Digital Commons Network^™

It’S About Us: Extinction, Contradiction, And The Mourning Of Modernity In David Attenborough: A Life On Our Planet, Alex Ventimilla

Animal Studies Journal

Despite their worldwide viewership, popular eco-documentary treatments of biodiversity loss and the ecological grief they evoke have received scarce attention from critics. Addressing this gap in scholarship, this article posits that understanding the grief and mourning affected by these cultural texts requires attention to the numerous contradictions inherent to the form. More concretely, this paper argues that a thorough exploration of the contradictory nature of the eco-documentary, as a media genre that is imbricated in the modernity whose impact on the natural world it critiques, renders the genre into a critical junction at which to interrogate the cultural meanings of …

No Going Back: Un-Fixing The Future Of De-Extinction, Jessie L. Beier

Animal Studies Journal

‘Extinction is a colossal problem facing the world’ proclaims the Colossal Laboratories & Biosciences website, adding, ‘And Colossal is the company that’s going to fix it’. For Colossal, this involves combining the science of genetics with ‘the business of discovery’ in order to bring back the woolly mammoth, which will not only help ‘rewild’ lost habitats, but also contribute toward ‘making humanity more human’. De-extinction is the process through which extinct species can be brought back into existence, often with the goal of reintroducing species to the wild and restoring ecosystems. While still in its nascent state, the science of …

Rhetorics Of Species Revivalism And Biotechnology – A Roundtable Dialogue, Eva Kasprzycka, Charlotte Wrigley, Adam Searle, Richard Twine

Animal Studies Journal

This informal dialogue contextualises and explores contemporary practices of nonhuman animal gene-modification in de-extinction projects. Looking at recent developments in biotechnology’s role in de-extinction sciences and industries, these interdisciplinary scholars scrutinise the neoliberal impetus driving ‘species revivalism’ in the wake of the Capitalocene. Critical examinations of species integrity, cryo-preservation, techno-optimism, rewilding initiatives and projects aimed at restoring extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth and bucardo are used to map some of the necessary restructuring of conservation policies and enterprises that could secure viably sustainable – and just – futures for nonhuman animals at risk of extinction. The authors question …

Colonialism, Domestication, & Extinction: A Pre-Mortem For Our Ecological Futures, Darren Chang, Lauren Corman

Animal Studies Journal

This paper engages with Ghassan Hage’s concepts of ‘ungovernable waste’ and ‘generalized domestication’ to think critically about the sociopolitical position and futures of farmed animals in the context of ongoing climate and ecological crises. Against the erasure of farmed animal subjectivities, we posit that there is much to learn by turning to farmed animals as sources of wisdom, as unique knowers with lessons to teach us about extinction. We consider how Andil Gosine’s radical suggestion to embrace animality as a refusal of the civilizing discourses of colonialism, and as an act of solidarity with nonhuman animals, constitutes a critical step …

Economies Of Extinction: Animals, Labour, And Inheritance In The Longleaf Pine Forests Of The Us South, Nathaniel Otjen

Animal Studies Journal

Despite mounting critiques, extinction continues to be framed as a unidirectional problem where humans, through acts of negligence and intent, lead nonhuman species to their demise. In addition to universalizing the actors and processes involved, unidirectional approaches overlook the ways nonhuman beings participate in the extinction of others and the ways extinction continues to impact multispecies communities long after the violent event or the death of an endling. With its focus on how nonhuman animals experience and navigate violence, the field of critical animal studies can illustrate how nonhuman animals contribute to extinction events and how extinction unfolds across distinct …

Prison Zooing And Conservation: Human And Animal Caging In A Time Of Ecological Catastrophe, Kelly Struthers Montford

Animal Studies Journal

Prisons are responsible for the social and biological death of the humans trapped within them, the animals whom it coerces prisoners to farm and slaughter, free-living animals displaced by prison building, as well as the ecosystems and waters destroyed by prison effluent which makes the lives of those dependent upon these systems and resources for survival, unliveable. In the context of the Sixth Extinction, the prison is at once one of the most resource intensive institutions contributing to Anthropogenic climate change and biodiversity loss, and paradoxically, in the last two decades, sometimes positioned similarly to zoos as an ecological saviour …

Introduction: Critical Animal Studies In An Age Of Extinction, Eva Kasprzycka, Chloë Taylor, Kelly Struthers Montford

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2023 12(2): Introduction: Critical Animal Studies in an Age of Extinction

[Review] Carol Gigliotti. The Creative Lives Of Animals. New York University Press, 2022. 289 Pp. Isbn 9781479815449, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Carol Gigliotti. The Creative Lives of Animals. New York University Press, 2022. 289 pp. ISBN 9781479815449

Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Contributor Biographies And Editorial – Dedication To Siobhan O’Sullivan (1974-2023), Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2023 12(1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Contributor Biographies and Editorial – Dedication to Siobhan O’Sullivan (1974-2023)

'Pooped In My Yard And Ate My Grass Last Night': Wild Burros And Tales Of Belonging In Riverside County, California, Christian Hunold, Jennifer L. Britton

