About the publication

Dear Colleagues,

First of all, I would like take this opportunity to thank all of you for participation in the conference on The Experience of Animality in Culture, Science and Daily Life, and especially those of you who, for various reasons, had to leave before the end of the conference without me being able to express my gratitude in person. I dare to say all presentations were state of the art and meticulously prepared making the effort worthwhile. I hope you have safely arrived home, and that the time spent in Warsaw at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies will contribute to your future research and academic work. Above all, the diversity of our research should not be seen as a disadvantage. Our focus on hermeneutic, interpretative, often textual, philosophical and philological method is a natural consequence of humanistic education. Therefore, we would rather combat the temptation to posit our conference was yet another conference on animals without animals. Of course, we wish there existed a direct and unmediated by language and culture experience of animality through observation, touch, look, or simply by the coexistence  of man and animal. Aside this rather obvious limitation to human cognition, we should answer the call to pursue liberating knowledge by first questioning the dominant subjectifying and third person paradigms of modern behavioural sciences, neurosciences and cognitive sciences.

Please refer to our website for the footage of the conference and to follow the forthcoming meetings and discussions: http://www.animality.ibi.uw.edu.pl/

We shall soon be making arrangements to have conference papers published in a single volume. Its major theme will be transgression of the man-animality opposition and the need to rethink what Tom Tyler referred to as "the bad faith of being human", meaning "anthroponormative over-identification" of “unanimal man" recognized by Tadeusz Sławek, "reviving biophilia" by Mary Trachsel, "monstrosity" by Kathleen Long, or Krzysztof Ziarek’s "Heidegger's questioning of the priority of the notions of life and humans as living beings". Should you have any comments regarding this unifying theme, please email me: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . THE DEADLINE FOR SENDING THE PAPERS IS 13TH JANUARY 2013. Please confirm your access by sending short notice to the above email address.

On the technical side, in order to format your manuscript please follow Instructions for the preparation of manuscripts, and in particular remember to use NO FOOTNOTES but parentheses inside the text, e.g. The Interpretation of Dreams needs not only (Freud 1900) but: (Freud 1900a) - see the attached Instructions and Example for further details. Also, please make sure that your manuscript DOES NOT EXCEED 10000 WORDS. Later in the editing process non-native English speakers will also be asked to consult a native (British) English speaker to proof their text. 

Whilst it is not possible to ascertain publication of each paper I will be working with you to facilitate the process.

With best wishes,

Szymon Wróbel

Szymon Wróbel - Intellectual motivation to undertake the subject animality

At the opening of our conference I would like to expound the reasons why we have decided to make the effort to spend three days discussing animality in culture, science and daily life. My diagnosis today differs somehow from the one worked out with Professor Jerzy Axer over a year ago in the invitation to the conference. We are now fully aware of the variety of questions to be raised in the forthcoming presentations and what awaits us on each day of the conference. 

 I will therefore try to outline the cognitive interests, intellectual motivations, ethical reasons and practical effects that substantiate our meeting:

 First of all, the main axis of our conference is the recognition of yet another turn in the humanities. After linguistic turn (30s to 70s) and pictorial turn (70s to 90s), what comes up next in the humanities and social sciences is what we only tentatively begin to refer to as the animal turn. I presume our main effort here is to determine what precisely is animal turn and what might be its further developments. Specifically, can we provide this turn with a meaning? Are we the lucky ones who can name and diagnose their times and consciously participate in the events to follow?

I am long conscious of a need to come up with a new philosophy of nature in which nature is not an externality subjugated and tamed by man, but an equal partner in a debate, so to speak, endowed with the gift of speech. If we are privileged to hear it, we are also capable of providing it with the ways to be heard aloud? Our section on THE HUMAN-ANIMAL RELATIONSHIP will presumably follow this direction, that is, explore the conditions of co-existence of humans and animals, animals and angels, and angels and monsters alike. Perhaps the main question that will organize our work in this respect is whether discourse ethics should now include entities that initially seemed mute and were excluded from the discussion.

Equally so, I am convinced we need to establish a new ethic. And by saying so I don’t mean we only need to expand the concept of a moral subject to include animals, nor that we need to establish legal basis for protecting animal rights. Even if the former and the later are of practical importance and of political interest I think that what really awaits us here is the revision of the project of ethics as such and the task of answering the question of non-anthropocentric ethics. Jürgen Habermas once called on us to replace the paradigm of subject centered reason with the paradigm of communication centered reason. In this sense, we would like to consider the possibility of establishing a new ethic of life that would strive not so much to protect life, which would probably result in a new biopolitical regime, as it would strive to think over the principles of co-existence and establish what is really common to all of the living. We hope to see THE ANIMAL ETHICS follow this direction.

