"Meet Animal Meat" Conference

Still from "Meat Joy" (1964) by Carolee Schneeman

"Meet Animal Meat" International Conference: May 21-23, 2009
Center for Gender Research at Uppsala University, Sweden
www.genna.gender.uu.se/Animals/Events/Meet_Animal_Meat

Informed by feminist investigations of embodiment and bodiliness, we ask: How do we understand our bodily relationship to other animals? How do we embody animals, and how do animals embody us? How are carnal modes of incorporation, intimacy, and inhabitation kinds of contacts forged between “HumAnimals”? If, as Donna Haraway writes, “animals are everywhere full partners in worlding, in becoming with,” then how do embodied encounters with animal matter necessarily constitute categories of “human” and “animal”? What is the meaning of meat, and the meat of meaning? How do we think and write about human and animal power relations in a way that acknowledges the discursive traffic, the actor-ship, agency, and the life conditions of these differently bounded socio-historical, political populations? How do we attend to the ways that animals and humans co-constitute each other in the flesh? What is the consequence of taking embodiment and corporeality as the starting point of inquiry into questions of relationality? How do we make meat “matter” in cultural/social/political studies of animals, and/or problematize preconceived notions of animals as “food”? How do animal parts and body-matters figure in politico-economic stories, processes, and institutions? We seek proposals for papers, panels, and other public presentations connecting representation, language, embodiment, animals, consumption, power, and culture. We especially welcome interdisciplinary approaches; readings of corporeally inflected HumAnimal fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction; films, videos, and slide presentations of artwork that explore carnal human and animal encounters; and proposals from outside the academy, including submissions from artists, writers, practitioners, and activists.

Keynote Speakers:
Carol J. Adams, author of "The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory" and "The Pornography of Meat".
Judith Halberstam, author of "Skin Shows: Gothic Horror" and The Technology of Monsters" and "In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives".

This conference comes out of a concerted research effort (at Uppsala University and elsewhere) that seeks to examine human-animal relationships in a new light. As the the HumAnimal Group at Uppsala explains:
The study of human-animal relations is a fascinating but still relatively unexplored research area. One of the reasons why the social sciences and humanities in general have been reluctant in dealing with the issue is the classical nature/culture divide. While “society” consists of humans and their interaction in institutions and culture, other animals become excluded and conceptualized as “nature”. The presence of animals can thereby, on the one hand, ”decivilize” human activities and urban places. But on the other hand, we have a strong Western tradition of linking the treatment of other animals with degrees of civilization: the more “humane”, the higher the civilisation. Put together, this points to an interesting potential openness of categories and flexibility in the understanding of humans and other animals. This potential openness creates a space for questioning taken for granted discourses and truths, and this is where the critical potential of animal studies lies. Internationally, human-animal studies is a growing interdisciplinary field with specialized journals, conferences and networks. However, in the Scandinavian context, the existence and activities of a research collaboration such as the Humanimal group has no precedence.
The HumAnimal group currently represent a vast diversity of disciplines and perspectives, from evolutionary biology, through sociology and pedagogy, to arthistory and philosophy. This is not a mere coincident. In line with the overall aims of GenNa, the HumAnimal group finds it an important advantage to cross over the nature/culture divide in science, also in the area of human-animal studies. Thus, interdisciplinarity is a given in the group. We believe that disciplinary and other differences, can become methodological advantages and present us with new insights, but also new questions and problems. The overall aim is to promote better understanding of human-animal relations in society, science and culture by way of exploration and analysis, to explore the critical potentials of such understanding. of human-animal relations in society, science and culture, and to establish human-animal studies as a field of academic inquiry in Sweden.

More about GenNa (Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University):
Nature/culture and transgressive encounters The Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala University is working to promote sustainable interdisciplinary encounters and networking. The aim of our GenNa-programme is to study empirically and reflect theoretically on the ways in which knowledge about gender and gendered knowledge are produced in the intersection between the natural and cultural sciences. We continuously identify different focus areas for research, collaborate with internationally renowned researchers, and organise transgressive seminars and conferences. By bridging organisational and conceptual divisions, we offer a unique meeting place for researchers and students from different disciplinary backgrounds. We have been awarded the Swedish Research Council’s funding for Centres of Gender Excellence 2007–2011, in order to continue building a centre of international excellence in empirical research, theoretical development and teaching.