Call for Papers: Critical Animal Studies - Vol. 5 No. 2 (2023): June
Since the early 2000s, we have been witnessing a growing and highly exciting academic interest in the social sciences and humanities regarding the relationship of human and non-human animals, also referred to as "The Animal Turn," which has irrevocably transformed the theoretical and methodological landscape of the field. As both a cause and consequence of this interest, the diverse forms of agency non-human animals exhibit in our lives are being increasingly recognized. However, as noted by Steve Best in his 2007 article "The Rise of Critical Animal Studies," mainstream animal studies runs the risk of depoliticization when it becomes overly immersed in theory and detaches non-human animals from the tangible, material conditions they inhabit. Influenced by critical theory, Best distances himself critically from mainstream animal studies and calls us to engage in "critical animal studies" in which theory and practice are inseparable and intellectual production is intertwined with activism in the public sphere.
Best's call in his 2007 manifesto is the starting point of our call for this issue as well. Critical animal studies starts from the recognition that speciesism and structural violence against non-human animals cannot be addressed separately from the ideologies and relations of domination, or capitalism, and that speciesism is intertwined with other forms of discrimination such as racism, sexism, and ableism. We begin by affirming this acknowledgment as literally "vital": Academic production in the field of animal studies must always be "critical". It should not lose sight of the goal of ending the normalized violence that pervades everyday life under animal exploitation, it should facilitate the weaving of networks of solidarity between human and nonhuman animals based on care, curiosity, and openness, and by reminding us that existence is always a co-existence in a multi-species companionship (Haraway, 2010), it should encourage discussions about the ethical obligations arising from this coexistence. In this sense, critical animal studies is an invitation to trace new modes of relating that allow human animals to flourish in symbiosis with non-human animals, and it is a proposal to reconsider our vital responsibilities towards them. We also believe that especially in these times when a climate of systematic violence against stray dogs prevails in Turkey, this invitation and proposal turns into an ethical obligation. Today, academic production on a local scale cannot be carried out independently from various factors, including the poor conditions of animal shelters, the new animal experimentation centers opening day by day in universities across the country, the confiscation of stray dogs despite the fact that it is against the law, the targeting of people who care for street animals, the February 6 earthquake/its aftermath and its effects on the animals we share the same cities with, and on a global scale, industrial capitalism that reduces animal bodies into raw material, global food policies, the irreversible damage caused by industrial waste to animal habitats, and the effects of industrial animal agriculture on the global climate crisis. We believe we need to remember the proposal and invitation of critical animal studies at these scales for a more just and caring present and future. We call on academic production to respond to this need, to look-back with curiosity, care, and openness to the animals with which it shares life, and to dismantle the ingrained anthropocentric ways of knowing and seeing!
The questions that the contributing papers might tackle are as follows:
- Critical approaches to animal welfare and animal rights theories
- Critical animal studies, feminist/ecofeminist and queer approaches
- Critical animal studies in Turkey
- Social sciences and humanities, theory, methodology and critique of anthropocentrism
- Critical animal studies and critical pedagogy
- Vegetarian/vegan activism, industrial animal agriculture and food policies
- Literature and critical animal studies
- Cinema and critical animal studies
- Contemporary art and critical animal studies
- Posthumanist animal studies
- Critical animal histories
- Critical animal geographies
- Critical animal philosophy and ethics
- Non-anthropocentric theories of rights and citizenship
- Critical theory and animals
- Biosemiotics and zoosemiotics
Issue Editors: Karun Çekem, Özlem Güçlü
Deadline for article submissions: April 14, 2024