Since in the vast majority we are the representatives of the humanities, not natural science, we would like to consider the presence of animals in literature and philosophy, from Flaubert after Gombrowicz and from Thomas Aquinas to the Jean-Paul Sartre, to paraphrase the title of Miroslaw Loba’s presentation featured in our conference. The presence of animals in literature and philosophy is permanent, indelible and inescapable. There are animals of Nietzsche - a donkey, a camel, a lion. There are animals of Kafka – a mole, a worm, a mouse, and a butterfly. Perhaps every writer and every philosopher brings to existence their own animals. Kafka-Gnostic discovered by Harold Bloom joins Kafka-Taoist discovered by Elias Canetti. Kafka-mole is thus complemented with the figure of Kafka-butterfly. However, how should we understand the presence of animals in literature? Are they just metaphors of human characters, or do they reveal something more profound, a direction of human desires, or in particular, a fantasy of transgressing humanity? Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari wrote ecstatically: "We think and write for animals themselves. We become animal so that the animal also becomes something else. The agony of a rat or the slaughter of a calf remains present in thought not through pity but as the zone of exchange between man and animal in which something of one passes into the other"” . But what does it exactly mean to "become animal so that the animal also becomes something else"? What does the difference mean, to paraphrase this time the title of Paweł Miech’s presentation: being a rat and identifying with a rat? I believe the above questions shall accompany us when discussing the section on visual arts ANIMALS IN ART AND CULTURE.

Andrew Linzey in his 1994 book Animal Theology instigated a large debate with one anxious question : what in fact is theology if it is developed only thanks to a moral neglect of a group of creatures constituting vast majority in the world of living organisms? Indeed. The question however, is whether the modern animal rights movement needs theology at all? And if so: what sort of theology is in demand? What is the place of animals in the hierarchy of God's creation? The question is not limited to: whether the animals or the animal rights movement needs theology, but what theology needs animals? We hope to see ANIMALS, RELIGION AND THEOLOGY section address these difficult and important issues and outline possible answers.

At the end of our conference we shall challenge probably the most important and most difficult question: animal policy. The presence or rather the absence of animals in politics, political and economic abuse of animals, and their widespread fetishization are rather obvious part of our biopolitical reality. However, Nicole Shukin pervasively notices in her Animal Capital  that while theorists of biopower (Foucault and Agamben) have interrogated the increasingly total subsumption of the social and biological life of the anthropos to market logics, little attention has been given to what Shukin calls “animal capital”. Indeed, as Jacques Derrida remarks, the power to reduce humans to the bare life of their species body arguably presupposes the prior power to suspend other species in a state of exception within which they can be noncriminally put to death . For this reason, it is not enough to theorize biopower in relation to human life alone and that the reproductive lives and labors of other species also become a matter of biopolitical calculation. Peter Sloterdijk writes that today life may depend only on itself. However, we have to ask: what is the life, which depends only on itself? Is there a form of the biophilia? What is a critical project related to this life? Is it just a satirical act as suggested by Sloterdijk? We hope ANIMALS AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY section will provide the basis for a closing discussion.

We raise no claims to completeness nor we intend to fully explore the issues at hand, we only claim that animality as such has been overlooked far too long and can no longer escape our thinking.

Due to a large number of interesting proposals, we decided to extend the conference to three days. I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for sending the abstracts and apologize for not being able to include them all. 

In particular, I wish we were able to include into our discussion many interesting papers of the students. Still, we hope the authors will engage in a discussion and share with us their insights. You are also invited to submit your texts for publication in a post-conference volume.

I am most thankful to our foreign guests. The fact that so many of you were willing to make the effort and in some cases flew across the ocean to join the conference is uplifting and proves that both human motivation to share the ideas at meetings as this one is still alive and an open exchange of ideas still in demand. 

Many thanks to our distinguished guests professors Mary Trachsel, Kathleen Perry Long, Clair Linzey, Ewa Mazierska, Kenneth Shapiro, Krzysztof Ziarek and as well as our distinguished guests from Poland Monika Bakke, Ewa Domanska, Jan Hartman, Mirosław Loba, Tadeusz Sławek. 

Many thanks to my colleagues from the Institute for Interdisciplinary Studies for their presence and support in preparation of the conference. Let me also thank my students for their help with the organization of the conference and the extraordinary inspiration they were the source of. Special thanks go to Paweł Miech who prepared the conference web page. I am particularly grateful to professor Jerzy Axer whose charismatic personality, spontaneous creativity and inexhaustible energy accompanied me ever since hatching the idea of our meeting.

