3rd Annual European Conference for Critical Animal Studies

Almost every technoscientific innovation is tested on nonhuman animals in order to get to the market: so called “animal experiments” represent not only a huge market, but an established reality in every corner of the world. Moreover, new technologies such as biotechnology, nanotechnology and neurosciences have made it possible to change fundamental characteristics of nonhuman animals, involving the systematic manipulation and commodification of their bodies as well as new uses of them. Technological developments, powerfully entrenched with industrialization, amplify almost every current use of nonhuman animals, such as in particular the so called field of “animal food production”.

At the same time technology and scientific developments have also provided powerful means to materially overcome animal use, notably in the field of alternative methods. Whereas the critique of so-called “animal experiments” has a longstanding tradition in the animal rights movement, activists have yet to directly engage current projects in experimental research, or to discuss long-term movement goals in the context of the politics and philosophy of science. It is therefore important that animal advocates reflect on alternative methods for testing substances and for performing biomedical research, ones that do not involve animal exploitation. Furthermore, some technological projects like the idea of “in-vitro meat” are directed explicitly to overcome some uses of nonhuman animals.

Technoscientific developments do not only refer to the use of nonhuman animals in experiments. Science can also be seen as a powerful “ally” within animal rights discourse, for example when scientific data (especially regarding ethology) provides evidence for the socio-cognitive capabilities of nonhuman animals, their consciousness and so on. On the one hand animal advocates increasingly rely on these data in order to argue for their rights. On the other hand, the link between results from ethological studies and some scientific initiatives has not yet been extensively discussed from a critical abolitionist perspective, both concerning the methods involved as well as the implications. Relying exclusively on scientific criteria for establishing “who is conscious”, “who is intelligence” (like the human being) and so on, this kind of discourse risks reinforcing the logic of moral and political exclusion, hence too the dynamics of exploitation.

Moreover, technoscience refers not only to projects currently under development in scientific research, but also to utopian and dystopian visions of a future world in which nonhuman animals can be reshaped. Some scholars even advocate the technoscientific abolition of suffering in the name of animal rights. In posthumanist discourses the possibility of transgressing species barriers through genetic engineering has also been used as an argument in favor of animal rights, empirically showing the collapse of ontological boundaries and thus defying anthropocentrism.

Technoscience thus represents a major challenge for the animal rights and abolitionist movement, both at the level of immediate activist concerns (defending nonhuman beings against violence) and at the level of scholarly debate on knowledge production (such as the intrusion of scientific positivism into so-called “critical” discourses). For a Critical Animal Studies perspective a broad reflection on what a new, “appropriate” technics would look like — i.e. to envision an applied science that would be democratic, socially useful, and non-exploitative, appears therefore crucial.

Contact: https://dimde.monoceres.uberspace.de/icas/questions-feedback

Organization:

• Arianna Ferrari (KIT/ITAS, Germany)

Scientific Committee:

• Tom Bradschetl (TU Cottbus, Germany)
• Arianna Ferrari (KIT/ITAS, Germany)
• Julia Gutjahr (Group for Society and Animals Studies, University of Hamburg, Germany)
• Kathrin Hermann (University of Newcastle, UK)
• Anne Franciska Pusch ( Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Germany)
• Friederike Schmitz (Eberhard-Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany)