Anne McConnell (West Virginia State University)
February 15, 2024
Scott Nygren Scholars Studio
Library West
5:30 PM
After spending time in the field with evolutionary biologist Amotz Zahavi, the Belgian philosopher and psychologist Vinciane Despret determined that unconventional, interactive approaches to animal knowledge can yield surprising and interesting results. Despret watched Zahavi engage with a group of Arabian babblers, soliciting their participation in his study and allowing his actual encounters with the birds to dictate the research questions he asked. This fieldwork experience with Zahavi encouraged Despret to embark on a multi-pronged study of animal knowledge practices. That work has explored the shortcomings of assumptions and methods in mainstream scientific practice; highlighted the insights of amateurs who work closely with animals in their daily lives; analyzed the ways that humans and nonhumans become with one another, in both work and companionship; and expanded our understanding of what we can know and do together, through practices of care and mutual respect.
I will discuss some of the central insights of Despret’s research and writing, applying them to brief examples from scientific research, interspecies training practices, and recent works of literature and film. I will then examine in more detail the fieldwork and writing that Despret conducted with French sociologist Jocelyne Porcher, where the two interviewed farmers who work with and care for animals on small farms. The resulting book, Être bête, includes the intimate knowledge and insights that have developed between the farmers and their animals, while also posing a more general challenge to particular modes of thinking about and studying human-animal difference. Lastly, I will turn to a work of contemporary French literature by Olivia Rosenthal: Que font les rennes après Noël? [To Leave with the Reindeer]. In the book, Rosenthal plays with the form of fieldwork interviews as a means of exploring questions related to animal knowledge and policies that impact the lives of animals.
This event is free and open to the public.
About the Speaker
Anne McConnell is a Professor in the English Department at West Virginia State University. She specializes in contemporary literature and philosophy from France, Latin America, and the United States, with an emphasis in animal studies and ecocriticism. She has published two books, Approaching Disappearance (2013) and Stepping Off the Edge (2021), along with a variety of academic articles. Topics of her recent research include literary and philosophical explorations of falconry and interspecies hunting practices; animal speech and interspecies communication; the ethical and ecological obligations of human-cat companionship; and interspecies knowledge practices. She currently lives along the New River Gorge in “wild, wonderful” West Virginia, sharing her home with two other humans and a pair of cat companions.
“Getting to Know You” is sponsored by Imagining Climate Change, the George A. Smathers Libraries, and the France-Florida Research Institute.