Digital Commons Network^™

Failure As Liberation: A Critical Analysis Of Rilo Chmielorz’ Artistic Feature “Scheitern Ist. Eine Bestandsaufnahme” (Failure Is. An Inventory), Ania Mauruschat

RadioDoc Review

This essay is a critical analysis, interpretation and assessment of the feature “Scheitern ist. Eine Bestandsaufnahme”(2016), by the German artist Rilo Chmielorz,which explores failure as a taboo subject in neoliberal societies that worship the ideology of success and progress.

This study deconstructs this unique feature to its various parts and looks at the feature as a whole in terms of the concept of “polyphonic narration” that the Russian literature and art scholar and theorist Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975) derived from the poetics of the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881). It shows how the level of content (life stories of failure, experts …

Pillow, Talk: Kaitlin Prest’S The Shadows And The Elements Of Modern Audio Fiction, Neil Verma

RadioDoc Review

This essay is a study of The Shadows (2018), a series produced by Kaitlin Prest and Phoebe Wang for CBC Podcasts. I situate the work in the framework of Prest’s career after her podcast The Heart, and argue that The Shadows crystallises a set of conventions about “audio fiction” that set it apart from “audio drama,” “radio features” and other similar forms, at least at this particular historical moment. These conventions include: the embrace of naive themes; a preference for retroversion or 'queer temporality'; a focus on body sound; multiplication in mixing and editing that comes across as a …

Notes On Contributors

Kunapipi

Notes On Contributors

Impressions And Thoughts On The Options Of South African Women, Lauretta Ngcobo

Kunapipi

Eighteen months after President De Klerk gave his historic speech of 2 February 1990, South Africans are beginning to show signs of believing that things are actually destined for change, and that change will be irreversible. This has brought on a frenzy of hope and doubt, of feverish excitement (as of people before a gathering storm), of joyous instability and aggressive possessiveness, as though they are afraid to lose what they've known all through the years of oppression. Visiting South Africa after many years, one soon finds oneself joining in the medley, and it is hard to pause and observe …

Mzwakhe Mbuli: The People's Poet, Kirsten Holst Petersen

Kunapipi

Poems and Interview

An Author's Agenda: Re-Visioning Past And Present For A Future South Africa, Stephen Gray

Kunapipi

This paper takes as premise Stanley Frielick's generally accepted point that much publishing in South Africa today is 'part of the process of historical rediscovery and re-visioning that informs contemporary South African studies', so that 'through exploring the dynamic connections between past and present, we can gain a clearer picture of the forces that are shaping our future'.1 I would add to this one of the satirist Pieter-Dirk Uys's throwaway lines: The future is known in South Africa; only the past is unpredictable? The position of that elusive specimen - the South African writer- is perhaps best summarised in part …

The Life Of Myth And Its Possible Bearing On Erna Brodber' S Fictions Jane And Louisa Will Soon Come Home And Myal, Wilson Harris

Kunapipi

My impression is that Erna Brodber brings into play an unusual mythmaking talent in her two novels at a time when myth is denigrated or undervalued in favour of a realism divorced from the intuitive imagination. Perhaps it would be wise to attempt to sketch in a kind of backcloth to the novels which may help, in some degree, to say what are my approaches to 'myth' before I come to the novels themselves.

A Gentle Consummation, Zeny Giles

Kunapipi

Kathleen stands on the verandah and looks out. It is after four and the cars come one after another, turning from Maitland Road and moving past her house in an endless stream. She can feel their vibration as she leans against the doorway. Now they have stopped. The gates will be down at Clyde Street. She can see the impatience on the faces, the irritation as the cars bank up. AU those men going home, tired after work, needing to be cosseted and fed. She wishes she could put her arms around them all to give them comfort. The cars …

Poems, Julian Croft

Kunapipi

Trepidations, Earthquake, Faults, Suburbs, Assessing the damage, After shock

Anthills Of The Savannah And The Ideology Of Leadership, David Maughan-Brown

Kunapipi

The publishers' contribution to the back-cover blurb on the paperback edition of Anthills of the Savannah consists of a single, wholly unexceptionable, sentence: 'Chinua Achebe's new novel, his first for 21 years, has been received with great acclaim.' The message is clear: Achebe is so well known that there is no need for biographical notes; this novel has been 21 years in the gestation and critics, as one might expect, have recognised the greatness of so long-awaited a novel from so fine an author.

