Session: 1h
Time: 11.15–13.00
Room: JK2–3 1.17
Chair: Mace Bielderman
Per Esben Svelstad (Norwegian University of Science of Technology), “The Queerness of Pig Farming: Sexuality, and Multispecies Tragedies in Anne B. Ragde’s Neshov series and Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s Règne animal”
Abstract: This paper proposes a comparative reading of Anne B. Ragde’s Neshov series (six volumes, 2004–2019) and Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s novel Règne animal (2016), which traces the evolution of a southern French farm during the 20th century. Both narratives unfold on pig farms haunted by the presence of a matriarch. In Ragde’s books, the youngest son Erlend escapes his narrow-minded rural upbringing to work as a window display designer in Copenhagen, where he shares a luxurious flat with his male partner and cherishes his collection of animal glass figurines. In Règne animal, the closeted homosexual son must deal with an outbreak of catastrophic disease among pigs—this culminating event appearing as an allegory of the looming AIDS crisis.
By placing queer characters in fraught relationships of care with the more-than-human, these novels critically probe the stigmatization of nonheteronormative sexuality as “against nature.” Both texts also function as polyphonic narratives, shifting focalization across a collective of characters, arguably positioning the socio-ecological environment—rather than individual humans—as protagonist. At the same time, while both authors explore the limits of human individuality amid ecological transformation, these narratives are characterized by vastly different formal strategies to depict both rapid transformations and the insidious effects of “slow violence” (Rob Nixon). Where Ragde’s books patiently dwell on the span of a few years, Del Amo portrays the destinies of humans and other animals spanning the years from 1898 to 1981, perhaps mimicking the acceleration of late modernity.
Inspired by ecocritical narratology (Erin James), posthumanist theory (Rosi Braidotti, Astrida Neimanis), and the idea of our need for resonance with the strange and disharmonious (Timothy Morton, Hartmut Rosa), this talk explores how these novels can be read as multispecies tragedies of the Anthropocene, a time when humans face the cumulative consequences of their treatment of other creatures.
Bio: Per Esben Svelstad is Professor of Norwegian at the Department of Teacher Education, NTNU in Trondheim. His current research focuses on ways to integrate Environmental and Sustainability Education in the literary classroom. Another research interest is gender and sexuality in Scandinavian and European fiction, with an emphasis on contemporary and interwar literature. In 2024, he published the monograph Same-Sex Desire and the Environment in Norwegian Literature 1908—1979 (Palgrave).
Clara Louise Søndergaard (Aarhus University), “‘You probably ought to be small enough to notice’: The Potential of Transspecies Solidarity in Performing Transgender Rage (2022) by Gry Stokkendahl Dalgas”
Abstract: Since 2019 several literary works published in Danish literature have combined themes of transness and nature. Together, they form what I call a “transecological breakthrough.” Exploring the pleasure-filled as well as unsettling and shadowy connections between transness and nature, this breakthrough represents a challenge to the binary logic that dominates Western culture and rethinks the paradoxical position of trans people between nature and naturalness.
This paper presents Gry Stokkendahl Dalgas’ Performing Transgender Rage, a work that explores the experience of being transgender within the highly regulated process of obtaining approval for gender-affirming care in Denmark. The text engages with transgender rage as both a deeply personal affect and a politically charged response to systemic gatekeeping, medical control, and societal marginalization. At the same time, “[a]ll that cows and corn make happen” represents moments of beauty and interspecies care. My reading of the work highlights how it generates a particular form of sensitivity and solidarity that moves beyond the human; for instance, a little wren ends up in the helpful hands of a big creature.
By centering trans-experiences of medical bureaucracy and marginalization, the work exemplifies what it means to care for “unloved others” — those whose lives and struggles are often rendered unintelligible or undesirable within dominant frameworks. I argue that Dalgas’ text offers a vision of justice that is both trans-specific and expansive, proposing forms of solidarity that cut across species boundaries and established categories of the political. In doing so, Performing Transgender Rage not only documents transgender rage but also performs an ethics of care and interconnection that points toward more livable futures.
