Multi-Species Politics

optional courses

(in Polish) The course is open to all students of any level, though a basic training in anthropology, political theory and/or philosophy will be helpful. Students must be prepared to read and actively discuss advanced academic texts in English. Please prepare to read sometimes as much as 50 pages week-to-week, though most weeks it will be less (some 30 pages on average).

This course explores the innovative literature from anthropology, philosophy, sociology, political science, jurisprudence, and other disciplines that broadens the concepts of 'politics' and 'the political' to include non-human living beings. Humans live in a common world they co-create with countless other organisms, entangled in complex relations that involve power. The acknowledgment of this fact poses challenges to our understanding of politics, which since Aristotle has been conceptualized as uniquely human. How does the presence of other-than-human life impact the meaning and the substance of the political? And how might concepts drawn from political theory elucidate our relationships with our fellow Earthlings?

This course explores the innovative literature from anthropology, philosophy, sociology, political science, jurisprudence, and other disciplines that broadens the concepts of 'politics' and 'the political' to include non-human living beings. Humans live in a common world they co-create with countless other organisms, entangled in complex relations that involve power. The acknowledgment of this fact poses challenges to our understanding of politics, which since Aristotle has been conceptualized as uniquely human. How does the presence of other-than-human life impact the meaning and the substance of the political? And how might concepts drawn from political theory elucidate our relationships with our fellow Earthlings? For instance, what does it mean to recognize the rights of other animals? Are concepts such as 'animal sovereignty' or 'plant autonomy' sufficient to not only describe but also improve our multi-species relations? How might a multi-species democracy be envisioned and practiced? In what ways do other beings resist human domination, and how might inter-species alliances be possible to confront exploitative and oppressive power? To seek answers these and potentially countless related question, we will discuss readings across heterogeneous literatures, with emphasis on theory on the one hand, and the emerging field of more-than-human ethnography on the other.

Agamben, Giorgio, 2004, The Open: Man and Animal, Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Altrudi, Soledad & Christopher M. Kelty, 2022, ‘Animals, Angelenos, and the Arbitrary: Analyzing Human-Wildlife Entanglement in Los Angeles’, Environmental Humanities 14(3): 522 542.

Beilin, Katarzyna O. & Sainath Suryanarayanan, 2017, ‘The War Between Amaranth and Soy: Interspecies Resistance to Transgenic Soy Agriculture in Argentina, Environmental Humanities 9(2): 204 229.

Chao, Sophie, 2021, ‘The Beetle or the Bug? Multispecies Politics in a West Papuan Oil Palm Plantation’, American Anthropologist 123(3): 476 489.

Chao, Sophie, 2022, ‘Multispecies Mourning: Grieving as Resistance on the West Papuan Plantation Frontier’, Cultural Studies, DOI: 10.1080/09502386.2022.2052920.

Colling, Sarat, 2021, Animal Resistance in the Global Capitalist Era, East Lansing: Michigan State University Press.

Derrida, Jacques, 2009, The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. I & II, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Donaldson, Sue & Will Kymlicka, 2011, Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Goldstein, Ruth, 2019, ‘Ethnobotanies of Refusal: Methodologies in Respecting Plan(ed)-Human Resistance’, Anthropology Today 35(2): 18 22.

Hall, Matthew, 2011, Plants as Persons: A Philosophical Botany, Albany, NY: SUNY Press.

Hall, Matthew, 2009, ‘Plant Autonomy and Human-Plant Ethics’, Environmental Ethics 31: 169 181.

Hribal, Jason, 2003, ‘“Animals Are Part of the Working Class”: A Challenge to Labor History’, Labor History 44(4): 435 453.

Kuřík, Bob, 2022, ‘Towards an Anthropology of More-Than-Human Resistance: New Challenges for Noticing Conflicts in the Plantationocene’, Sociální studia / Social Studies 1: 55 72.

Marder, Michael, 2012, ‘Resist like a Plant! On the Vegetal Life of Political Movements’, Peace Studies Journal 5(1): 24 32.

Massumi, Brian, 2014, What Animals Teach Us about Politics, Durham, NC: Duke University Press

Meijer, Eva, 2019, When Animals Speak: Toward an Interspecies Democracy, New York: New York University Press.

Suryanarayanan, Sainath & Katarzyna Beilin, 2020, ‘Milpa Melipona Maya: Mayan Interspecies Alliances Facing Agribiotechnology in Yucatan’, ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies 19(2): 469 500.

Tsing, Anna L., 2015, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins, Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Wadiwel, Dinesh J., 2015, The War on Animals, Leiden: Brill Rodopi.

Wolfe, Cary, 2003, Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Wolfe, Cary (ed.), 2003, Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Written essay (max 2,500 words, in English) or any other form (e.g. visual, audio; upon individual agreement) addressing a case of multi-specice politics; must convincingly show engagement with at least some of the concepts and theories explored in the course. Details to be discussed.