Book review: Eurasian Environments: Nature and Ecology in Imperial Russian and Soviet History (original) (raw)

(Political Ecology and) Animal Studies

The Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory , 2020

In light of the extraordinary social and political situation under which we all now labor, I have chosen to take a rather different approach than usual in this year’s essay. To this end, I deploy Bruno Latour’s Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climatic Regime as both a framing mechanism and a heuristic device in order to focus attention on the compelling question of posthumanist political ecology. While originally published as Ou` atterrir? Comment s’orienter en politique in 2017, Latour’s short text has only continued to gain relevance consequent on the heavy black pall cast over society first by the Covid-19 pandemic, and then quickly followed by the political hucksterism of the Trump administration in lieu of any reasoned response—as clearly evidenced by the opportunistic refusal by the US to pay dues amounting to millions of dollars to the World Health Organization by way of an inflammatory campaign of lies and blame aimed at denying any and all responsibility for the current woes of the Earth writ large. Whereas to some this might seem to concern animal studies only obliquely, the questions brought to bear by political ecology upon the agitated thickness of geological history are among the most important facing animal studies today.

Globalization And Critical Animal Studies

Globalization and Critisal Animal Studies, 2023

This essay on “Globalization and Critical Animal Studies” is to be published by Brill in a collective volume on globalization entitled ReFiguring Global Challenges: Literary and Cinematic Explorations of War, Inequality and Migration edited by Johan Högland, Amanda Minervini et al. It has as a coda a recent interview that Amanda Minervini did with me concerning the relation between the Academy and the larger society.

“Animals and Imperialism in World History,” History Compass 11, no. 10 (October 2013): 801-807.

In the last decade or so, an increasing number of historians have written about the relationship between animals and imperialism. Their work builds on pioneering scholarship by environmental historian Alfred Crosby and cultural historians Harriet Ritvo and John MacKenzie, among others. Recent writing on animals and imperialism, influenced by wider trends in animal studies and history, has taken this topic in new directions. Namely, history writing on animals and imperialism has become more concerned with actual animals and their relationship with people, the metaphorical deployment of creatures, animal agency, and sources that give voice to animals. Work on animals and imperialism will likely benefit from becoming less Western-centric and more transnational and transimperial.

KLIMKOVA Beyond the human world The Unseen animal Quaere 2014

V štúdii načrtávam a reflektujem morálny problém nevidených zvierat, ktorých neviditeľnosť predstavuje zložitú sieť kultúrnych, sociálnych, morálnych, psychologických a ekonomických súvislostí. Termínom nevidené zviera rozumiem mimoľudské bytie, živé bytosti z ríše zvierat, ktoré v rôznych podobách sprevádzajú našu každodennosť ako vec, objekt, surovina, číslo a sú svojim utrpením a bolesťou nevidené za tovarom a rôznymi produktmi, v zábavnom priemysle, vo vede, výskume a vzdelávaní alebo v zajatí pre zábavu človeka. Zdá sa, že kým v spoločenskej praxi nemáme konečné odpovede, je dôležité hľadať spoločné cesty welfaristov a rightistov a pokúšať sa zmierniť zbytočnú polarizáciu etických prístupovantropocentrizmu a biocentrizmu uznaním vnútornej hodnoty a individuálnej variability zvierat a vo vzťahu k nim dávať na prvé miesto uznanie, rešpekt, súcit a obdiv.