Nicolas Smith – Rethinking Intentionality From the Skin Outwards

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Conférence de Nicholas Smith (Senior Lecturer, Södertörn University, Stockholm)

“Rethinking Intentionality From the Skin Outwards”
(Repenser l’intentionnalité à partir de la peau)

Quand : Lundi 14 novembre de 16h30 à 19h30
Lieu : Université de Montréal, Stone Castle, 2910 Édouard-Montpetit (local 422).
Gratuit et ouvert au public.
Note : La conférence sera donnée en anglais.

“Rethinking Intentionality From the Skin Outwards”

When : Monday, November 14, 2016, at 4:30-7:30 p.m.
Where : Université de Montréal, Stone Castle, 2910 Édouard-Montpetit (Room 422).
Free and open to all
Conference will be in English

Nicholas Smith is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy (Södertörn University, Stockholm). He has done research at the Husserl-Archives, Leuven and taught at PUC in Rio de Janeiro. He has lectured in many parts of the world including Europe, South America, USA, Japan and China.

Smith is project manager for the research project Decolonizing Phenomenologies (2016-2018) with Professor Madina Tlostanova (Department of Gender, Linköping University).

Smith also participated in the research project Perceptions of the Other: Aesthetics, Ethics and Prejudice to investigate the proto-ethics of perception from the point of view of transcendental aesthetics (Levinas, Husserl), psychoanalysis (Kristeva, Lacan), feminist philosophy (Young, Butler, Alcoff) and postcolonial thinking (Césaire, Fanon, Gordon, Ahmed). Info: www.perceptionsoftheother.se

His most recent book is Towards a Phenomenology of Repression – A Husserlian Reply to the Freudian Challenge (Stockholm 2010).

One of his recent workshops includes Ethics, Ignorance, and the Physiology of White Racism. This workshop focuses on the epistemology of ignorance in the context of race and white racism. Engaging the work of Charles Mills, we will examine how white ignorance is not merely or even primarily a cognitive dysfunction. It also operates physiologically, in the fibers, chemicals, and functions of human bodies. Focusing on the stomach and especially the heart, we will discuss how racial privilege can help structure white bodies not just phenomenologically, but also biologically. As part of this discussion, we will challenge dualisms between the social and the biology and critical philosophy of race’s reluctance to productively (vs. merely critically) engage the biological and medical sciences. The upshot of the workshop is to examine how critical philosophy of race should also be a critical physiology of race.

nicolas-smith

To learn more about Nicolas Smith, visit his webpage.

Cette conférence aura lieu dans le séminaire de Bettina Bergo (Professeure titulaire, Département de philosophie, Université de Montréal).

Pour plus d’info :
Bettina Bergo
Professeure titulaire
Département de philosophie
Université de Montréal
Tel. 514 343 6111, ext. 39892
bettina.bergo@umontreal.ca

 

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Decolonizing Critical Animal Studies, Cripping Critical Animal Studies – Conference Program

Decolonizing Critical Animal Studies, Cripping Critical Animal Studies

Conference Program

June 21-23, 2016
University of Alberta

Organized by Chloë Taylor and Kelly S. Montford

For more info on rooms and for updates on the program, check out this site.

Tuesday, June 21

2:00-3:00 p.m. – Refreshments and Registration in the Humanities Centre Fishbowl

3:00-5:00 p.m. – Welcome and Decolonizing Critical Animal Studies Plenary Panel

Decolonizing Critical Animal Studies Plenary Panel with DINESH WADIWEL, KIM TALLBEAR, AND MANEESHA DECKHA; MODERATED BY BILLY-RAY BELCOURT

5:30 p.m. – Dinner at Narayanni’s Restaurant (vegan South Indian buffet), 10131 81 Avenue

Wednesday, June 22

8:00-9:00 a.m. – continental breakfast in the Humanities Centre Fishbowl
9:00-10:00 a.m.: Concurrent Individual Papers