Szymon Wróbel

Example

Text passage: The core issue is the divide between omnipotent phantasy and reality (Freud 1911b). In the concept of the uncanny, Freud (1919h) brings out the ambiguous character of this divide. The closer we approach it, the more confused becomes the relationship between the attraction of the surmounted familiarity of home/mother and the terror of resurgent omnipotent phantasy. The horror of the collapse of the ordinary, external world, is simultaneously the most tempting relapse into ultimate satisfaction. Harold Searles (1960) deals most extensively with the seduction of psychosis, to the point of identifying with non-human and even inanimate objects, whose durability promises a safe psychic haven for the ego in its very dissolution.

In the collapse of Yugoslavian stability into nationalist war, Slobodan Milošević exploited an anxiety of Serbs living as a minority population in Kosovo, when Albanians were demanding independence (Ignatieff 1998, pp. 42–5). He aimed to reabsorb Kosovo into a Serbian republic.

References

Figlio, K. (2010). Phallic and seminal masculinity: a theoretical and clinical confusion, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 91(1): 119-139.

Firth, R. (1966). Twins, birds and vegetables: problems of identification in primitive religious thought, Man, n.s., 1: 1-17.

Freud, S. (1911b). Formulations on the two principles of mental functioning. S.E., 12.

Freud, S. (1912-1913). Totem and Taboo. S.E., 13.

Freud, S. (1914c). On narcissism: an introduction. S.E., 14.

Freud, S. (1915c). Instincts and their vicissistudes. S.E., 14.

Freud, S. (1919h). The uncanny. S.E., 17.

Freud, S. (1930a). Civilization and its Discontents. S.E., 21.

Freud, S. (1939a) [1937-1939]. Moses and Monotheism. S.E., 23.

Gabbard, G. (1993). On hate in love relationships: the narcissism of minor differences revisited, Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 62: 229–238.

Mitchell, J. (2003). Siblings. Cambridge: Polity.

Volkan, V. (2006). Killing in the Name of Identity: a Study of Bloody Conflicts. Charlottesville, VA: Pitchstone Publishing.

Instructions for the preparation of manuscripts

Please note the following with respect to the typing and organization of the material:

  •       All the pages of the printout should be numbered consecutively, beginning with the title page, to enable us to check for the correct ordering of elements.
  •      Levels of headings should reflect the organization of the chapter in which they occur. They should be parallel in construction, and all headings of the same level should be typed in the same format.
  •       If a gap is to be left between paragraphs to indicate a change in subject, three asterisks should be inserted on a separate line.
  •       Cross-references to other specific pages of the book cannot be completed until the book has been paged and should, if possible, be avoided, in favour of reference by chapter or section. If cross-references are necessary, however, please be sure to insert the correct pages at the page-proof stage.
  •       Any special symbols, Greek letters, etc. should be written or typed clearly and unambigously and specified or explained in the printout, as they tend not to transfer correctly between different word processors. Also, please check accents and symbols carefully in the proofs.
  •       Source notes for whole chapters give information regarding the previous publication history plus any necessary credit line; they appear listed together either on the copyright page or in an Acknowledgement section immediately following the copyright page. Credit lines given by the copyright holders on the permission must be followed exactly.
  •       Other previous history of a chapter (date of lecture, etc.) as well as acknowledgement of personal assistance with a chapter or with information contained in the chapter can be placed in a footnote at the beginning of the relevant chapter.
  •       Explanatory notes should be avoided if at all possible; explanations can be given within the text, in parentheses.
  •       Only acknowledgement of assistance or of information supplied for parts of chapters should appear as end-of-chapter notes; they are referred to with superscript numbers within the text, and the notes themselves listed at the end of the chapter.

STYLE

  •       Our books are edited according to Oxford English Dictionary and Oxford editorial style---e.g. z-spelling: (realize BUT analyse: for OED's rationale see Fowler's Modern English Usage, p. 314); serial comma ("Where more than two words or phrases or groupings occur together in a sequence a comma should precede the and: A great, wise, and beneficent measure.": See Hart's Rules for Compositors and Readers at the University Press Oxford, p. 38).
  •       Again according to OED style (and scientific writing generally), that is used in restrictive constructions and which in unrestrictive ones (see Fowler's, pp. 625–630, 699–702).
  •       Any abbreviations (acronyms) used should be explained the first time they occur.
  •       Please avoid terminology that might be construed as being sexist.

