CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS

Submissions are invited for an edited volume, "Animal Others and the Human
Imagination:  Explorations of the non-human in Self-Understanding", to be
published by University of Toronto Press.

It is the aim of this volume to explore how conceptions of non-human animals are
fundamental to ideas about human nature, typically through their negation. The
volume hope to draw together works in anthropology, religious studies,
psychology, philosophy etc. that explore the processes through which animals are
‘othered.’

In most of the worlds’ religious and cultural traditions, animals are a
fundamental other to the human self. They play a vitally important symbolic role
in human self-conception; demarcating the limits which humans seek to transcend.
Most, if not all, known cultural and religious traditions posit a unique space
for humanity. Humans are not conceived as just one life-form among many; they
are typically understood as special in some vitally important way. It is
striking that the belief in human exceptionality generally rests upon a presumed
capacity to transcend the physical.

It is widely held that humans alone are symbolic animals, capable of extending
beyond our physical limits. Whereas animal natures are seen as fixed and
encoded, human natures are understood as indeterminate, unpredictable, and in a
‘process of becoming’. Our human-ness is revealed in the degree to which we
distance ourselves from our determinate, biological (animal) nature.  In the
philosophies and cultural traditions associated with the West, this has played
out in terms of the familiar “mind-body dualism”, in which human essence and
dignity are believed to be located in the mind, and in which the body is
conceived of as governed by ‘animal appetites,’ in need of discipline. But the
relative denigration of the physical body (vis-à-vis the “true self”), and its
association with animal nature, is far more widespread than the Western
tradition. Indeed, in varying degrees and forms, it may be a human universal.

The ‘problem’ of the body for human beings (its aging, decay and death) and the
implications of this problem for human meaning, are the challenges to which
every cultural and religious tradition responds. Exploring these questions has
long been a focus within philosophy, literature and the social sciences. The
association of the human body with animal nature, however, and the implications
of this association for human understanding, have not been adequately studied.

The aim of this proposed volume is to draw together works that explore the
‘othering’ of animals in a variety of socio-cultural and religious traditions,
with each chapter focusing on a particular historical or ethnographic example.
The first section of the volume could examine the role and conception of animals
within specific traditional worldviews, including religious philosophies. The
second section could explore conceptualizations of animals in post-modern,
post-Darwinian secular discourses where differences between humans and
non-humans are constructed on grounds other than the appeal to a divine plan.  A
substantial final chapter would seek to explore the significance of the
Non-Human in the construction and understanding of what constitutes the Human,
through a comparative analysis of the individual essays in the volume.


Abstracts will be collected over the months of June and July (see contact
information at bottom).  Please feel free to forward to any colleagues who might
find this project to be of interest.  Queries and electronic submissions should
be directed to:

Janet Gunn, Research Assistant
Ph.D. candidate, Religion
University of Ottawa
e-mail: janet.gunn@mac.com

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