Critical Animal Studies Research Papers (original) (raw)

Katerina Kolozova is a Macedonian philosopher whose publications from last two decades aim to analyze various topics using François Laruelle’s “non-philosophy” or “non-standard philosophy.” Non-philosophy could be roughly described as radicalized deconstruction:
Laruelle claims that not everything can be grasped by a philosophy: for Laruelle, “philosophy is too serious an affair to be left to the philosophers alone.”1 Non-philosophy opposes the “principle of sufficient philosophy” through which philosophy determines and decides
what is real. According to Laruelle, the ultimate limit of philosophical thought and its self-proclaimed sufficiency lies in its inherent tendency to close itself in a transcendental system of autofetishist conceptions, which presume that one can grasp the Real (“The Real is neither capable of being known or even ‘thought,’ but can be described in axioms. [...]
Even ‘immanence’ only serves to name the Real which tolerates nothing but axiomatic descriptions or formulations.”) by a philosophical thought, or that the Real could be mediated only through human thought. Laruelle criticizes this tendency of philosophy, which is usually expressing itself through the structure of “philosophical Decision.” (“To philosophize is to decide Reality and the thoughts that result from this, i.e. to believe to
be able to order them in the universal order of the Principle of Reason [Logos].”) Katerina Kolozova use Laruelle’s non-philosophy to explore more explicitly political topics. In the Cut Of Th e Real (2014), she criticized certain dogmatism of poststructuralist philosophy and feminist theory, namely their symptomatic rejection of the Real and the
One. In Toward a Radical Metaphysics of Socialism (2015) and The Lived Revolution (2016) Kolozova presented a rereading of Marx, whose work she found relevant for the critique of speculative philosophical dimension of the capitalist economy, embodied in the 2008 global finance crisis, and in the latter book, she explored the possibility of a new political solidarity, based on “bodies in pain.” Kolozova doesn’t call to philosophically reconstruct Marx’s thought for the current situation, but she goes back to Marx with the help of Laruelle’s non-Marxism, contrary to the usual approach of Marxist philosophers, who often
try to create certain philosophical system of Marx’s work. Together with Eileen A. Joy, Kolozova edited the anthology After the “Speculative Turn” (2016), which addressed recent realist and materialist tendencies in feminist philosophy. In her most recent book, Capitalism’s Holocaust of Animals (2019), Kolozova aimed to explore broader philosophical foundations of neoliberal capitalism, and its dealing with nonhuman animals and their suffering. According to Kolozova, “We have to start by coming to terms with what we did to the animals in the constitutive act of philosophy and via proxy to all those dehumanised that belong to the species of man ‘by courtesy’ only.”

- by Katerina Kolozova and +1
- •
- Political Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Marxism, Posthumanism

A special issue for Issues in Teacher Education (ITE) that includes diverse ecocritical perspectives in teacher education.

- by John Lupinacci and +3
- •
- Critical Theory, Environmental Education, Teacher Education, Indigenous education

Flyer for forthcoming book, published September 2021

- by Catherine Duxbury
- •
- Critical Animal Studies, Human-Animal Studies, Ethical veganism, Veganism

This article examines the Japanese cat café boom, which peaked in 2009 yet remains a significant retail phenomenon throughout Japan, and in particular Tokyo. How do humans encounter animals in contemporary Japan, not as private owners and companions, but as consumers seeking direct, sensory engagement with cats at a moment of profound social and economic anxieties? Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in Tokyo, this article examines how cats have become a newly emergent commodity within the ‘healing boom’ that first emerged in recessionary-era 1990s Japan. Such healing commodities – therapeutic music, aromatherapy, robot interaction, among others – are designed to invoke an affective engagement with the consumer in order to cope with the uncertain and stressful conditions of life in still recessionary, and now post 3/11, Japan. I situate cat cafés within the increasing immaterialization of the economy in post-bubble Japan during which social relationships have become commodified and marketed to those who can afford it. Cats are the affective object through which patrons seek a sense of healing and relaxation.