A. ‘Animal Crips’ and Cripping Animal Liberation

Ryan Sweet, “Chickens with Cork Legs and Dogs with Dentures: Representations of Prostheticised Animals in Late Nineteenth-Century Periodicals”

Hannah Monroe, “Neurodiversity and Animal Liberation: Challenging Hegemonic Constructions of Normalcy”

B. Indigenous Epistemologies

Danielle Taschereau Mamers, “Decolonizing the plains: bison life beyond colonial commodification”
Brandon Kerfoot, “Seals that club back: Animal Revenge in Alootook Ipellie’s Arctic Dreams and Nightmares”

C. Critical Engagements with the Work of Temple Grandin

Chair: Lindsay Eales

Vasile Stanescu, “Lost in Translation: Temple Grandin, ‘Humane Meat’ and the Intersection of Oppression”

Vittoria Lion, “Disrupting Temple Grandin: Resisting a ‘Humane’ Face for Autistic and Animal Oppression”

D. Settler Colonialism and Animals

Fiona Probyn-Rapsey, ‘Dog whistling: Australian settler colonialism and the dingo’

Presenters: Fiona Probyn-Rapsey and Dinesh Wadiwel (Co-authors: (presenters plus Sue Donaldson, George Ioannides, Tess Lea, Kate Marsh, Astrida Neimanis, Annie Potts, Nik Taylor, Richard Twine, Stuart White), ‘Sydney’s sustainability and campus food justice workshop”

10:15-12:00 – Cripping Critical Animal Studies Plenary Panel

Plenary panel with Stephanie Jenkins, Sunaura Taylor, and A. Marie Houser
moderated by Vittoria Lion

12:00-1:00 – lunch in the Humanities Centre Fishbowl

1:00-2:30 p.m.: Concurrent Individual Papers

A. Gender, Disability, and Animality (Undergraduate Student Panel)

Samuella Jo Johnson, “Institutionalized Space: Dehumanization and the Masking of Violence”

James Harley, “The Trouble with Animal Rights Activism: Emotion Work is Women’s Work”

Dylan Hallingstad O’Brien, “‘We Are Humans!’: Animality as Disability in Yusuke Kishi’s Shinsekai Yori”

B. Settler Colonial Imaginings of Nature and Animals

Ben O’Heran, “Henry David Thoreau, the Unsettled Settler: Exploring Environmentalism as a Means of Usurping Indigenous Place-Thought”

Carina Magazzeni, “The Trouble with Taxidermy: Brad Isaacs and Animalium”

Rebekah Sinclair,”Guest, Pests, or Terrorists?: The Settler-Colonial Intelligibility of ‘Invasive Species”

C. Decolonial Perspectives on Domestication and Diet

Shaila Wadhwani, “Coloniality: Nature and the Bodies of Domestication”

Jason Price, “Decolonizing Desire and Relationships with Animals and Space in The Devil’s Chimney”

Samantha King, “Consuming Animals in Theory and Practice: Conversations with Indigenous and Postcolonial Studies Scholars on the Ethics and Politics of Food”

3:00-4:00 – Seeing Animals: Crip Reflections on the Work of Sunaura Taylor

Plenary Lecture by Alison Kafer
moderated by Emilia Nielsen

4:15-5:30 p.m. Art Exhibition Opening: Works of Sunaura Taylor
FemLab (Feminist Exhibition Space), Assiniboia Hall
curated by Michelle Meagher
Wine and Cashew Cheese Reception

Thursday, June 23

8:00-9:00 a.m. – continental breakfast in the Humanities Centre Fishbowl
9:00-10:30 a.m.: Concurrent Individual Papers

A. Global Perspectives on Interlocking Oppressions

Lisa Warden, “The street dog and the slum dweller: twin victims of urban renewal in modern India”

Alexandra Isfahani-Hammond, “But American Indians Blessed the Animals Before Killing Them: Native Fetishes and Edible Others in Brazil”

Maria Elena Garcia, “Culinary Spectacles: Bodies and Violence in Peru’s Gastronomic Boom”

B. Critical Animal/ Disability Studies

Nancy Halifax and Chelsea Jones, “‘What kind of animal are you?’”

