Hayley Singer | University of Melbourne (original) (raw)
Papers by Hayley Singer
Cultural Politics
This essay is a broken elemental thing composed of cuts, by which is meant outtakes. Outtakes are... more This essay is a broken elemental thing composed of cuts, by which is meant outtakes. Outtakes are scenes or sequences that never make it into a film. The scenes collected here have been retrieved from the cutting floor of the editing suite in its author's mind and reassembled in ways that hold onto an ambitious claim—to think of narrative cuts and silences as interruptive forces in the operation of writing and the imaginative rendering of the abattoir. Working with outtakes helps the author approach, in a new way, questions the author has been exploring for a while now: How can writers critically respond to the existence of abattoirs? What strategies might writers engage to render normalized forms of violence against animals strange and even intolerable through particularly literary practices, strategies, and generic forms? Literally, caesura means “cutting.” It evokes pause. Space for breath, for detours in modes of multispecies literary representation. If the line—working on t...
Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ), Apr 21, 2020
History, Emily Potter proposes in Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Se... more History, Emily Potter proposes in Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Settler-Colonial Place, ‘does not end when we stop telling a particular story of a particular time’ (146). The stories sit right here, in the ground. As Potter shows, they radiate in unpredictable ways. They continue to mark the present no matter how colonial culture attempts to encyst narratives of Indigenous knowledge, cultural practice and unextinguished connection to Indigenous Country
Society & Animals, 2021
Animal Studies Journal, 2016
This essay has two primary aims: 1) to provide an introductory definition of the concept of the f... more This essay has two primary aims: 1) to provide an introductory definition of the concept of the fleischgeist and 2) outline what it means for novelists to ‘write the fleischgeist’. This essay emerges from my own desire, as a writer of fiction, to consider how, practically, I can expose and explore interconnections between carnist and misogynistic violence without lapsing into a conceptual perpetuation of such violence. Coupled with this practical desire is the recognition that there is a rich body of modern and contemporary fiction that makes visible some ways in which the logic of carnivorous patriarchy (or, carnophallogocentrism) plays across histories, cultures, literatures and in every day life. It is my view that some novels write the fleischgeist. In the following essay I consider what this phrase, writing the fleischgeist, means. Then I sketch out what the fleischgeist is, and offer examples of the way it manifests in everyday life and works of art. Finally, I turn to Deborah...
This review of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007) introduces the concept of the art of carnis... more This review of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007) introduces the concept of the art of carnism through which a reading of the novel is undertaken.
When I look around I see a terrifying pattern: animals are not meant to survive.
![Research paper thumbnail of ‘Let’s Find Out! What Do I Make?’ [Review] Kathryn Gillespie, The Cow with Ear Tag #1389. University of Chicago Press, 2018. 272pp](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/91550643/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](Animal Studies Journal, 2019
I’m halfway through Kathryn Gillespie’s book when it hits me. This enormous shadow lake of sadnes... more I’m halfway through Kathryn Gillespie’s book when it hits me. This enormous shadow lake of sadness I’ve been walking around with – it’s dairy. It’s the electric prods that move cows through pens. It’s the endless stream of bovine bodies flowing around the world. It’s the ginormous global wet market of milk and semen. It’s the aftermath of shotgun blasts delivered to immobile cows, to fugitive cows, still ringing in my ears. It’s the call of mothers and children separated at auction yards. It’s that we’re living in a context of (almost) compulsory dairy consumption. It’s that writing about the commodification of animal life appears to be an endless task and though I cannot take my eyes away from its pages, reading The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 also feels like an endless task. Endless because I have not, cannot, retain all the details Gillespie has packed into this book in only a single read. I know and I feel that I am not just working my way through this book; it is working its way thr...
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2020
A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care f... more A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care for urban nature and creating more socially and environmentally just cities. At the same time, urban biodiversity is the focus of an increasing number of projects at multiple scales. However, in contrast to the ethos of multispecies ‘entanglement’ and ‘becoming with’ that typically animates this research, large numbers of animals ‘entangled’ in the machinations of our cities constitute a ‘nature’ that remains mostly unseen. And yet, it is the local and global practices these animals are part of – associated with food, entertainment, education, companionship and research – and the persistent relations of use and exploitation that underpin them, that are most directly implicated in the ongoing environmental degradation, destruction of habitats and extinction of species that create the ‘problem’ of urban biodiversity. We therefore argue that a persistent anthropocentrism is hampering efforts...