Chinua Achebe And The Possibility Of Modern Tragedy, Alastair Niven

Kunapipi

It is often said that the conditions for the creation of tragedy in art do not exist in the twentieth century. Modern man has lost a universal acquiescence in the existence of God. We all aspire to be materially prosperous members of a small nuclear family, neglecting or even unaware of our extended family. Modern government and taxation encourages self-interest rather than a sense of community. The lines which Calphurnia, Caesar's wife, speaks on the morning of the fatal Ides of March - 'When beggars die there are no comets seen;/ The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes' …

The Year That Was, Mark Macleod, Diana Brydon, G N. Devi, Alamgir Hashmi, Rajiva Wijesinha, Cherry Clayton

Kunapipi

AUSTRALIA 1989, CANADA 1988, INDIA 1988, INDIA 1989, PAKISTAN 1988, PAKISTAN 1989, SRI LANKA 1989, SOUTH AFRICA 1987,

Interview And Extract From Innocent Cities, Jack Hodgins

Kunapipi

Interview and Extract from Innocent Cities

Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (1): Cover Page, Table Of Contents, Editorial And Notes On Contributors, Melissa Boyde

Animal Studies Journal

Animal Studies Journal 2018 7 (1): Cover Page, Table of Contents, Editorial and Notes on Contributors

Bodily Encounter, Bearing Witness And The Engaged Activism Of The Global Save Movement, Alex Lockwood

Animal Studies Journal

The global Save Movement, alongside other animal rights organisations and practices, has since 2010 sought to bring the experiences of nonhuman farmed animals into the public domain from privatized, usually hidden spaces of industrial procedure and slaughter. One key mechanism used is to conduct vigils held outside slaughterhouses, where activists gather to bear witness to the passing of nonhuman animals in trucks, and to raise awareness of the suffering of animals to passers-by. Central to the practice are the roles played by emotional engagement and bodily encounter with the nonhuman animals; the movement is founded on a self-styled ‘love-based’ compassion …

Demystifying Dairy, Deidre Wicks

Animal Studies Journal

In this paper, I examine the dairy cow, her body and disposition, with a specific focus on the way we humans have designed her for our purposes, through the use of selective breeding and reproductive technology. I will also examine the consequences of this design for the health and welfare of the dairy cow and her calf. I will conduct this examination through the concept of ‘naturalistic mystification’, which I will use to challenge the dominant, hegemonic message, which presents the cow as natural, and milk as a nonharm product. Rather, I will demonstrate that the cow and her milk …

From Rice Eaters To Soy Boys: Race, Gender, And Tropes Of ‘Plant Food Masculinity’, Iselin Gambert, Tobias Linné

Animal Studies Journal

Tropes of ‘effeminized’ masculinity have long been bound up with a plant-based diet, dating back to the ‘effeminate rice eater’ stereotype used to justify 19th-century colonialism in Asia to the altright’s use of the term ‘soy boy’ on Twitter and other social media today to call out men they perceive to be weak, effeminate, and politically correct (Gambert and Linné). This article explores tropes of ‘plant food masculinity’ throughout history, focusing on how while they have embodied different social, cultural, and political identities, they all serve as a tool to construct an archetypal masculine ideal. The analysis draws on a …

Alexis Wright’S Literary Testimony To Intersecting Traumas, Meera Atkinson

Animal Studies Journal

This article proffers a reading of Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book (2013), hailed as ‘the first truly planetary novel’ (Gleeson-White), arguing that Wright’s poetics of transgenerational trauma witnesses to intersected trans-species injustices and traumas. Exploring the way Wright testifies to entanglements of human-nonhuman trauma, I challenge entrenched humanist and speciesist preoccupations in trauma theory to address trauma transmissions with particular focus on trauma as a social and political force generated by patriarchal imperialism. In doing so, I show how Wright’s fiction serves as a form of advocacy for nonhuman sentient beings.