- by Lorraine Plourde
- •
- Japanese Studies, Critical Animal Studies, Cultural Anthropology, Cats

Follow this link for free access:... more

- by Gretchen Head
- •
- Arabic Literature, Critical Animal Studies, Ecocriticism, Maghreb studies
- by Tobias Linné
- •
- Critical Pedagogy, Critical Animal Studies

En el cruce entre los estudios animales, los estudios decoloniales, los feminismos y la teoría crip, este artículo argumenta que la "modernidad-colonialidad" ha distribuido a las formas de vida en escalas jerárquicas en base a la dicotomía entre lo humano y lo no-humano, dictaminando qué cuerpos importan y cuáles no, con arreglo a diferentes marcadores de poder: raza, capacidad, género, especie (y otros). Asimismo, se sostiene que la cuestión animal puede operar como una instancia transversal para desmontar los dispositivos racistas, heterocisexistas, capacitistas y especistas que han ubicado en el centro al varón cisgénero, blanco, heterosexual y capacitado, mientras han situado en los márgenes a los demás animales, a las personas racializadas, a los cuerpos queer o con discapacidad. Asimismo, se afirma que un enfoque oblicuo de los veganismos puede ser una oportunidad para pensar redes de cuidado, marcadas por la promesa de configurar otros modos de lo común.

- by Anahí Gabriela González
- •
- Posthumanism, Critical Animal Studies, Crip theory, Colonialidad

La tesi presenta inizialmente il pensiero di Jacques Derrida sull'animalità. Il tema affrontato è la sovranità dell'uomo sul resto dei viventi, in particolare nei riguardi della discriminazione dell'animalità. Nei capitoli a seguire si attua un'emancipazione dell'animalità e non dall'animalità come la corrente umanista voleva. Attraverso l'ontogenesi del concetto di "umanità" viene decostruito il costrutto che sorregge la soglia che divide l'uomo dagli animali, laddove essi partecipano all'animalità in maniere differenti. L'emergenza di questa composizione dei temi trattati si erge ad azione esemplare con cui Derrida, prima di morire, ha lasciato delle tracce da seguire durante il ricevimento del premio Adorno.

- by Nicola Zengiaro
- •
- Philosophy, Ontology, Philosophy Of Language, Epistemology

Dossier de Presentación del Programa Viopet VioPet es un programa que acoge temporal o definitivamente a los animales domésticos de
víctimas de la violencia familiar. Esta iniciativa surge desde GEVHA (Grupo para el Estudio de la Violencia hacia Humanos y Animales) y el
Observatorio de Violencia Hacia los Animales a partir de la relación establecida entre la violencia hacia animales y humanos y debido a
la falta de protección de los animales que desemboca en una desprotección total de les víctimas humanas que sufren este
fenómeno.

- by Núria Querol
- •
- Criminology, Animal Science, Domestic Violence, Animal Studies
- by Núria Querol
- •
- Human-Animal Relations, Domestic Violence, Violence, Animal Studies

Modern-day zoos and aquariums market themselves as places of education and conservation. A recent study conducted by the American Zoo and Aquarium Association (AZA) (Falk et al., 2007) is being widely heralded as the first direct evidence that visits to zoos and aquariums produce long-term positive effects on people’s attitudes toward other animals. In this paper, we address whether this conclusion is warranted by analyzing the study’s methodological soundness. We conclude that Falk et al. (2007) contains at least six major threats to methodological validity that undermine the authors’ conclusions. There remains no compelling evidence for the claim that zoos and aquariums promote attitude change, education, or interest in conservation in visitors, although further investigation of this possibility using methodologically sophisticated designs is warranted.

- by Lori Marino
- •
- Conservation, Methodology, Animal Ethics, Critical Animal Studies
- by Amber E. George and +1
- •
- Critical Animal Studies

A joint evaluation of all animals, uses all additive genetic relationships uses all data on all animal jointly It works as a linear model (correcting different effects for each other), jointly estimates animal effects and fixed effects (herds) but has Selection Index properties (Regression with " heritability ")  1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1

- by Mohammad Rifky
- •
- Agricultural Engineering, Genetics, Animal Science, Conservation Biology

This essay analyzes the behavioral psychologist Neal E. Miller's 1948 educational film, Motivation and Reward in Learning, as a pivotal example of the overhaul of educational media in the wake of animal experiments into behavioral psychology during the mid-twentieth century. Drawing from historical research and close analysis of the formal components of the film, this essay reveals the impact of the animal laboratory as a vital site where films were produced and where the effects of spectatorship were tested. Ultimately, it concludes that the onscreen animals in films like Motivation and Reward in Learning reflected the intended experience of their viewers, both of whom had their motivations and actions managed by their manufactured settings of the laboratory and the screen.