Environment and Planning E: Space and Nature, 2020
A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care f... more A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care for urban nature and creating more socially and environmentally just cities. At the same time, urban biodiversity is the focus of an increasing number of projects at multiple scales. However, in contrast to the ethos of multispecies ‘entanglement’ and ‘becoming with’ that typically animates this research, large numbers of animals ‘entangled’ in the machinations of our cities constitute a ‘nature’ that remains mostly unseen. And yet, it is the local and global practices these animals are part of – associated with food, entertainment, education, companionship and research – and the persistent relations of use and exploitation that underpin them, that are most directly implicated in the ongoing environmental degradation, destruction of habitats and extinction of species that create the ‘problem’ of urban biodiversity. We therefore argue that a persistent anthropocentrism is hampering efforts to respond effectively to the findings and recommendations of the IPCC, IPBES, FAO and others. Based on a thorough literature search and review of 65 articles concerned with urban ‘nature’ and multispecies relations, we demonstrate a prevailing hierarchy in how, and more importantly which, nonhuman species are being represented. Parallels are noted from recent social movements and the work of scholars from complementary fields. We highlight the dangers posed by this selective remit of care and concern and suggest critical animal studies as a way to adjust the frame and extend the boundaries of dominant thinking about what constitutes ‘nature’. In conclusion, we call for researchers concerned with urban nature and biodiversity to adopt more critical and repoliticized understandings of ‘nature’ and multispecies relations – ones that are better poised to challenge practices involving commodified animals and slow the pace of environmental destructions and losses they are associated with.
The Monthly , 2019
Inside report on police violence at IMARC 2019
The Lifted Brow, 2017
When I look around I see a terrifying pattern: animals are not meant to survive.
The Lifted Brow, 2017
Determining whose life is grievable is an act of framing.
The Lifted Brow, 2017
When I turn to look back at the twentieth century I see it convulse under the image of a physiol... more When I turn to look back at the twentieth century I see it convulse under the image of a physiologist sorting through the entrails of freshly slaughtered pigs looking for embryos.
Animal Studies Journal, 2016
How to expose and explore interconnections between carnist and misogynistic violence without laps... more How to expose and explore interconnections between carnist and misogynistic violence without lapsing into a conceptual perpetuation of such violence?
This symposium explores the intersection between feminist studies and animal studies in research ... more This symposium explores the intersection between feminist studies and animal studies in research and activism. What can contemporary feminism offer to the animals whose lives are deemed to be outside of legal protections and ethical concerns? How might considering the perspective of nonhuman animals advance the aims and practices of feminism?
Book Reviews by Hayley Singer
Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology, 2020
History, Emily Potter proposes in Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Se... more History, Emily Potter proposes in Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Settler-Colonial Place, ‘does not end when we stop telling a particular story of a particular time’ (146). The stories sit right here, in the ground. As Potter shows, they radiate in unpredictable ways. They continue to mark the present no matter how colonial culture attempts to encyst narratives of Indigenous knowledge, cultural practice and unextinguished connection to Indigenous Country.
Animal Studies Journal, 2019
I’m halfway through Kathryn Gillespie’s book when it hits me. This enormous shadow lake of sadnes... more I’m halfway through Kathryn Gillespie’s book when it hits me. This enormous shadow lake of sadness I’ve been walking around with – it’s dairy. It’s the electric prods that move cows through pens. It’s the endless stream of bovine bodies flowing around the world. It’s the ginormous global wet market of milk and semen. It’s the aftermath of shotgun blasts delivered to immobile cows, to fugitive cows, still ringing in my ears. It’s the call of mothers and children separated at auction yards. It’s that we’re living in a context of (almost) compulsory dairy consumption. It’s that writing about the commodification of animal life appears to be an endless task and though I cannot take my eyes away from its pages, reading The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 also feels like an endless task.
Cordite Poetry Review, 2018
From the decayed fragments of Sappho (Psappha) to the works of HD, Monique Wittig, Anne Carson an... more From the decayed fragments of Sappho (Psappha) to the works of HD, Monique Wittig, Anne Carson and Marion May Campbell, fragmentation has been developed as a deeply political and poetically significant way to write stories of how lesbians live and die.
