5:00pm, Friday, April 29, 2011
Performance Studies Studio, Tisch School of the Arts, NYU
721 Broadway, Room 612
New York, NY
Please join us to toast the publication of a special issue of Social Text on Interspecies, edited by Julie Livingston and Jasbir K. Puar!
Industries of production and scientific research rely on the use of nonhuman animals and plants, remaking environments, populations, and even genetic information to suit human designs. This issue of Social Text considers the radical implications of questioning the exceptional status of humans among the planet’s species. Responding to growing interest in animal studies and posthumanism, the contributors draw on racial, feminist, queer, postcolonial, and disability theories to probe the diversity of human relationships with other forms of biosocial life. Interspecies queries the politics of traditional species taxonomy and examines the ways humans use the material characteristics of other species to pursue their economic, political, and social aims.
This collection goes beyond companionate species to examine less charismatic life forms: viruses, vermin, transgenic pigs, and commodified plants. Bringing together prominent scholars and artists from a range of fields, the issue examines the histories of species collection and display. In the context of current public health challenges, including the swine flu epidemic and the scarcity of donor organs, the contributors explore the limits of transgressing species boundaries that arise when human bodies contain other species, such as viruses or transplanted organs from genetically customized pigs. Interspecies analyzes the use of nonhuman species in the biopolitics of warfare and torture and examines how interspecies relationships shape conditions of colonialism, imprisonment, and violence. The issue also complicates romanticized narratives of human/nonhuman animal dynamics without resorting to oversimplified portrayals of human exploitation of animal and plant life.
Contributors:
Neel Ahuja
Suzanne Anker
Ed Cohen
James Delbourgo
Sarah Franklin
Carla Freccero
Alphonso Lingis
Julie Livingston
Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
Jasbir Puar
Kingsley Rothwell
Lesley Sharp