Why Is It Important To Use Flagship Species In Community Education? The Koala As A Case Study, Rolf Schlagloth, Flavia Santamaria, Barry Golding, Hedley Thomson

Animal Studies Journal

Our paper investigates the conservation and planning implications of the use of an individual flagship species. The koala was chosen, as an example, in a community education intervention in a regional Australian city. Educating the community to accept changes in planning laws aimed at the protection of a single species such as the koala has never been an easy task. We examine the approach used to educate the Ballarat community in doing just that. We outline the power of this iconic Australian mammal, the koala, in promoting conservation and changes in planning regulations. We highlight the flow-on conservation and educational …

How To Help When It Hurts? Think Systemic, Corey L. Wrenn Ph.D.

Animal Studies Journal

To resolve a moral dilemma created by the rescue of carnivorous species from exploitative situations who must rely on the flesh of other vulnerable species to survive, Cheryl Abbate applies the guardianship principle in proposing hunting as a case-by-case means of reducing harm to the rescued animal as well as to those animals who must die to supply food. This article counters that Abbate’s guardianship principle is insufficiently applied given its objectification of deer communities. Tom Regan, alternatively, encouraged guardians to think beyond individual dilemmas and adopt a measure of systemic reconstruction, that being the abolition of speciesist institutions (The …

Should We Eat Our Research Subjects? Advocacy And Animal Studies, Yvette M. Watt, Siobhan O'Sullivan, Fiona Probyn-Rapsey

Animal Studies Journal

This paper examines data from a survey of Animal Studies scholars undertaken by the authors in 2015. While the survey was broad ranging, this paper focuses on three interconnected elements; the respondents’ opinions on what role they think the field should play in regard to animal advocacy, their personal commitment to animal advocacy, and how their attitudes toward advocacy in the field differ depending on their dietary habits. While the vast majority of respondents believe that the field should demonstrate a commitment to animal wellbeing, our findings suggest that respondents’ level of commitment to animal advocacy is informed by whether …

The Good Life, The Good Death: Companion Animals And Euthanasia, Eva Meijer

Animal Studies Journal

In this paper, I investigate the relevance of a relational approach to nonhuman animal euthanasia, focusing on companion animals. Recent scholarship in animal ethics, political philosophy and different fields of animal studies argues for viewing other animals as subjects, instead of as objects of study. Seeing other animals as subjects with their own views on life, with whom humans have different relations and with whom communication is possible, has ethical, practical, and epistemological implications for thinking about nonhuman animal euthanasia. In what follows I aim to shed light on some of these implications, focusing on euthanasia in the case of …

What If I Want To Put A Cow Down With A Gun? Sociological Critical Media Analysis Of Non-Companion Animals’ Representation In Rural Australian News, Angela T. Ragusa

Animal Studies Journal

Although sociology of animals is a contemporary specialisation examining human-animal interactions, little research explores rural animals. Content analysis of non-companion animals’ news visibility in a rural Australian newspaper in 2016-2017 found 311 articles represented 3 categories of news-reporting. Findings evidence human lexicon, not animal news-reporting, greatly reducing animals’ substantive media presence and socially-legitimated cultural attitudes and journalism practices normalised humans’ power to treat rural animals in ways benefiting humans. Animals were depicted as dangerous, harming humans and each other, requiring killing for environmental management (legitimated by culling and food production claims), as commodities for human entertainment, products, and/or cultural rituals. …

Animals And Humans On Stage: Live Performances At Sea World On The Gold Coast, Rebecca Scollen

Animal Studies Journal

The purpose of this study is to investigate animal and human relations as constructed, and as demonstrated, through the live performances at Sea World on the Gold Coast, Australia. Particular attention is placed upon the meanings generated by the intersection of the starring animals and humans in the two narrative-driven productions. The study employs participant observation at three performances of Fish Detectives and Affinity. Fish Detectives highlights the dangers of overfishing the Earth’s oceans in a play where the sea lions and pelican involved in the show perform alongside human actors. The animals do not perform their species but instead …

Animal Utopia: Liberal, Communitarian, Libertarian Or…? [Review Essay] Wayne Gabardi. The Next Social Contract: Animals, The Anthropocene, And Biopolitics, Dinesh Wadiwel

