The literature to be read for the classes is here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WeB48rMyD4SS-mh49FxVoiwNPV_29tn2
Weekly overview
BLOCK I.
SELF-MAKING: CONSCIOUSNESS, LANGUAGE, AND (INTER)SUBJECTIVITY
Week 1, 1 October. Introduction. Making animals: Language and exclusion
Since the antiquity, the line separating humans from other animals has been drawn by
means of language: the animal is that which does not speak. What are the roots of this
assumption, and what have been its ontological, epistemic, ethical, and political
consequences? How can it be challenged, and what happens when it is?
Required reading:
Meijer, E. 2019. The Animal, What a Word! When Animals Speak: Toward an Interspecies
Democracy. New York: NYU Press. Pp. 15-35.
Reading tasks: What is anthropocentrism? What is the relationship between theories of
the animal and theories of language? What were the views of Descartes and
Heidegger, respectively? And Derrida’s? Finally, how does Meijer propose to extend
Derrida’s critique?
Week 2, 8 October. Questioning anthropomorphism
People tend to speak about other animals in human-like terms. This is anathema in
science. But what does it actually mean when they do? Is it always wrong?
Required reading:
Milton, K. 2005. Anthropomorphism or Egomorphism? The Perception of Non-human
Persons by Human Ones. Animals in Person: Cultural Perspectives on Human-
Animal Intimacies, ed. J. Knight. Oxford: Berg. Pp. 255-271.
Reading tasks: What is anthropomorphism? What is wrong about it? How does Milton
propose to redefine it? What alternative does she offer? Does her concept of
egomorphism resonate with your experience and interests? Can you see any
limitations to its usefulness?
Week 3, 15 October. Towards multispecies humanities and social science
The recent years have witnessed a proliferation of innovative approaches to human
relationships with other animals across the humanities and social science. How have
humanities scholars attempted to bridge the species gap? What methods for
multispecies studies are possible?
Required reading: Van Dooren, T., E. Kirksey and U. Münster. 2016. Multispecies Studies: Cultivating Arts
of Attentiveness. Environmental Humanities 8(1): 1-23.
Reading tasks: How do the authors conceptualize ‘species’? And ‘multiplicity’? What
does that imply for the possibility of ‘multispecies studies’? Who or what might such
studies include? What are the ‘arts of attentiveness’? What is their epistemological
and ethical potential? What limitations of the authors’ conception can you see?
Week 4, 22 October. Co-constitution: Canine-human entanglements
Is the human – non-human divide really so rigid? Or might humans and other animals be
mutually constituted through practiced relationships? In the absence of ‘language’, how
might this work?
Required reading:
Haraway, D. 2008. Training in the Contact Zone: Power, Play, and Invention in the Sport
of Agility. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Pp. 205-
246.
Reading tasks: What is Haraway’s argument about domestication? What is the role of
the body (human and not) in this process? In the canine-human relationship she
describes, what kinds of agency are exercised, and by whom? What limitations of
Haraway’s argument can you see?
Week 5, 29 October. Life is thought is life: Semiosis beyond the human
Crudely, the distinction between the ‘humanities’ and the ‘natural sciences’ rests on the
assumption that only humans have thoughts, language, and the capacity to produce
and exchange meanings. It is now abundantly clear that this assumption is wrong, and
yet the basic human exceptionalism persists. How can we recognize thought and
meaning beyond the human, without projecting human features on other beings? If all
life thinks, and all thought is alive, what does that mean for the notions of the ‘human’
and the ‘non-human’? What are the epistemological, ethical, and political implications
for the theory and practice of multispecies relationality?
Required reading
Kohn, E. 2013. How Forests Think: Toward and Anthropology beyond the Human.
Berkeley: University of California Press. Pp. 27-35, 38-42, 86-89, 131-150.
Reading tasks: Kohn’s book might be one of the most challenging readings in this
course. Please allow sufficient time to read the assigned fragments carefully. It
might be the case that it becomes easier to understand the argument if you readmore – even the whole book. Please focus on the following questions: What is
semiosis and the sign? What is the icon, the index, and the symbol (Pierce)? What
does Kohn mean by ‘provincializing language’? Why does he argue this is necessary?
What is Kohn’s response to Thomas Nagel? How can dogs’ dreams be knowable to
humans?
Week 6, 5 November. Rethinking engagement and detachment
The humanities and social-science literature on human relationships with other animals
often emphasizes ‘entanglement’, ‘connection’, and ‘engagement’ – against the
assumption of an unbridgeable species gap. However, are detachment and engagement
polar opposites? Is one always necessarily ‘better’ than the other?
Required reading
Candea, M. 2010. ‘I Fell in Love with Carlos the Meerkat’: Engagement and Detachment
in Human–Animal Relations. American Ethnologist 37(2): 241-258.
Reading tasks: How does Candea conceptualize engagement and detachment as
modalities of interspecies relationality? What is the ethical valuation of either
engagement or detachment? Can detachment be also a form of relationship? What
does Candea mean by ‘interpatience’? Can this be a useful concept for your own
research interests?