Chelsea Jones and Liz Shek-Noble, “What to Make of Lashawn Chan: An Overview of Critical Disability, Animal, and Post-colonial Studies’ Intersections in Southeast Asia and North America”

C. Philosophical Perspectives on Interlocking Oppressions

Angela Martin, “Affirmative Action for Animals?”

Syl Kocieda, “The spectre of not-quite-humans in the narrative of ‘animality’: Should we be talking about actual animals in animal advocacy?”

Frédéric Côté-Boudreau, “Enabling Autonomy for Animals and People with Cognitive Disabilities”

10:30-11:00 a.m. – refreshment break in the Humanities Centre Fishbowl

11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. – Indigenous Food Politics

Billy-Ray Belcourt, “Reserve Dying and the Taste of Non-Sovereignty”
Margaret Robinson, “All My (Blood) Relations: Indigenous Relationality in Vegan Future”
moderated by Susanne Luhmann

12:00-1:00 p.m. – lunch in the Humanities Centre Fishbowl

1:00 – 2:15 – BOOK PANELS

A. Book panel on Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel’s The War Against Animals (Brill Press, 2015)

Chair: Chloë Taylor

Panelists: Vasile Stanescu and Kelin Emmett

Respondent: Dinesh Joseph Wadiwel

B. Book panel on Claire Jean Kim’s Dangerous Crossings: Race, Species and Nature in a Multicultural Age (Cambridge University Press, 2015)

Panelists: Kelly Struthers Montford and Christiane Bailey

Respondent: Claire Jean Kim

C. Book panel on Sunaura Taylor’s Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation (New Press, 2016)

Chair: Danielle Peers

Panelists: Alexis Shotwell and Joshua St. Pierre

Respondent: Sunaura Taylor

2:30-3:30 – Taxonomies of Power

Plenary lecture by Claire Jean Kim
moderated by Fiona probyn-rapsey

3:30-4:00 p.m. – refreshment break in the Humanities Centre Fishbowl

5:00-8:00 p.m. visit to F.A.R.R.M. (farm sanctuary) and vegan bbq

For more info on rooms and for updates on the program, check out this site.

Animals Under Capitalism : Art and Politics (Bristol, 2016)

Animals under Capitalism: Art and Politics

University of Bristol
Institute of Advanced Studies
May 25, 2016

Deadline for Proposal : December 10 (250-300 word proposal)

Bristol Animal Capitalism

Animals under Capitalism: Art and Politics

The University of Bristol invites submissions for a 1-day conference to be held on May 25, 2016, on the subject of ‘Animals under Capitalism: Art and Politics’. The conference aims to explore the relations between capitalism and animal life, and will emphasise the following themes: 1) the intersections between capitalism and the ‘Sixth Extinction’; 2) artistic representations of animals under the aegis of capitalism; 3) the biopolitics of domestication; 4) the development of industrial animal farms.

This conference welcomes a broad range of responses from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, literary studies, art history, politics and critical studies. Other topics might include:

  • artistic responses to endangered and extinct animals
  • the development of zoos
  • animals under the law
  • feminist responses to animal exploitation
  • Marxism and animals
  • animal futures and science fiction
  • animals, class and biopolitics
  • big game hunting and ‘wildlife management’
  • Freud, Darwin, modernity and animal life
  • visual representations of animals in sculpture and painting
  • literary responses to ‘animals under capitalism’
  • pre-capitalist modes of relating to animals and post-capitalist alternatives

Please submit a 250-300 word proposal by the 10th of December to: mm8179@bristol.ac.uk

Conference Summary

Capitalism inaugurated a new set of patterns vis-à-vis our relationships with animal others. This conference explores what some of those relationship are. In this context, we welcome papers that address the following questions:

1) what ‘structures of feeling’ emerged during the long and complex evolution from feudalism to mercantilism to industrial capitalism in the eighteenth century?