Animal Studies Journal

Riverside County, California is home to several hundred free-roaming burros (donkeys) who frequent the open spaces surrounding and between the cities of Riverside, Moreno Valley, Loma Linda, and Redlands, as well as the public parks, private properties, residential developments and roadsides in these towns. Tales of more-than-human belonging (and not-belonging) in Riverside County render visible how multispecies places are mediated by infrastructures of consumption and infrastructures of reciprocity. Where infrastructures of consumption generate callousness, infrastructures of reciprocity sustain responsibility. We investigate these dynamics by tracing how two geographically close but infrastructurally distinctive spaces frequented by the area’s wild burros are …

The Mouse Colony, Katerina Tsiopos

Animal Studies Journal

The Mouse Colony

Simply Caring, Lisa Kemmerer

Animal Studies Journal

Simply Caring

Nothing More Than ‘Anti-Cull Activists’: Accusations Of Bias And The Politics Of Research That Advocates For Non-Human Animals, Jes Hooper, Thomas Aiello, Kristine Hill, Michelle Szydlowski, Sarah Oxley Heaney

Animal Studies Journal

This paper explores the ethical quandary faced by researchers whose work advocates for non-human animals and whose results conflict with prevalent anthropocentric societal narratives. To problematise the concept of research bias, we qualitatively analyse contemporary political debates surrounding the treatment of animals to ascertain if, how, when, and by whom research can be conducted with scientific integrity whilst advocating for more ethical treatment of other animals. By taking a holistic approach to the issues of bias presented within the remit of human-animal studies (research concerning human-animal relations), this paper firstly addresses the historic ways in which accusations of bias are …

[Review Essay] Animal Worlds After Uexküll: Ed Yong. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal The Hidden Realms Around Us. New York: Random House, 2022. 449 Pp., David Herman

Animal Studies Journal

[Review Essay] Animal Worlds after Uexküll: Ed Yong. An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us. New York: Random House, 2022. 449 pp.

[Review] Krishanu Maiti, Editor. Posthumanist Perspectives On Literary And Cultural Animals. Springer, 2021. Second Language Learning And Teaching: Issues In Literature And Culture. 188 Pp. Isbn 978-3-030-76159-2 (Ebook), Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Krishanu Maiti, editor. Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and Cultural Animals. Springer, 2021. Second Language Learning and Teaching: Issues in Literature and Culture. 188 pp. ISBN 978-3-030-76159-2 (eBook)

[Review] Matthew Calarco. The Boundaries Of Human Nature: The Philosophical Animal From Plato To Haraway. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 170 Pp. Isbn9780231194730, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Matthew Calarco. The Boundaries of Human Nature: The Philosophical Animal from Plato to Haraway. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. 170 pp. ISBN9780231194730

Cover Page, Table Of Contents, And Contributor Biographies, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2022 12(2): Cover Page, Table of Contents, and Contributor Biographies.

The Common Law Of Landscape Hostility In The Lives And Deaths Of Honeybees, Caleb Goltz

Animal Studies Journal

This article offers a legal explanation for the decline of honeybees. While most investigations into bee populations and bee survival rates have been scientific, this article provides an additional set of causes, showing how our legal definitions of property and standards of negligence contribute to a landscape hostile to the lives of bees. Examining recent litigation in the United States and Canada, it shows how legal concepts of property impact the lives of bees, especially in cases of pesticide overspray near property boundaries, and in the forms of knowledge and ignorance in play in contesting duties of care in negligence …

The Violent Narrowing Of Animal Life, Tony Weis

Animal Studies Journal

Mainstream environmentalism has long prioritized wild animals and their habitats while paying little attention to the explosive growth of global livestock production and consumption. However, this blind spot to livestock is changing quickly, in large part because of the rising general awareness of the resource and emissions intensity of animal-based foods and how it relates the interwoven crises of climate change and biodiversity loss. This paper considers both the fertile ground for animal advocacy to be found in the mounting scientific evidence about environmental inefficiencies of animal-based foods, and the need to be attentive to the risks it bears. The …

Sites Of Cultural Production In Response To Mass Extinction, Stephanie S. Turner, Evamarie Lindahl, Tara Nicholson

Animal Studies Journal

This conversation, mediated by Tara Nicholson, considers Stephanie Turner and EvaMarie Lindahl’s research in cultural representations of extinction and investigations of more-than-human forms of storytelling through an art historical lens. In response to Lori Gruen’s classification, extinction is a distinctive loss of ‘animal cultures’. It is more than biodiversity destruction or a static inventory of a species’ death. Nonhuman ways of building bonds, reproducing, teaching offspring, constructing homes and mourning the dead, are all systems of knowledge lost in extinction (Gruen et al. 2017). This conversation offers compassionate ways of bearing witness to species destruction and a space for empathy …

Not Another Plant-Based Documentary: A Critical Review Of Eating Our Way To Extinction, Melissa Plisic

Animal Studies Journal

Despite mounting evidence that industrial animal agriculture is a formidable force of climate change and mass extinction, many humans remain impervious to this knowledge. Eating Our Way to Extinction is a timely documentary that takes this issue head on. This film review is guided by Alexandra Juhasz’s explanation of media praxis as ‘an enduring, mutual, and building tradition that theorizes and creates the necessary conditions for media to play an integral role in cultural and individual transformation’ (299). Eating Our Way to Extinction attends to some of the most popular strawman arguments against veganism and is widely accessible. That being …

