary films critical of dolphinariums and similar marine mammal parks and argues that in The Cove (2009) and Blackfish (2013) these fixed categories recede into the background while a concept of personhood emerges that is not always limited already to the human. I connect this rhetorical move to the increasing im- pact of risk as a shaping power on the cultural imagination, which makes extrapolations of human impact on the planet and conceptualizations like the Anthropocene possible in the first place and acts as a driving force behind narrative strategies that lend textual shape to such restructurings.

At a time in which the concept of the ‘human’ as defined by cognitive abilities allegedly exclusi... more At a time in which the concept of the ‘human’ as defined by cognitive abilities allegedly exclusive to the species is thoroughly undermined (Haraway, Wolfe), the deconstruction of the humanist subject is well under way. This process has led to anxieties that often find textual expression in literature. Well before Darwin’s On the Origin of Species introduced human animals to their uncomfortable closeness to other primates, whales (among other mammals like bats) found widespread public attention as “problematic organisms” that resisted both Biblical and Linnean taxonomic systems (Burnett).
Exploitive practices and the systematic study of nonhuman animals alike have produced knowledge that threatens the notion of anthropological difference. My paper aims to position nineteenth-century whales in the history of this threat, sharing John Simons’ and Philip Armstrong’s objective to recover “tracks” or “traces” (respectively) of material animals in literature. Analoguous to Armstrong’s analysis of historicized “structures of feeling” in Moby-Dick, my paper brings historicized knowledge to bear on an interpretation of the human-animal interactions in the novel, placing emphasis not only on the problem of classifying whales (as several interpretations have done), but emphasizing the threat to the place of humans in the natural order. For this purpose, I am reading “The Quarterdeck” and “The Grand Armada” in the context of historian of science D Graham Burnett’s 2007 analysis of competing knowledges of whales in an 1819 New York trial about whether whales were mammals or fish. It is my claim that Melville’s use of metaphor and metonymy in these chapters generates an irony that I connect to whales as “problems of knowledge” and the implications of this conceptualization for human exceptionalism; this irony creates a narrative space in which the ideological violence inherent in clinging to anthropological difference can emerge amidst precariously liked chains of metaphors.

Key words
Moby-Dick, Melville, irony, metaphor, metonymy, taxonomy, uncertainty, anthropological difference, whales, whaling, history of science

References

Armstrong, Philip. “Moby-Dick and Compassion.”
-”-. “Rendering the Whale.” What animals mean in the fiction of modernity.
Burnett, Graham D. The Sounding of the Whale.
-”-. Trying Leviathan.
Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species.
Simons, John. Animal rights and the politics of literary representation. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Wolfe, Cary. Animal Rites.
Haraway, Donna.
Zoellner, R The salt-sea mastodon: A reading of Moby-Dick. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973.

The concept of the Anthropocene calls attention to large scale human-induced changes to the plane... more The concept of the Anthropocene calls attention to large scale human-induced changes to the planet we inhabit alongside millions of other species. Anthropocene implies that human actions in the past will actively shape the future for millennia to come. The enormity of the temporal scales involved make environmental risks difficult to conceptualize in the first place and even more difficult to represent. Narrative in general and science fiction in particular offer unique possibilities for constructing temporal scales that make a staging of human impact in the long durée possible.

This paper advances a reading of the 1986 science fiction film Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home in the context of the discourse surrounding global risk in Late Modernity. I argue that Star Trek IV’s combination of the trope of species extinction with the trope of catastrophic climate change is instrumental in staging planetary risk. The coming together of these two tropes serves to compress diegetic time in order to represent anthropogenic effects on the planet on a large scale. Anthropogenic risk then becomes available to be examined from an ironic distance. Irony plays a central role in the way in which the environmental crisis - which can only be averted through nonhuman agency - is imagined as a crisis of the imagination.

By imagining voluntary risk-taking as a key element in the solution to the central conflict, Star Trek IV claims the chance aspect inherent in risk and thereby sets a counterpoint to other narratives of ecological risk that operate with an exclusive understanding of risk as “the anticipation of catastrophe” (Beck 9).

References:

Beck, Ulrich. World at Risk. Transl. Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009. Print.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Dir. Leonard Nimoy. Perf. Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, et al. Paramount Pictures, 1986. Film.