REFERENCES / BIBLIOGRAPHY

Text citations should appear in the form of the surname of the author(s) and the year of publication in parentheses. If more than one work is cited, the works should be ordered alphabetically by authors' surnames. In text references in parentheses, an ampersand should be used with two authors (and serial comma and ampersand with more than two). Complete references should then be given in a single reference section at the end of the manuscript, in the case of authored books, and in the case of edited books where each chapter has been contributed by a different author, the references for each chapter should be placed at the end of the chapter.

References in the reference list should be ordered alphabetically by the authors' surnames. Please repeat authors' names throughout the reference list, to enable us to use automatic alphabetical sorting.

Text citations and reference list entries must agree, both in spelling and in date.

In the case of two or more authors with the same surname, initials should also be given in the text citation. If two or more works by the same author were published in the same year, the letters "a", "b", etc. are appended to the date, both in the text citation and in the reference section. Please note that if references are added, identifying letters may have to be changed throughout the text.

If possible, historical dates should be given in the text, with the current edition in the Reference section: Bion, W. R. (1970). Attention and Interpretation. London: Tavistock [reprinted London: Karnac, 1984].

In the case of Sigmund Freud references only, citations should follow the Standard Edition, Freud Bibliography, in terms of both date and identifying letter (e.g. "The Unconscious" is always listed as 1915e, even if no other 1915 work is cited in the book). This means that Freud references can be changed without checking throughout the text for other references. Please note that where there is a discrepancy in the date in the Standard Edition between the alphabetical listing and the Freud Bibliography (for example, Civilization and Its Discontents is 1930a [1929] in the alphabetical listing, but only 1930a in the Bibliography), we take the date from the Bibliography.

In the case of translations, if there are any direct quotes in the text, these must be drawn from an English edition, if one exists. In this case the relevant page number should be given in the text reference. If no English version exists, please add "[translated for this edition]" to the text reference. For books and articles that appeared originally in English, the English edition only is listed. For those that have been translated from another language, both the edition in the original language and the English translation can be given in the references.

BOOK:

[Author's or editor's surname, followed by initial---list all authors; do not use et al. (Year of publication---in parentheses). Title of Work (italicized). City of publication (anglicized): Publisher.]

Alexandris, A., & Vaslamatzis, G. (Eds.) (1993). Countertransference: Theory, Technique, Teaching. London: Karnac [not Karnac Books].

Book authors or editors:   Alexandris, A., & Vaslamatzis, G.

  •       Invert all authors' names; give surnames and initials for all authors, regardless of the number of authors. List all authors - do not use "et al.". (However, in text, if authors number six or more, abbreviate second and subsequent authors as "et al." [not italicized and with no full stop after "et"].)
  •       Use commas to separate authors and to separate surnames and initials; with two or more authors, use an ampersand (&) before the last author. This means that there is always a comma before the ampersand.
  •       Spell out the full name of a corporate author.
  •       In a reference to an edited book, place the editors' names in the author position, with the abbreviation "(Ed.)" or "(Eds.)" in parentheses after the last editor.

Date of publication:   (1993).

  •       Give the year the work was copyrighted (for unpublished works, this is the year the work was produced). For magazines and newspapers, give the year followed by the month and day, if any.
  •       Enclose the date in parentheses.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop after the closing parenthesis.

Book title:   Countertransference: Theory, Technique, Teaching.

  •       Capitalize all main words.
  •       Italicize the title. The volume number (Volume 16) follows the title and is also italicized.
  •       Enclose additional information necessary for identification and retrieval (e.g. 3rd edn) in parentheses immediately after the title. Do not use a full stop between the title and the parenthetical information.
  •       In two-part titles, use Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals, unless the Roman numeral is part of the published title.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop.

Publication information: London: Karnac Books.

  •       Give the city and, if the city is not well known for publishing or could be confused with another location, the country (or U.S. state) where the publisher is located. For U.S. publishers, use U.S. Postal Service abbreviations for states (see list). Use a colon after the location.
  •       Give the name of the publisher in as brief a form as is intelligible. Spell out the names of associations and university presses, but omit any superfluous terms such as Publishers, Co., Inc., or Ltd that are not required for easy identification of the publisher.
  •       If two or more publisher locations are given, give the location listed first in the book or, if specified, the location of the publisher's home office.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop.

ARTICLE OR CHAPTER IN AN EDITED BOOK:

[Author's or editor's surname, initials. (Year of publication) Title of article or chapter. In: Name of editor(s), Title of Work (italicized) (pp. 0000). City of publication (and state, if an American publication): Publisher.