Cultural Politics
This essay is a broken elemental thing composed of cuts, by which is meant outtakes. Outtakes are... more This essay is a broken elemental thing composed of cuts, by which is meant outtakes. Outtakes are scenes or sequences that never make it into a film. The scenes collected here have been retrieved from the cutting floor of the editing suite in its author's mind and reassembled in ways that hold onto an ambitious claim—to think of narrative cuts and silences as interruptive forces in the operation of writing and the imaginative rendering of the abattoir. Working with outtakes helps the author approach, in a new way, questions the author has been exploring for a while now: How can writers critically respond to the existence of abattoirs? What strategies might writers engage to render normalized forms of violence against animals strange and even intolerable through particularly literary practices, strategies, and generic forms? Literally, caesura means “cutting.” It evokes pause. Space for breath, for detours in modes of multispecies literary representation. If the line—working on t...
Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology (ASLEC-ANZ), Apr 21, 2020
History, Emily Potter proposes in Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Se... more History, Emily Potter proposes in Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Settler-Colonial Place, ‘does not end when we stop telling a particular story of a particular time’ (146). The stories sit right here, in the ground. As Potter shows, they radiate in unpredictable ways. They continue to mark the present no matter how colonial culture attempts to encyst narratives of Indigenous knowledge, cultural practice and unextinguished connection to Indigenous Country
Society & Animals, 2021
Animal Studies Journal, 2016
This essay has two primary aims: 1) to provide an introductory definition of the concept of the f... more This essay has two primary aims: 1) to provide an introductory definition of the concept of the fleischgeist and 2) outline what it means for novelists to ‘write the fleischgeist’. This essay emerges from my own desire, as a writer of fiction, to consider how, practically, I can expose and explore interconnections between carnist and misogynistic violence without lapsing into a conceptual perpetuation of such violence. Coupled with this practical desire is the recognition that there is a rich body of modern and contemporary fiction that makes visible some ways in which the logic of carnivorous patriarchy (or, carnophallogocentrism) plays across histories, cultures, literatures and in every day life. It is my view that some novels write the fleischgeist. In the following essay I consider what this phrase, writing the fleischgeist, means. Then I sketch out what the fleischgeist is, and offer examples of the way it manifests in everyday life and works of art. Finally, I turn to Deborah...
This review of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007) introduces the concept of the art of carnis... more This review of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007) introduces the concept of the art of carnism through which a reading of the novel is undertaken.
When I look around I see a terrifying pattern: animals are not meant to survive.
Animal Studies Journal, 2019
I’m halfway through Kathryn Gillespie’s book when it hits me. This enormous shadow lake of sadnes... more I’m halfway through Kathryn Gillespie’s book when it hits me. This enormous shadow lake of sadness I’ve been walking around with – it’s dairy. It’s the electric prods that move cows through pens. It’s the endless stream of bovine bodies flowing around the world. It’s the ginormous global wet market of milk and semen. It’s the aftermath of shotgun blasts delivered to immobile cows, to fugitive cows, still ringing in my ears. It’s the call of mothers and children separated at auction yards. It’s that we’re living in a context of (almost) compulsory dairy consumption. It’s that writing about the commodification of animal life appears to be an endless task and though I cannot take my eyes away from its pages, reading The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 also feels like an endless task. Endless because I have not, cannot, retain all the details Gillespie has packed into this book in only a single read. I know and I feel that I am not just working my way through this book; it is working its way thr...
Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 2020
A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care f... more A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care for urban nature and creating more socially and environmentally just cities. At the same time, urban biodiversity is the focus of an increasing number of projects at multiple scales. However, in contrast to the ethos of multispecies ‘entanglement’ and ‘becoming with’ that typically animates this research, large numbers of animals ‘entangled’ in the machinations of our cities constitute a ‘nature’ that remains mostly unseen. And yet, it is the local and global practices these animals are part of – associated with food, entertainment, education, companionship and research – and the persistent relations of use and exploitation that underpin them, that are most directly implicated in the ongoing environmental degradation, destruction of habitats and extinction of species that create the ‘problem’ of urban biodiversity. We therefore argue that a persistent anthropocentrism is hampering efforts...