The gaining currency of Anthropocene as a critical concept in the humanities and a term in public... more The gaining currency of Anthropocene as a critical concept in the humanities and a term in public discourse indicates that the status of human beings as a geological force that impacts the planet as a whole has arrived in the consciousness of academics and the general public alike (Chakrabarty 206). Homo sapiens is implicated in a temporal dimension that far exceeds the life spans of individuals at the same time that it exceeds that of cultures, species, and ecosystems. Narrative offers the possibility of constructing temporal scales that are able to address planetary risk and imagine the impact of unintended consequences beyond individual lifetimes through devices like time travel.
The threat of species extinction has become a common trope in narratives of ecological risk and is frequently employed as a narrative device that illustrates the destructive potential of exploitative human-animal relationships. Framed as a discourse of conservation, the Western anti-whaling discourse largely relies on representing whales as metonyms of nature and whaling as a metaphor for human treatment of nature. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home imagines the impact of whaling in a dimension beyond the temporal or spatial limits experienced by its audience and takes the significance of species extinction to another level.
Approaching this filmic text in the context of Ulrich Beck’s World Risk Society paradigm, I argue that both the plot device of time travel and the figure of the alien probe are narrative strategies that make human-made risk visible as such (World at Risk 45). The probe, which I read as a robotic zombie of an extinct species, functions as an embodiment of existential threat originating from what Beck (“World” 293) and Giddens (4) call manufactured uncertainty. In the tension between local problem, global catastrophe, and planetary obliteration, the film in this manner imagines the ultimate unknowability of continually replicating manufactured uncertainties, but connects them strongly to shortsighted exploitative human practices and points out the limitedness of the anthropocentric viewpoint.

References:
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Dir. Leonard Nimoy. Perf. Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, George Takei. Paramount, 1986. Film.

Beck, Ulrich. World at Risk. Transl.Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009.
---. “World Risk Society and Manufactured Uncertainties.” Iris, 2036-3257: I, (2009): 291-299. Print.
Chakrabarty, Dipesh. “The Climate of History: Four Theses.” Critical Inquiry 35 (2009): 197-222. Print.
Giddens, Anthony. “Living in a Post-Traditional Society.“ Reflexive Modernization. Eds. Ulrich Beck, Anthony Giddens, and Scott Lash. Cambridge: Polity, 1994. 56-109. Print.

Talks by Michaela Castellanos

From the mysterious fox in electronic dance music to the cuddly puppies in toilet paper ads, popu... more From the mysterious fox in electronic dance music to the cuddly puppies in toilet paper ads, popular culture is full of animal representations. Yet they rarely make us think about actual animals – instead, they communicate other ideas (e.g. what you should buy next!). We will watch a film clip together and explore what sounds and images are used to represent whales. What does the way the animals are shown on screen tell us about how we value them? What, if anything, might it say about how we see ourselves as human (rather than animal)?

Reading The Cove as a Narrative of Risk Conflict German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s contribution... more Reading The Cove as a Narrative of Risk Conflict

German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s contribution to a sociological theory of risk over the last three decades has culminated in his conceptualization of society on a global scale as a “World Risk Society.” Now established as one of several influential models for “what the defining emphases of global environmental culture are or should be” (Buell 197), the World Risk Society paradigm is becoming increasingly relevant as a theoretical framework for the analysis of narratives that engage issues of ecological risk. Scholars in cultural and literary studies, particularly in the field of ecocriticism, have taken up Beck’s statement that risks have to be made visible in order to be perceptible as such (World at Risk 45) and demonstrated how tropes and narrative templates such as apocalypse and elegy are employed as narrative strategies for achieving this purpose (Garrard, Heise).

Louie Psihoyos’ 2009 documentary The Cove focuses on the experience of the current moment by foregrounding the work necessary to make particular risks visible while others attempt to define them as non-risks. Making extensive use of images captured by night vision cameras, the film adopts a peculiar aesthetic that has been described as “imperialist” (Ahuja 24). Alternatively, I am reading the documentary with aesthetic influences from film noir as following in the tradition of the detective story, which is ultimately based on explaining the unknown in terms of metonymy (Hayward 229). It is my contention that the ambiguity inherent in these images as well as in this type of story-telling creates a particular kind of irony that acknowledges its own complicity in the problem the narrative aims to ‘uncover.’ Therefore I connect the simultaneously unfolding biographical narrative about Ric O’ Barry with Beck’s concept of tragic individualization.

Participation in Workshops & Summer Schools by Michaela Castellanos

This AHRC-funded, invitation-only symposium, organised by the University of Strathclyde, takes pl... more This AHRC-funded, invitation-only symposium, organised by the University of Strathclyde, takes place in Central Glasgow on May 18-19 2016.