2) Does the ‘animal’ signify different things as new economic systems come to predominate, and, if so, to what extent do alternative conceptions of the animal exist despite (or in spite of) these economic configurations?

3) How are changing relationships with animal life embodied in art and popular culture – in paintings, novels, poetry and folklore? In what ways do artistic representations of animals both embody and resist the dominant cultural understandings of their time?

4)  What alternative futures have artists imagined for animals (perhaps particularly in works of science fiction?)

Date and place: 25th of May, 2016; the Institute of Advanced Studies (University of Bristol)

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/ias/diary/conferences/animals-under-capitalism/

Decolonizing and Cripping Critical Animal Studies – Alberta 2016

CALL FOR CONFERENCE PAPERS

DECOLONIZING CRITICAL ANIMAL STUDIES,
CRIPPING CRITICAL ANIMAL STUDIES

June 21-23, 2016, at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada

Program Conference is out : http://kellysmontford.com/program/

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: January 10, 2016

Sponsored by the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Native Studies, and the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Alberta

CCAS Alberta

 

Conference plenary panels will include :

Decolonizing Critical Animal Studies

Moderated by Billy-Ray Belcourt (University of Alberta) and featuring
• Kim TallBear (Associate Professor of Native Studies, University of Alberta),
• Maneesha Decka (Associate Professor of Law, University of Victoria), and
• Dinesh Wadiwel (Lecturer in Human Rights and Socio-legal Studies, University of Sydney).

Cripping Critical Animal Studies

Moderated by Vittoria Lion (University of Toronto) and featuring
• Sunaura Taylor (artist and author),
• Stephanie Jenkins (Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Oregon State University), and
• A. Marie Houser (independent writer, editor, and activist).
Taxonomies of Power, Plenary by Claire Jean Kim (UC Irvine)

Decolonizing Critical Animal Studies

The first thread of conversation that we hope to develop is that of decolonizing Critical Animal Studies. While some theorists have turned to non-Western and indigenous cultures for examples of less or nonspeciesist worldviews, the relationship between anti-colonial politics and animal activism has been fraught. Single-issue animal activist campaigns have often functioned to justify racism, xenophobia and exclusion, with, to adapt Gayatri Spivak’s phrase, white humans saving animals from brown humans. The eating of shark fins and dog meat has been marked as cruel and backward, for instance, in contrast with dominant constructions of Western diets as sophisticated and humane. Indigenous rights activists and animal activists have clashed over the issue of hunting charismatic animals, such as whales and seals, often eclipsing attention to far more widespread forms of animal, colonial, and racial oppression in Western, settler societies. Ecofeminist approaches to animal ethics have been riven over the issue of indigenous hunting; some ecofeminists, such as Marti Kheel, have expressed dismissive views of the spiritual significance of subsistence hunting for indigenous people, while others, such as Val Plumwood, Deanne Curtin, and Karen Warren, have argued for contextual rather than universalizing forms of ethical vegetarianism. More recently, decolonial scholars have shown the interconnections between animal oppression, imperialism, and settler colonialism, and the need to center race in Critical Animal Studies. Maneesha Decka, for instance, has highlighted the ways that imperialism is justified through animalizations of racial others and condemnations of the ways colonized others treat animals, even while imperial identities are constituted through the consumption of animal bodies. Billy-Ray Belcourt has argued that speciesism and animal oppression are made possible in settler colonial contexts through the prior and ongoing dispossession and erasure of indigenous people from the lands on which animals are now domesticated and exploited. Belcourt critiques the ways that Critical Animal Studies assumes and operates within the ‘givenness’ of a settler colonial state, and suggests that Critical Animal Studies should center an analysis of indigeneity and call for the repatriation of indigenous lands.

