14.30 – 16.30* Chair of the roundtable "Futures of Zoosemiotics", Wednesday April 6th at 17.00-18.30.Session: Perspectives in zoosemiotics II
Felice Cimatti, Marco Mazzeo. Uexküll’s heritage: do human animals live in an Umwelt?
Morten Tønnessen. The Umwelt trajectories of wolves, sheep and people.
Katya Mandoki. Performative acts among animals? Considering zoo-pragmatics
Mara Woods. An affective model of perception-action.
Pain's "What is an Animal" - a book review from 2009 - tops the list the last 30 days (when the 'Semiotics of Perception' intro was downloaded 60 times, at no. 2) and the last 7 days as well. On the two most recent lists (last 30/7 days), Marcello Barbieri's "Three Types of Semiosis", also from 2009, comes in as no. 3/2.
309 What is an Animal?Pain, Stephen
172
Introduction to the Special Issue Semiotics of Perception Being in the World of the Living—Semiotic PerspectivesLindström, Kati,Tønnessen, Morten
138
Steps to a Semiotics of BeingTønnessen, Morten
131
Ecosystems are Made of Semiosic Bonds: Consortia, Umwelten, Biophony and Ecological CodesKull, Kalevi
117
Autocommunication and Perceptual Markers in Landscape: Japanese ExamplesLindström, Kati
Morten Tønnessen
The title of my PhD project is “Umwelt transition: Uexküllian phenomenology – An ecosemiotic analysis of Norwegian wolf management”. The starting point for my research is the Umwelt theory of Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), which I interpret as a genuine theory of phenomenology. Core notions of phenomenology – ‘subjectivity’, ‘autonomy’ and ‘intentionality’ included – therefore have to be understood in a more-than-human sense.
What is “subjective biology” today? In my work, the concept of Umwelt transition represents an Uexküllian notion of environmental change. This might be revisionist, since Uexküll himself envisioned a harmonious nature in balance. While I find it necessary to revise Uexküll on this point, on other points, I hold, it suffices to apply his theory. One example is his notion of Berufsumwelten (the Umwelten of professions), a subcategory of human Umwelten – in my work I depict e.g. the Berufsumwelt of Norwegian sheep farmers. On yet other points, Uexküll’s theory needs clarification. Two important precisations (conceptual clarifications): an Umwelt is organism-specific, rather than species-specific; and must be taken to refer to an existential realm/”inner states”. Umwelt theory also needs to be developed. Focusing on universally applicable Umwelt terminology, I introduce various notions of aggregate Umwelten (Umwelt trajectories, total Umwelten and common-Umwelten), the concept of existential universals, and a distinction between communal being and distinctive being.
The time frame of my case study is 1845-2010. It thus spans both historical extermination campaigns and the current management regime aiming at conservation. I conceptualize the formal and the informal human interaction with/intervention in wolf ecology, and the wolves’ response. To what extent is the wolf a favored species, in practice? By contextualizing such a question, I pinpoint characteristics of the semiotics of the ecological crisis. One assumption is that humankind’s domestication of animals and plants can be taken as archetypical for our attempted planet-scale taming of the wild. My analysis is conducted by way of an Umwelt mapping of the lifeworlds of wolves, sheep and people, with emphasis on historical Umwelt transitions. In the process I present maps of the ontological niches of these three creatures.
In Scandinavia, in part invasive monitoring justifies questions such as this one: Is a wolf wild as long as it does not know that it is being thoroughly handled? My field trips to Polar Zoo and Langedrag Nature Park and Mountain Farm suggest that socialized wolves come in many forms. What is it like to be a wolf? And what is it like to be a dog?
Preliminary conclusions:
1. The Scandinavian wolf/sheep strife is largely a symbolic construction (cultural analysis is key).
2. Ecological and cultural developments have basically decoupled (there is, in other words, a cultural drift towards pure symbolicity).
3. The long-term goal of wildlife management should be to restore its independent viability. One success criterion: to minimize anthropogenic mortality.