The first part of this paper (by Suzana Marjanić) documents the fact that city authorities throughout Croatia do not encourage needed care for stray dogs and cats, specifically the construction of state and private shelters for abandoned and lost animals, as well as feeding stations. Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, does not have a shelter for cats. Also documented are exhibitions of animal studies in Croatia, two of which were organised in Zagreb in the same year: an artistic one All Our Animals – Animals as Subjects in Croatian Modern Fine Arts (Modern Gallery, Zagreb, 2017), and another from the aspect of ethnozoology and anthropology of animals – Of Animals and Humans (Ethnographic Museum, Zagreb, 2017), both of which also featured cats.The second part of the article (by Rosana Ratkovčić) notes the fact that the number of stray cats on Croatian islands increases each year, as pets brought by tourists are frequently left behind at the end of summer vacation. On the example of the ...

- by Rosana Ratkovčić
- •
- Geography, Critical Animal Studies, Cats

This thesis seeks to explore the ways in which human exceptionalism operates by problematizing the sexualization of the body parts of dead farm animals, namely meat, with the premise of going beyond the binary understanding of human and non-human animals division, as well as the binary gender categories of woman and man. The discussions in this thesis are empirically informed by the production and circulation of Nusret's videos and photographs in which he performs sexualized masculine domination over meat and/or skinned, headless bodies of farm animals. This thesis is built upon the investigation of two main questions. The first question this thesis inquires is what Nusret's sexualized performative engagement with meat and/or skinned, headless bodies of farm animals in sexualized ways connotes in terms of human and non-human animals relation of power, gender and sexuality. Acknowledging the contributions of the feminist critique on the sexualisation of meat, I show the limitations of ecofeminist theorist Carol Adams' theoretical concept of absent referent through which she explains the permissibility of the production and consumption of meat as a " food " and as a sexual object (Adams, 1990, p. 66). I argue that this concept is not applicable to explain and understand the cases in which violent reality behind meat is spectacled. Instead, I suggest that the permissibility of the meat consumption as a food and as a sexualized object lies in biopolitical anthropocentrism. Examining Nusret's sexualized engagement with meat and/or skinned, headless bodies of farm animals, I argue that he represents and reinforces socio-culturally and politically accepted normative masculine domination in his interspecies sexualized relation with meat and/or skinned headless bodies of farm animals. I also show that meat that is sexualized is not always associated with a female body, as it is

- by Didem Salgam
- •
- Critical Animal Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Performativity, Biopolitics

The catalyst was a 2010 editorial in the Chronicle of Higher Education, written by Harold Fromm, in which he accused vegans of “grandstanding” and ridiculous idealism. Fromm’s a big name in ecocritical circles, so I was a bit taken aback by the piece. I decided to explore the way that veganism is perceived, specifically in the US, specifically post-9/11, so I wrote The Vegan Studies Project as a way of examining how veganism is depicted in the media, in literature, and in popular culture, and the way that that depiction has evolved over time. The original title of the book was “The Vegan Body Project” – I had a blog of the same name – as I had initially planned to look at the way vegan bodies are depicted and scrutinized. There is a chapter in the book that engages with the way that women’s bodies are pathologized when women are vegan, especially when they have children. But the project became so much bigger, and I decided that I’d treat the book as a kind of primer for what a field of academic study based on various analyses of veganism might look like. And then things just kind of took off in ways that I couldn’t have anticipated, including an invitation to be the keynote speaker at a conference on vegan theory at Oxford soon after the publication of the book

- by Laura Wright and +1
- •
- Gender Studies, Philosophy, Humanities, Climate Change