Possible presentation topics for the Decolonizing Critical Animal Studies thread include:

• The intersections of decolonial and Critical Animal Studies
• The uses of nonhuman animals in projects of land settlement
• Cultural food colonialism or decolonial food studies
• Reservization, food and fat studies
• Animal ethics and decolonization
• Animals, ontology, and settler colonialism

The Cripping of Critical Animal Studies

The second thread of conversation that we wish to pursue at this meeting is the cripping of Critical Animal Studies. Scholars working at the intersections of Critical Animal Studies and Critical Disability Studies have argued that the oppression of nonhuman animals and disabled humans are interconnected. Humans who defend animals and refrain from eating them have often found themselves labeled as cognitively disabled, mentally ill, ‘stupid’ or ‘crazy,’ and psychiatrists have proposed diagnoses for animal activists and vegans such as ‘anti vivisection syndrome’ and ‘orthorexia nervosa.’ Disabled humans, like people of colour, have been put on display along with nonhuman animals in the history of ‘freak’ shows, and disabled humans and nonhuman animals continue to have their bodies objectified and their interests sacrificed for the purposes of medical training and scientific knowledge. Disabled humans are continually compared to nonhuman animals, not only in insults but also in medical terminology, with effects that are oppressive because of the pre-existing denigration of nonhuman animals. The same claims about what makes human life ontologically distinct and morally valuable—that humans have reason, that humans have language, that humans are autonomous—justify the exclusion of both nonhuman animals and cognitively disabled humans from moral consideration, as well as the oppression of physically disabled humans who are considered ‘dependent.’ Despite these interconnecting oppressions, speciesism has characterized Critical Disability Studies as much as ableism has characterized animal rights discourse (Peter Singer, Jeff McMahan). In recent years and more productively, however, Critical Animal Studies scholars such as Sue Donaldson, Will Kymlicka, Stephanie Jenkins and Sunaura Taylor have borrowed from Critical Disability Studies scholarship to argue that the dependency and vulnerability of domesticated animals should not be a reason to devalue their lives; far from removing a human or another animal from the realm of moral concern, (inter)dependency and vulnerability are the animal (and thus human) condition. Two types of animals come immediately to mind at the intersections of Critical Disability Studies and Critical Animal Studies: the service animal and the disabled animal, and scholars such as Kelly Oliver and A. Marie Houser have provided ethical analyses of these animals drawing on both animal and disability ethics. In particular, while disability scholars have critiqued the ways we view disabled humans as pitiful, tragic, exotic, or inspirational, Houser observes that heartwarming images of disabled pigs and dogs in mobility devices function to reassure viewers that we live in a society that is extraordinarily compassionate to animals, even while actual animals have by and large disappeared from view, sequestered in institutions of exploitation, containment and death.

Possible presentation topics in the Cripping Critical Animal Studies thread include:

• Intersections of Critical Disability and Critical Animal Studies
• Critiques of the work of Temple Grandin
• The ethics of using service animals
• Representations of disabled animals
• The cultural associations between mental illness and love for animals (e.g. ‘crazy cat ladies’)

SUBMISSIONS:

FORMAT: Presentations should be 20 minutes in length, leaving 10 minutes for discussion. We are receptive to different and innovative formats including but not limited to panels, performances, workshops, and public debates. You may propose individual or group presentations, but please specify the structure of your proposal. Please be sure to include your name(s), title(s), organizational affiliation(s), field of study or activism, and A/V needs in your submission.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS: January 10, 2016

TO SUBMIT: email an abstract of no more than 500 words and a bio of no more than 150 words to the conference organizers: Chloë Taylor (chloe3[at]ualberta[dot]ca) and Kelly Struthers Montford (kelly.sm[at]ualberta[dot]ca).

(Download the call for paper)