Frey-Wehrlin, C. T., Bosnak, R., Langegger, F., & Robinson, C. (1978). The treatment of chronic psychoses. In: A. Samuels (Ed.), Psychopathology: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives (pp. 205-212). London: Karnac, 1989.

Article or chapter authors: Frey-Wehrlin, C. T., Bosnak, R., Langegger, F., & Robinson, C.

      See elements of a reference to a whole book.

Date of publication: (1978).

  •       Give the year the work was originally copyrighted.
  •       Enclose the date in parentheses.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop after the closing parenthesis.
  •       See elements of a reference to a whole book

Article or chapter title: The treatment of chronic psychoses.

  •       Capitalize only the first word of the title and of the subtitle, if any, and any proper names; do not italicize the title or place quotation marks around it.
  •       Use Arabic numerals, not Roman numerals, in two-part titles unless the roman numeral is part of the published title.
  •       Enclose non-routine information that is important for identification and retrieval in brackets immediately after the article title (e.g., [Letter to the editor]). Brackets indicate a description of form, not a title.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop.

Book editor:  In: A. Samuels (Ed.),

  •       If an editor's name is not in the author position, do not invert the name: use initials and surname.
  •       Give initials and surnames for all editors, regardless of the number of editors.
  •       With two names, use an ampersand (&) before the last name and do not use com­mas to separate the names. With three or more names, use an ampersand before the last name and use commas to separate the names.
  •       Identify the editor by the abbreviation "Ed." in parentheses after the surname. To identify a translator, use "Trans."
  •       Finish the element with a comma.

Book title and article or chapter page numbers: Psychopathology: Contemporary Jungian Perspectives (pp. 205-212).

  •       See elements of a reference to an entire book.
  •       Give inclusive page numbers of the article or chapter in parentheses after the title.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop.

Publication information: London: Karnac, 1989.

  •       See elements of a reference to an entire book.
  •       Give date of publication of book in which article appears, if different from original publication date.

PERIODICAL

  • Author's surname, followed by initials. (Year of publication). Title of article. Name of Journal, vol. no. (italicized), inclusive pages of article. (Journal titles in the reference list should be spelled out in full.)]
  • Bernstein, I., & Glenn, J. (1988). The child and adolescent analyst’s reaction to his patients and their parents. International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 15: 225–241.

Article authors: Bernstein, I., & Glenn, J.

  •       Invert all authors' names; give surnames and initials for all authors, regardless of the number of authors. (However, in text, if authors number six or more, abbreviate second and subsequent authors as "et al." [not italicized and with no full stop after "et"].)
  •       Use commas to separate authors and to separate surnames and initials; with two or more authors, use an ampersand (&) before the last author.
  •       Spell out the full name of a corporate author.
  •       In a reference to a work with no author, move the title to the author position, before the date of publication, and treat the title like a book title (see elements of a refer­ence to an entire book).
  •       Finish the element with a full stop. In a reference to a work with a corporate author, the full stop follows the corporate author. In a reference to a work with no author, the full stop follows the title, which is moved to the author position. (If an author's initial with a full stop ends the element, do not add an extra full stop.)

Date of publication: (1988).

  •       Give the year the work was copyrighted (for unpublished works, this is the year the work was produced). For magazines, give the year; for newspapers, give the year followed by the month and day.
  •       Enclose the date in parentheses.
  •       Write "in press" in parentheses for articles that have been accepted for publication but that have not yet been published. Do not give a date unless the article has actually been published.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop after the closing parenthesis.

Article title: The child and adolescent analyst’s reaction to his patients and their parents.

  •       Capitalize only the first word of the title and of the subtitle, if any, and any proper names; do not italicize the title or place quotation marks around it.
  •       Use Arabic numerals, not roman numerals, in two‑part titles unless the roman numeral is part of the published title.
  •       Enclose non-routine information that is important for identification and retrieval in brackets immediately after the article title (e.g., [Letter to the editor]). Brackets indicate a description of form, not a title.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop.

Journal title and publication information: International Review of Psycho-Analysis, 15: 225–241.

  •       Give the journal title in full, in Capital and lower-case letters; italicize the title.
  •       Give the volume number and italicize it. Do not use "Vol." before the number. If, and only if, each issue begins on page 1, give the issue number in parentheses immediately after the volume number.
  •       Give inclusive page numbers. Use "pp." before the page numbers in references to newspapers and magazines, but not in references to journal articles.
  •       Use commas to separate the parts of this element.
  •       Finish the element with a full stop.