This chapter highlights several criticisms of zoos, then provides a vision for new zoos: “nooz.” Offering a new name to these institutions makes a clear break from the old model, which is fundamentally exploitative. The common denominator between zoos and nooz is that both foster nonhumans who are neither domestic pets nor farmed animals—they keep “wild” animals. Nooz are nonexploitative, benevolent, and are designed for nonhumans, to provide safe-haven for those individuals who have been misused by zoos or science, or injured by humans. This essay also explores “benevolent” reasons for keeping nonhuman animals in zoos, such as captive breeding programs and injured wildlife, and acceptable parameters for nooz, including such topics as retribution for previous exploitation and the problem of carnivory.

- by Lisa Kemmerer
- •
- Human-Animal Relations, Animal Studies, Animal Ethics, Critical Animal Studies

This essay investigates the animals and plants in Piero Bigongiari's "Antimateria".

- by Diego Salvadori
- •
- Comparative Literature, Animal Science, Animal Studies, Critical Animal Studies

This paper offers an exploratory analysis of social movement theory as it relates to the nonhuman animal rights movement. Individual participant motivations and experiences, movement resource mobilization, and movement relationships with the public, the political environment, historical context, countermovements, and the media are discussed. In particular, the hierarchical relationships between factions are highlighted as an important area for further research in regards to social movement success. Specifically, the role of counterframing in subduing radical mobilization and the potential aggravating factor of status contamination is explored.

- by Corey L Wrenn
- •
- Social Movements, Critical Animal Studies, Animal Rights/Liberation

This paper extends recent work that has called for greater attention to be paid to nonhuman difference. The burgeoning animal geographies literature has been very successful in dissecting the concept of ‘nature’ and in examining the myriad ways in which animal and human lives are intertwined. However, its focus is more often on collectivities, such as species and herds, than on individual animals. Through the brief case study of an octopus in The Deep, an aquarium in Kingston-upon-Hull, UK, the paper draws on and develops recently promoted notions of responsible anthropomorphism. It argues that future work might usefully pay greater attention to the lived experience of individual animals, and that further emphasis should be given to non-mammalian life forms. Doing so might not only shed light on these creatures' encounters with humans, but also help to give a greater sense of their lives beyond these direct encounters, challenging understandings of what it means to be ‘animal’.

- by Chris Bear
- •
- Geography, Human Geography, Cultural Geography, Animal Geography

The Belgian radical environmental group Aardewerk invited me to give a presentation on my research, so I quickly invented this title (it's a bit too Star Warsy, perhaps) and combined material from two of my papers on hunting. Not sure how... more

- by Nathan Kowalsky
- •
- Environmental Philosophy, Critical Animal Studies, Theodicy, Environmental Ethics

In this chapter, I argue that mainstream animal-centered (i.e., “humane”) ethics and critical animal studies attempt to account for nonhuman moral considerability in terms of those animals’ similarities with human animals. I argue that this emphasis on similarity is a reason why these two fields are generally anti-naturalistic and ultimately (though ironically) anthropocentric. Moreover, on the assumption of a general Levinasian ethic of alterity, this anti-naturalism and anthropocentrism is violently immoral. I propose, therefore, an ethic of animal difference based on an ethically naturalistic reading of intra- and inter-specific behavior sets. However, such naturalism is problematic if the Anthropocene is understood to be a naturalized fact which undermines all (metaphysical or normative) claims to naturalness or wildness. In response, I argue that the Anthropocene is not a naturalized fact but a socially-contingent and constructed fact, and as such is open to moral evaluation. M...

- by Nathan Kowalsky
- •
- Critical Animal Studies, Émmanuel Lévinas, Levinas, Animals in Culture

In this essay I will look at the symbolism that meat holds within our ‘modern’ ‘Western’ society. I will begin by briefly introducing the study of food in general within the social sciences, setting a framework of reference for the exploration of meat specifically. In
examining meat I will firstly set the context by turning to the global livestock sector and its relationship with the environment, before probing meat’s physical properties and their
ensuing symbolism, which, as we will see, is the basic foundation for meat’s high culinary and dietetic value in our culture. I will then continue to investigate meat’s symbolism by
asking what place, if any, may meat hold within our wider cultural cosmology, within our systems of social and moral ideas, before drawing some conclusions.