Animal Studies Journal

It would be difficult to be optimistic in the face of the political challenges that confront us. Globally, we have seen stark intensifications of economic inequalities and social stratifications, coupled with the rise of new nationalist and proto-fascist political movements. The environmental challenges are daunting: we now face a future where anthropogenic climate change will inescapably and deeply impact the earth’s systems. As I write, armed conflict continues to shape human affairs, generating continued misery and displacement; and instabilities have posed the possibility of new global conflicts, including a renewed threat of nuclear war. For non-human animals globally, the picture …

[Review] Creatural Fictions David Herman, Editor. Creatural Fictions: Human-Animal Relationships In Twentieth- And Twenty-First-Century Literature, Wendy Woodward

Animal Studies Journal

David Herman has put together a landmark collection of essays in the Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature series. Drawing from the Animal Studies theories of Donna Haraway, John Berger, Jacques Derrida and Cary Wolfe, for instance, the collection has a lot to offer students new to Literary Animal Studies. Rigorous essays which further debates mean that the collection also has appeal for established scholars in the field. Creatural Fictions takes its title, Herman explains, partly from the creaturely theories Anat Pick turns to in Simone Weil, but the term ‘creatural’ is preferred in order to emphasise continuities between human …

[Review] A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015 Gonzalo Villanueva, A Transnational History Of The Australian Animal Movement, 1970-2015, Christine Townend

Animal Studies Journal

This is a book that every student of politics would enjoy reading, and indeed should read, together with every person who wishes to become an activist (not necessarily an animal activist). This is because the book discusses, in a very interesting and exacting analysis, different strategies used to achieve a goal; in this case, the liberation of animals from the bonds of torture, deprivation and cruelty. Gonzalo Villanueva clearly has compassion for animals, but he is careful to keep an academic distance in this thoroughly researched, scholarly book, which is nevertheless easy to read. After each chapter of the book …

[Review] Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene Barbara Creed, Stray: Human-Animal Ethics In The Anthropocene, Siobhan O'Sullivan

Animal Studies Journal

Barbara Creed is well known for her contribution to the field of Film Studies, as well as feminist thought more generally. Books such as The Monstrous-Feminine: Film, Feminism, Psychoanalysis (1993, Routledge) and Phallic Panic: Film, Horror and the Primal Uncanny (2005, University of Melbourne Press) established Creed as a leading international thinker. They also attest to Creed’s willingness to push boundaries and to take on challenging and controversial topics. In recent years Creed has turned her attention to the lives of nonhuman animals, and the multitude of ways in which humans engage with, oppress, and may learn from their nonhuman …

From Disability To Eco-Ability [Review] Anthony J. Nocella Ii, Amber E. George, And J. L. Schatz, Editors. The Intersectionality Of Critical Animal, Disability, And Environmental Studies: Toward Eco-Ability, Justice, And Liberation, Nathan Poirier

Animal Studies Journal

The Intersectionality of Critical Animal, Disability, and Environmental Studies: Toward Eco-ability, Justice, and Liberation (hereafter, Intersectionality), edited by critical scholars Anthony Nocella II, Amber E. George, and J.L. Schatz, is the follow-up collection to an earlier anthology edited by Nocella II, Judy Bentley and Janet Duncan. Published in 2012, Earth, Animal, and Disability Liberation: The Rise of the Eco-Ability Movement was visionary in illuminating entanglements of the struggles that people with disabilities share with environmental and nonhuman animal oppression (similar to the realization of the shared oppression of women, animals and the environment that sparked ecofeminism). This connection is termed …

Provocations From The Field: Female Reproductive Exploitation Comes Home, Carol J. Adams

Animal Studies Journal

Sexual violation and reproductive exploitation happen to vulnerable bodies. After studying systems of female reproductive servitude and visiting ‘parlors’, exhibitions, and auctions where females are sold into captivity, Dr. Kathryn Gillespie of the University of Washington found relentless ‘sexually violent commodification of the female body’. Meet Carly (not her real name). Carly was torn from her mother shortly after birth, and while her umbilical cord hung from her, was auctioned off. She lived a life of physical and social isolation until her captors felt she was sexually mature. She was immobilized by chains or with a specially designed containment device, …