The symposium takes place just before the next British Animal Studies Network meeting and will bring together academics and current postgraduate research students to discuss three key issues at the heart of the field: interdisciplinarity and animal studies; teaching and animal studies; impact and animal studies.

The central theme of the Summer School 2014 will be the question as to an aesthetics of animals, ... more The central theme of the Summer School 2014 will be the question as to an aesthetics of animals, in a twofold sense: For one matter, animals pose a fundamental question of Aesthetics: How do animals appear within the space of a form-conscious perception? How may this perception be translated into a representation that will both remain object-oriented and sound realms realms of possibility? And how, in the face of the animal as a paradigm of the Natural, may something akin to aesthetic autonomy be implemented? Investigation will focus on such artworks (pictures, films, texts, etc.) that do not merely depict animals, but at the same time use animals to bring up questions of aesthetic theory. In this way, animals can be grasped as reflection figures of the Aesthetic. On the other hand, animals are also to be contemplated as active agents of an aesthetics in its own right. Categories such as beauty, magnificence, design, etc., are discussed in Zoology time and again. This creates an investigative horizon which may be linked to aesthetic theory: Which function does form-conscious perception perform in animals? Where in the animal kingdom do mechanisms of imitation become effective which go beyond the mere matching of behavior by exploratively testing new option? Where does animal behavior not simply restrict itself to pure functionality, but exhibits playful license?

Central for the 2013 Summer School on "Political Zoology" (Sep 23-Sep 28, 2013) will be a politic... more Central for the 2013 Summer School on "Political Zoology" (Sep 23-Sep 28, 2013) will be a political-historical question: What are the political and social functions of animals? What about the interrelations between the politics, the poetics, and the history of animals? Animals are both ordinal signs and regulatory instruments: Tell me in which place you put which animals, and I will tell you how the culture, in which you live, works. Such systems of animal order may be traced within the framework of a political zoology. The analysis of political zoologies does not relate to a given biological, but to a pre-conceived and designed cultural order. Incorporating perspectives from the Natural Sciences, it moves in bio-cultural, respectively cultural-biological spaces. It devotes itself to theories (e. g., Evolution) as well as to institutions (e. g., the Zoo), and practices (e. g., Breeding). A substantial period of time – the Early Modern Age, Modernity, the Present – will be of historical interest. Political Zoology is to be investigated proceeding from exemplary case studies of literary, zoological, philosophical, and legal texts.

America After Nature: Democracy, Culture, Environment, 2016

Key words
Moby-Dick, Melville, irony, metaphor, metonymy, taxonomy, uncertainty, anthropological difference, whales, whaling, history of science

References

References:

Beck, Ulrich. World at Risk. Transl. Ciaran Cronin. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2009. Print.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Dir. Leonard Nimoy. Perf. Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, et al. Paramount Pictures, 1986. Film.

References:
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Dir. Leonard Nimoy. Perf. Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, George Takei. Paramount, 1986. Film.

Reading The Cove as a Narrative of Risk Conflict German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s contribution... more Reading The Cove as a Narrative of Risk Conflict

"Lisa Sällvin, Heléne Zetterström-Dahlqvist, Emelie Larsson, Karin Larsson Hult and Michaela Cast... more "Lisa Sällvin, Heléne Zetterström-Dahlqvist, Emelie Larsson, Karin Larsson Hult and Michaela Castellanos, using modern technology, have created an easy-to-use tool that enables everyone to raise awareness, visualize and counteract microaggressions/ suppression techniques and discriminatory power structures in everyday situations. In the light of the # metoo movement, they have thus contributed to producing knowledge and raising awareness about these issues, thus creating the conditions for a better working environment for employees and students - free from suppression techniques, violations and sexual harassment.

/ in the Swedish original:
"Lisa Sällvin, Heléne Zetterström-Dahlqvist, Emelie Larsson, Karin Larsson Hult och Michaela Castellanos har genom att utnyttja modern teknologi skapat ett lättillgängligt verktyg, som möjliggör för var och en att utifrån upplevda vardagssituationer öka medvetenheten om, synliggöra och motverka härskartekniker och diskriminerande maktstrukturer. I ljuset av #metoo-rörelsen har de på detta sätt bidragit till att öka kunskapen och medvetenheten kring dessa frågor, och därmed skapat förutsättningar för en bättre arbetsmiljö för medarbetare och studenter – fri från härskartekniker, kränkningar och sexuella trakasserier."

Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities, 2015