Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry

In recent years, critical researchers, educators, and activists have become aware of the problems and limitations that have resulted by placing the ‘human’ at the center of all societal conceptualizations, concerns, and practices. Across fields, ranging from medical research laboratory practices—to the construction of the humanities—to the social sciences—to environmental studies (just to name a few), this anthropocentric focus is being called to question. The goal of this book series is to provide scholars and readers with critical opportunities to contest this anthropocentrism, (1) by creating a textual field of Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry that generates critical spaces for (re)thinking philosophies, knowledges, and ways of being/living and performing, as well as methodologies and inquiries, that decenter the human, (2) while at the same time attempting always/already to actively transform inequities and injustices performed by human privilege on nonhuman others, traditionally disqualified human others, and the natural world more broadly. This Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry can represent difference and the multiple, while at the same time exploring and welcoming notions of indistinction. Work that further develops and expands current notions of becoming (animal, earth), new feminist materialisms, critical posthuman sensibilities, hybrid existences (past and present) are example locations from which an intersectional, non-anthropocentric politics may emerge. Additionally, post-anthropocentric inquiry and activism will always include the unthought, not-yet-considered modes of living, thinking, research while critically acknowledging that alternatives can create new dualisms, new forms of human privilege, and are not always liberatory for those labeled not human or for those human beings who have traditionally been marginalized. Further, post-anthropocentric scholarship acknowledges, and attempts to (1) transform, the current post-anthropocentric predicament that facilitates neoliberal capitalism as all forms of life, matter, and relations have been/are constructed to serve market economies, and (2) examine the unprecedented human/nonhuman interaction with the increasingly intrusive and intimate technological order. Post-anthropocentric inquiry is necessary as related to these contemporary aggressive, and all-encompassing post-human conditions. Single or multiple authored manuscripts are encouraged that facilitate the development of Post-Anthropocentric Inquiry by addressing one issue, multiple issues, research purposes, methodologies, and/or forms of activism. Over a wide range of volumes that cross disciplines, the series will address broad issues, as mentioned above, and questions like the following: What is post-anthropocentric inquiry? What is made possible, enabled by post-anthropocentric approaches and research methodologies? How is post-anthropocentric research conducted without (re)privileging the human? How does the work in fields that would decenter the human, like critical animal studies, intersect with professional content and practices in fields like education or medicine? How can coalitions be formed (and actions taken) that decenter the human and increase possibilities for all forms of justice, while countering capitalist and technological orders that devalue all forms of life? Interested authors should contact Gaile S. Cannella, gaile.cannella@gmail.com

2 publications