Animals in the Anthropocene: Critical perspectives on non-human futures

Description

Much of the discussion on the Anthropocene has centred upon anthropogenic global warming and climate change and the urgency of political and social responses to this problem. Animals in the Anthropocene: critical perspectives on non-human futures shows that assessing the effects of human activity on the planet requires more than just the quantification of ecological impacts towards the categorisation of geological eras. It requires recognising and evaluating a wide range of territories and terrains, full of non-human agents and interests and meanings, exposed to the profound forces of change that give their name to the Anthropocene. It is from the perspective of 'the animal question' - asking how best to think and live with animals - that Animals in the Anthropocene seeks to interrogate the Anthropocene as a concept, discourse, and state of affairs. The term Anthropocene is a useful device for drawing attention to the devastations wreaked by anthropocentrism and advancing a relational model for human and non-human life. The effects on animals of human political and economic systems continue to expand and intensify, in numerous domains and in ways that not only cause suffering and loss but that also produce new forms of life and alter the very nature of species. As anthropogenic change affects the more-than-human world in innumerable ways, we must accept responsibility for the damage we have caused, and the debt we owe to non-human species. Animals in the Anthropocene Animals in the Anthropocene Contents Introduction Works cited The paradox of self-reference: sociological reflections on agency and intervention in the Anthropocene Self-referentiality: the lineage of social science The world as a self-referential system Life in the Anthropocene as general systematicity of life Works cited Anthropocene: the enigma of ‘the geomorphic fold’ The narcissistic subject The ends of the human The enigmatic fold Geostory and the fire species The detrivorous turn Learning how to die in the Anthropocene Works cited Cycles of anthropocenic interdependencies on the island of Cyprus Pleistocene colonisations and extinctions Animal translocations Dynamic equilibrium Modern dynamics Conservation conundrums Conclusions Works cited Ecosystem and landscape: strategies for the Anthropocene The objects and subjects of the Anthropocene Ecosystem Landscape Nativism and naturalisation: strategies for the Anthropocene and the case of feral cats Cats and the UK Feral cats in Australia Nationalism and animals in the UK Nationalism and animals in Australia Conclusion Works cited The matter of death: posthumous wildlife art in the Anthropocene Materiality of animal bodies in art practice Translations from tradition to contemporary practice Works cited A game of horseshoes for the Anthropocene: the matter of externalities of cruelty to the horseracing industry A brief paleoethology of multiple-bodied entities Bodies killed with kindness Research diary entry 1 Situatedness of horse rescue in Australia Research diary entry 2 Material resonances of racehorses and the performativity of art Affective moments towards interrogating interspecies violence Resolution in playful material-discursivity Materiality of blood sports Agencies of the underworld Social contracts for post-industry equines Positive experiences-that-matter Works cited Painfully, from the first-person singular to first-person plural: the role of feminism in the study of the Anthropocene The impact of animal exploitation on the Anthropocene Ecofeminism and animal studies A culture of predation Conclusion Acknowledgment Works cited We have never been meat (but we could be) Meat: a key marker of human and animal difference Janus flesh We have never been meat (but we could be) Conclusion Works cited Multispecies publics in the Anthropocene: from symbolic exchange to material-discursive intra-action The public: a brief genealogy From transaction to intra-action Seeing ourselves as a species in the Anthropocene Conclusion Works cited Apiculture in the Anthropocene: between posthumanism and critical animal studies Colony collapse disorder Honeybees as livestock Of hives and hybrids From domination to trust Entangled politics in the Anthropocene Works cited The welfare episteme: street dog biopolitics in the Anthropocene Street dogs in India The welfare episteme Intervening on and for dogs Individuals and collectives, harm and care Immersion and subjectification Agential subjectification and centrifugal animal welfare discourses Conclusion Works cited Wild elephants as actors in the Anthropocene Species interconnections Relationships between humans and wild elephants in Yunnan Province Involvement of the World Wildlife Fund The Sixiao Highway Alternate histories and animal governmentalities Conclusion Works cited New World Order – nature in the Anthropocene Works cited About the contributors Index