- by A B
- •
- Human-Animal Relations, Animal Studies, Critical Animal Studies, Anthrozoology
- by Constance Russell
- •
- Photography, Ecotourism, Critical Animal Studies, Wildlife Conservation

For centuries, animals have worked alongside humans in a wide variety of workplaces, yet they are rarely recognized as workers or accorded labour rights. Many animal rights advocates have argued that using animals for their labour is inherently oppressive, and that animal labour should therefore be abolished. Recently, however, some people have argued that work can be a source of meaning, self-development and social membership for animals, as it is for humans, and that our goal should be to create good work for animals, not to abolish work. In this volume, an international and interdisciplinary group of scholars explores the benefits and drawbacks of animal labour as a site for interspecies justice. What kind of work is good work for animals? What kinds of labour rights are appropriate for animal workers? Can animals consent to work? Would recognizing animals as “workers” improve their legal and political status, or would it simply reinforce the perception that they are beasts of burden? Can a focus on labour help create bonds between the animal rights movement and other social justice movements? These and other questions are explored in depth. While the authors defend a range of views on these questions, their contributions make clear that the question of labour deserves a central place in any account of justice between humans and animals.

- by Charlotte Blattner, Dr. iur., LL.M. (Harvard) and +2
- •
- Human-Animal Relations, Animal Studies, Animal Ethics, Critical Animal Studies
- by Anat Pick
- •
- Film Studies, Animal Studies, Film Analysis, Critical Animal Studies
- by Keith Botelho
- •
- Critical Animal Studies

This article probes the ambiguity of posthuman heroism by revisiting the remarkable story of Pippi Longstocking. The purpose is to explore with Pippi a non-anthropocentric living in the more-than-human world. Its critical posthumanist analysis is empirically it is based on the American English translation of the Pippi book trilogy from the 1950s, as well as the Swedish TV series produced in 1969. Pippi’s posthuman power here serves to conceptualize a move beyond the anthropocentric savior complex. The analysis exhibits a power used to defy, mock, and resist authority, but always with the purpose of securing agency for Pippi and her community. This power-to, rather than power-over, becomes a creative force that builds a posthuman community between inorganic matter, humans, and animals. In place of heroism to save our planet, Pippi animates how to relate differently to the more-than-human world. She is a productive fantasy, an idea materialized – a posthuman figuration – that extends the notion of community, opens up the demos, and forcefully challenges anthropocentric normativity.

- by Markus Lundström
- •
- Children's Literature, Posthumanism, Critical Animal Studies, Anarchism

The Anthropology of Animals – Paradox and/or Necessity . U: What to Do with Folklore? New Perspectives on Folklore Research. ur. Marjetka Golež Kaučić, Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, BASIS, Volume 9, 2017, pp. 123-139.

- by Suzana Marjanić
- •
- Critical Animal Studies
- by Susan Crane
- •
- Medieval Studies, Renaissance Studies, Animal Studies, Critical Animal Studies

Despite the evidence concerning the substantial greenhouse gases emissions resulting from animal-based food production, climate policies and institutions around the world have barely made an issue of this link until very recently. To better understand this lack of attention, we focus on the discursive role of think tanks as prominent but under researched actors attempting to shape public policy. This contribution examines whether European think tanks have discussed animal-based diets regarding climate change policies and mitigation actions. We conduct a frame analysis study of 110 European think tanks, encoding all their available online output in English related to the link between global heating and animal-based food. We conclude that European think tanks have contributed to a manufacturing of ignorance regarding the impact our dietary choices have on the climate. Ideological reasons related to economic, anthropocentric and patriarchal worldviews explain this role. Free eprint: https://www.tandfonline.com/eprint/7PAMIHESZIZRUM9NWBKV/full?target=10.1080%2F09644016.2021.1933842&

- by Nuria Almiron and +2
- •
- Climate Change, Animal Ethics, Critical Animal Studies, Animal Rights/Liberation