[Review] Francesca Mackenney. Birdsong, Speech And Poetry: The Art Of Composition In The Long Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 244 Pp. Isbn 9781316513712, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

[Review] Francesca Mackenney. Birdsong, Speech and Poetry: The Art of Composition in the Long Nineteenth Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023. 244 pp. ISBN 9781316513712

Can Animals Contract?, John Enman-Beech

Animal Studies Journal

Animals are, or are like persons, and so should not be treated as mere property. But persons are not just non-property; they are contractors. They interact with property and with other persons. This article analyses the possibilities for a range of animals to fit within market liberal society as contractors from a legal disciplinary perspective. Some animals are capable of contract-like relationships of reciprocal exchange, and can consent, in a certain sense, to parts of such relationships. However, the dangers of the contractual frame, which is used to legitimate exploitation, may exceed the benefits. Some scholars have begun to explore …

Fostering Refugia Amid Unfolding Extinctions, João Aldeia

Animal Studies Journal

According to Anna Tsing, Holocene resurgence, the multispecies work carried on to enable life among disturbance, and the ability to foster refugia where the living can recover from damage are crucial to oppose modern capitalogenic extinctions. I expand on this argument by looking at the geo-historical role that refugia have played (and perhaps can still play) during the Quaternary in nurturing the lives of survivors amid unfolding extinctions. Refugia have fostered multispecies life in harsh climatic and ecological times, which enabled individuals of different species to carry on the work of resurgence, because they have functioned as homes for refugees, …

Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Contributor Biographies, Sally Borrell, Clare Archer-Lean

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2022 11(1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Editorial and Contributor Biographies.

Mutual Rescue: Disabled Animals And Their Caretakers, Lynda Birke, Lori Gruen

Animal Studies Journal

In this paper, we explore how caretakers experience living with disabled companion animals. Drawing on interviews, as well as narratives on websites and other support groups, we examine ways in which caretakers describe the lives of animals they live with, and their various disabilties. The animals were mostly dogs, plus a few cats, with a range of physical disabilities; almost all had been rehomed, often from places specializing in homing disabled animals.

Three themes emerged from analysis of these texts: first, respondents drew heavily on the common narrative of disabled individuals as heroes, often noted in disability rights literature – …

Wild Dogs And Decolonization: Ivan Sen’S Mystery Road And Omar Musa’S Here Come The Dogs, Iris Ralph

Animal Studies Journal

The broad subject of First Nations and decolonial perspectives on animal flourishing is addressed in this paper in a reading of references to canids in Mystery Road (2013), a film by the First Nations-Australian director, Ivan Sen, and Here Come the Dogs (2014), a novel by the Malaysian-Australian author Omar Musa. Dingoes and other wild dogs are a prominent trope in Sen’s film and tie to seemingly perdurable debates about the rights of these animals to flourish in Australia. Dingo advocates argue that dingoes are endemic to Australia, are Australia’s oldest introduced animals, and are a top predator species and …

‘Her Brains Are All Over Her Body’: Jeff Vandermeer’S Avian Weird, Toyah Webb

Animal Studies Journal

Drawing on the thinking of Donna Haraway and other transdisciplinary thinkers, this paper makes the case for an ‘avian Weird’ by exploring the representation of birds in the New Weird fiction of Jeff VanderMeer. Distinct from the Lovecraftian ‘Old Weird’ of the twentieth century, the New Weird has been defined by VanderMeer himself as “a type of urban, secondary-world fiction that subverts the romanticized ideas about place found in traditional fantasy” (2008, 31). However, VanderMeer’s oeuvre is also something of a textual aviary, where the avian comes to represent the entangled and monstrous ontologies of the ‘Chthulucene’. A substitute for …

Snake Church, Sue Hall Pyke

Animal Studies Journal

This paper imagines Snake Church as a post-secular worship practice that reaches with and beyond the vilified serpent held within the limits of Judeo-Christianity. Snake Church offers a devotional practice enlivening enough to shift the languish of a post-secular world where the reasonableness of Enlightenment has crumbled into numbers like 440ppms and 1.5C. The Western empire has been revealed as stark naked, vulnerable, an old skin that cannot hold my world. Snake Church offers me a sacred opiating hope. As I approach a nascent liturgy, here, in the settler-ravaged Stony Rises, home to the Eastern Maar tiger snake and Eastern …

Learning Hope In The Anthropocene: The Party For The Animals And Hope As A Political Practice, Eva Meijer

Animal Studies Journal

This article investigates the role of hope in politics, in the context of the current climate crisis. Hoping for positive transformation may seem naïve and or a way to avoid action, but there is a close connection between hope and democratic action. Understood as a collective political practice, hope can contribute to imagining and articulating alternative futures, and motivate action. The first part of the paper explicates the relevance of the work of Ernst Bloch for the challenges of the Anthropocene. It focuses specifically on learning hope as a collective political practice, the function of utopias in fostering political imagination, …