BLOCK II. WORLD-MAKING: ETHICS AND POLITICS
Week 7, 12 November. All animals are equal…: The case for animal rights
If all humans are considered equal by natural right, should this principle be extended to
include other animals? Why or why not? What are the implications of doing so?
Required reading
Singer, P. 2015 (1975). Animal Liberation. London: The Bodley Head. Pp. 1-25.
Reading tasks: What are the main tenets of Singer’s argument? Do you agree? Can you
see any limitations to his case?
Week 8, 19 November. Animal citizenship.
The original animal rights theory (ART) focuses on the ethical, the normative, and the
question of the individual non-human animal as a moral subject. Donaldson and
Kymlicka propose to complement that approach with a political theory of how human –non-human animal relationships can be organized on a collective level. This session
examines their three-tier model of animal ‘citizenship’.
Required reading:
Donaldson, S. and W. Kymlicka. 2011. Extending Animal Rights via Citizenship Theory.
Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 50-
69.
Reading tasks: What theories do the authors draw on to construct their model of human
– non-human animal relations? What are the three categories of non-human animals’
political status that they propose? Do you find this model useful? How could it be
applied in practice? What might be its limitations?
Week 9, 26 November. War.
Despite the normative models of animal rights, the dominant order in human society
continues to rest upon the exploitation of, and systemic violence against, other
animals. Can this interspecies relationship be understood through the concept of war?
Required reading:
Wadiwel, D. 2015. Introduction: The Live Hang. The War Against Animals. Leiden: Brill
Rodopi. Pp. 1-62.
Reading tasks: How does Wadiwel understand ‘war’? Why does he think ‘war’ is the
apposite concept for describing human relationships with other animals? What kinds
of violence against animals does he diagnose, and how are they related? What is the
meaning of ‘sovereignty’ and ‘biopolitics’ in Wadiwel’s argument? What is his critique
of (a) the animal rights discourse, and (b) relational approaches in multispecies
humanities?
Content warning: This text contains graphic descriptions of violence against animals.
Week 10, 3 December. Interrogating relatedness.
In between the normative ideals of animal rights and the grim reality of war lies the
complicated terrain of everyday multispecies relatedness, explored by ethnographers.
This session probes that terrain through focus on monkeys in Himalayan India.
Required reading:
Govindrajan, R. 2018. Animal Intimacies: Interspecies Relatedness in India’s Central
Himalayas. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Pp. 1-7, 90-117.
Reading tasks: How does Govindrajan conceptualize ‘relatedness’? Does ‘relatedness’
imply equality? What different kinds of monkeys did the villagers have to deal with?
What were their differences? What kinds of relations did the villagers develop with
those different monkeys? How did that correspond to ideas of animal rights and
conservation? Would ‘war’ be an apposite concept in this context?
Week 11, 10 December. Indifference to difference.
Discourses about human relations with other animals are usually premised on the
assumption of difference: animals are different than us, and therefore they can be
exploited; they are different than us, and therefore they need to be protected. But what
if we chose to refuse that difference? This means not to ignore the animals; it is not a
refusal of relation. Instead, what if we tried to exist together with other animals in
difference, not trying to either master or exalt that difference?
Required reading:
Davé, N. 2025. Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being. New Delhi: Navayana.
Pp. 1-7, 73-90.
Reading tasks: What does the author mean by indifference? What does she not mean by
it? In what sense does she use the verb ‘to speak’? What are the effects of the
assumption that non-human animals do not speak? Can non-speaking be an act of
resistance?
Week 12, 17 December. The bite: Undomesticated justice
Have you ever been bitten by a dog? Dominant ideologies of animal rights, citizenship,
or ‘multispecies justice’ tend to remain anthropocentric as humans take it upon
themselves to design and enforce a ‘just’ order of multispecies relations. But in the
margins and interstices of capitalist order coexistence and conflict, violence and justice
interweave in complex ways as the marginalized and the undomesticated – human and
other – fight (often literally) tooth and claw to survive the peace that has no place for
them.
Required reading:
Ihar, Z. 2022. Multispecies Mediations in a Post-Extractive Zone. The Promise of
Multispecies Justice, eds. S. Chao, K. Bolender, and E. Kirksey. Durham: Duke
University Press. Pp. 205-225.
Reading tasks: What does multispecies justice look like in the context described? What
competing visions of justice come to clash? Who gets to exercise ‘justice’, and how?How are alliances and division lines drawn among actors of different species? How
do you think this text can relate to other texts from the course (e.g., Donaldson and
Kymlicka; Haraway; Govindrajan; Davé)?
Week 13, 8 January. Wrapping up
In this final session, we will try to recap and wrap up the themes, findings, and further
questions that will have emerged from the course. We will also talk with a Special Guest
about the possibilities of shaping and studying more-than-human relationships through
speculative fiction, focusing on Ray Nayler’s novella The Tusks of Extinction.
Required reading:
Nayler, R. 2024. The Tusks of Extinction. New York: Tordotcom.
Reading tasks: Please read the novella in full – it is just below 100 pages, depending on
the edition you use. In what ways can it resonate with any of the other course
readings and our discussions? What new ideas does the novella inspire for you that
go beyond the academic readings?
Last update: Kuřík Bohuslav, Mgr., Ph.D. (15.09.2026)