Environment and Planning E: Space and Nature, 2020
A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care f... more A growing body of literature is concerned with ‘healing’ our cities, fostering an ethic of care for urban nature and creating more socially and environmentally just cities. At the same time, urban biodiversity is the focus of an increasing number of projects at multiple scales. However, in contrast to the ethos of multispecies ‘entanglement’ and ‘becoming with’ that typically animates this research, large numbers of animals ‘entangled’ in the machinations of our cities constitute a ‘nature’ that remains mostly unseen. And yet, it is the local and global practices these animals are part of – associated with food, entertainment, education, companionship and research – and the persistent relations of use and exploitation that underpin them, that are most directly implicated in the ongoing environmental degradation, destruction of habitats and extinction of species that create the ‘problem’ of urban biodiversity. We therefore argue that a persistent anthropocentrism is hampering efforts to respond effectively to the findings and recommendations of the IPCC, IPBES, FAO and others. Based on a thorough literature search and review of 65 articles concerned with urban ‘nature’ and multispecies relations, we demonstrate a prevailing hierarchy in how, and more importantly which, nonhuman species are being represented. Parallels are noted from recent social movements and the work of scholars from complementary fields. We highlight the dangers posed by this selective remit of care and concern and suggest critical animal studies as a way to adjust the frame and extend the boundaries of dominant thinking about what constitutes ‘nature’. In conclusion, we call for researchers concerned with urban nature and biodiversity to adopt more critical and repoliticized understandings of ‘nature’ and multispecies relations – ones that are better poised to challenge practices involving commodified animals and slow the pace of environmental destructions and losses they are associated with.
The Monthly , 2019
Inside report on police violence at IMARC 2019
The Lifted Brow, 2017
When I look around I see a terrifying pattern: animals are not meant to survive.
The Lifted Brow, 2017
Determining whose life is grievable is an act of framing.
The Lifted Brow, 2017
When I turn to look back at the twentieth century I see it convulse under the image of a physiol... more When I turn to look back at the twentieth century I see it convulse under the image of a physiologist sorting through the entrails of freshly slaughtered pigs looking for embryos.
Animal Studies Journal, 2016
How to expose and explore interconnections between carnist and misogynistic violence without laps... more How to expose and explore interconnections between carnist and misogynistic violence without lapsing into a conceptual perpetuation of such violence?
This symposium explores the intersection between feminist studies and animal studies in research ... more This symposium explores the intersection between feminist studies and animal studies in research and activism. What can contemporary feminism offer to the animals whose lives are deemed to be outside of legal protections and ethical concerns? How might considering the perspective of nonhuman animals advance the aims and practices of feminism?
Swamphen: a Journal of Cultural Ecology, 2020
History, Emily Potter proposes in Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Se... more History, Emily Potter proposes in Writing Belonging at the Millennium: Notes from the Field on Settler-Colonial Place, ‘does not end when we stop telling a particular story of a particular time’ (146). The stories sit right here, in the ground. As Potter shows, they radiate in unpredictable ways. They continue to mark the present no matter how colonial culture attempts to encyst narratives of Indigenous knowledge, cultural practice and unextinguished connection to Indigenous Country.
Animal Studies Journal, 2019
I’m halfway through Kathryn Gillespie’s book when it hits me. This enormous shadow lake of sadnes... more I’m halfway through Kathryn Gillespie’s book when it hits me. This enormous shadow lake of sadness I’ve been walking around with – it’s dairy. It’s the electric prods that move cows through pens. It’s the endless stream of bovine bodies flowing around the world. It’s the ginormous global wet market of milk and semen. It’s the aftermath of shotgun blasts delivered to immobile cows, to fugitive cows, still ringing in my ears. It’s the call of mothers and children separated at auction yards. It’s that we’re living in a context of (almost) compulsory dairy consumption. It’s that writing about the commodification of animal life appears to be an endless task and though I cannot take my eyes away from its pages, reading The Cow with Ear Tag #1389 also feels like an endless task.
Cordite Poetry Review, 2018
From the decayed fragments of Sappho (Psappha) to the works of HD, Monique Wittig, Anne Carson an... more From the decayed fragments of Sappho (Psappha) to the works of HD, Monique Wittig, Anne Carson and Marion May Campbell, fragmentation has been developed as a deeply political and poetically significant way to write stories of how lesbians live and die.
Writing From Below, 2016
This review of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007) introduces the concept of the art of carnis... more This review of Han Kang’s novel The Vegetarian (2007) introduces the concept of the art of carnism through which a reading of the novel is undertaken.