4. My case study demonstrates that Umwelt theory is applicable in a modern ecological setting, but in need of updating and further development.
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For an interesting article that links umwelt theory with the deep ecology platform, see Tonnessen, “Umwelt ethics.”
In the literature list, Umwelt ethics is listed p. 758.
Individual papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. Please send a 250 word abstract and a brief biography (maximum 150 words) to Sam Solnick, Deborah Lilley and Kate Parry – emergentenvironments [at] gmail.com by 31 March 2011. Proposals for panels (3 speakers) and roundtables are also welcome: please send a 200 word summary of the rationale for the panel or roundtable, in addition to individual abstracts. Please send further enquiries to the above email address.
1. Aristotle
2. Plato
3. Trotskij
4. Augustine
5. Jakob von Uexküll
6. Socrates
7. Kalevi Kull
8. Marx
9. Husserl
10. John Deely
The reflexive and critical reflection of the history and philosophy of ethology bears an obvious relationship to its object, the practice of the science of animal behaviour itself; and the latter relies on such historical and philosophical reflections for its own self-understanding and development. But as Buchanan (2008) and others have shown, Continental philosophy has its own debt to the early ethological work of Jakob von Uexküll (1957) and others that has yet to be fully understood (Deleuze & Guattari 1987, Merleau-Ponty 2003). While phenomenology has traditionally focussed solely on human experience, a critique of such anthropocentrism in favour of immanence and biological continuity opens pathways for distinctive empirical, qualitative descriptions of interspecies forms of life (Abram, 1996; Bussolini 2000; Lawlor 2006). Meanwhile, the field of biosemiotics or zoosemiotics, following the work of Thomas A. Sebeok (1972, 2000), Uexküll and others, has its own set of tools and questions, rarely considered by other science and humanities genres, with which to approach the questions of animal life (Tønnessen, 2010).
Our historical moment is one that combines, on the one hand, the breaking down of barriers between the human and the nonhuman, and on the other, the intensification of our anthropocentric use of animal bodies. It is in this context that what is called “the question of the animal” has become an important question in the humanities. Yet while an insistence on animal subjectivity is foundational for much of this discourse, there is a continuing poverty of truly interdisciplinary work that questions how such subjectivity is imagined and comprehended. This workshop will bring together scholars who work in and among disciplines such as philosophy, anthropology, sociology, ethology, neurobiology, science studies, literature, biblical studies, Egyptology, film and music. It will allow local researchers the opportunity to participate in a discussion with distinguished international visitors. It will provide a space for interdisciplinary discussion at the cutting edge of the history and philosophy of ethology, and related fields of animal philosophy and ethics. An edited volume arising from these conversations is planned.As mentioned in the quoted text, the workshop is funded by (ISL-HCA), meaning the International Science Linkages: Humanities and Arts Programme of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The ethology workshop was one of 13 international colloborative workshops to get funding in 2010.
Programme. The workshop will be held in the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion at Macquarie University in Sydney. It will be held over three days, from Saturday-Monday 19th-21st February, 2011. The workshop is funded by the ISL-HCA programme, with additional funding provided by the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion. International speakers are Dominique Lestel (ENS, France), Brett Buchanan (Laurentian, Canada), Gary Steiner (Bucknell, USA), Jeffrey Bussolini (CUNY, USA), Morten Tønnessen (Tartu, Estonia). International guests will speak for 45 minutes, local participants for 25-30 minutes. There will be extended question periods as well as opportunities for group discussion. Please notify of attendance and forward final paper titles and 500 word abstracts by Tuesday 25th January.
Philosophical Practice: Questioning of Rhys Evans on his honest, deeply held beliefs and intuitions on human-animal relations
When: 15th October 2011 This session will partake in the „Position Note‟ workshop of The Oslo Minding Animals Pre-Conference Lecture event (Saturday October 15th). I am the philosophical practioner/facilitator/questioner of the session.On Rhys Evans: http://www.hlb.no/tilsette/rhys-evans.html