Bio: Clara Louise Søndergaard, PhD student at the Scandinavian Department, Aarhus University, Denmark. I work in the intersection between gender studies (more specifically transstudies) and ecocriticism. In my project, I explore what I call a “transecological breakthrough” in Danish literature beginning in 2019. The literary works I examine combine themes of transness and nature, and this combination is investigated through the theoretical framework offered by the emerging field of transecology.
Valerie Tollhopf (Leuphana University), “Contextualizing Multispecies Struggles: Trans and Animal Bodies, Capitalism, and the State”
Abstract: In this paper, I trace historical links between the governance of nonhuman animals and the regulation of trans bodies through the US-based agricultural youth organisation 4-H. Engaging with the ascendent field of trans* new materialism (TNM), which has sought to connect animal studies and trans studies, I propose that a historical materialist perspective offers a sharper framework for understanding multispecies justice and resistance. Critics argue that TNM risks downplaying antagonism and power asymmetries in favour of more optimistic visions of entanglement (Amin; Ison; Wadiwel). My intervention responds by situating trans-animal connections in specific histories of violence and struggle.
Drawing on Gabriel Rosenberg’s account of 4-H, I show how the twentieth-century elimination of transness from rural youth bodies was inseparable from the capital-intensification of agriculture, which simultaneously escalated animal domination. The family farm functioned as a reproductive apparatus in which cisheteronormativity was naturalised alongside eugenic ideals of “healthy” white bodies, while animals were subjected to parallel processes of standardisation, commodification, and reproductive control. Yet these projects of biopolitical governance also reveal sites of friction and resistance, where both trans and animal bodies exceeded or disrupted their prescribed functions.
This case study demonstrates the value of historical materialist analysis for reimagining trans-animal connections not as abstract and innocent entanglements but as shared terrains of struggle shaped by capitalism, state power, and eugenics. It suggests possibilities for multispecies solidarity attentive to both care and conflict, enriching ongoing debates about nonhuman resistance and more-than-human justice. If we are to imagine avenues for multispecies revolution, a crucial step is to embed animals within Marxist frameworks that foreground the potential for shared struggles. This paper contributes to that project by developing the first historical materialist account of trans-animal connections.
Bio: Valerie Sofie Tollhopf is a graduate student of cultural theory at Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany. Her research focuses on materialist approaches to trans studies and critical animal studies with a particular emphasis on connections between the fields. Holding a BA in Environmental Studies and Philosophy, she is committed to bridging various social movements from an interdisciplinary perspective.
Rebecca Jordan (Bowdoin College), “Queer Resistance in the Age of Man: Animal Cyborgs in Contemporary Austrian Literature”
Abstract: This paper considers the depiction of animal/human hybrids in the contemporary German literature. Specifically, I examine the two works Jana Volkmann’s Der beste Tag seit langem (2024) and Elisabeth Klar’s Es gibt uns (2023). My project locates itself among current ecocritical and queer scholarship that contends the term “Anthropocene” has ignored the complexities of social, economic, racial, and gender inequalities in environmental discourse. Though this paper cannot manage a discussion of these inequalities on an individual level, as a starting point, I consider how distinctions of “animal” and “human” have blurred due, in part, to emerging technologies and problematic scientific rhetoric of the Anthropocene. I argue that in exploring these blurred distinctions, as humans in a globalized world must question conventional understanding of animal bodies, identities, even species. What might these literary works reveal about animals’ place in an ever-changing environment and their relationships with technologies? The animal cyborg in the Anthropocene thus serves as a framework to understand human mortality, the fragility of human identity, and animal survival in the face of extinction.
Bio: Dr. Rebecca Jordan, Visiting Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College, is a scholar of German literature, environmental, queer, and animal studies from the 20th to 21st centuries. Her current research focuses on animal interaction with technologies in the Holocene. She examines the representations of animal interaction and bodily immersion with technologies in changing climates and landscapes. Dr. Jordan holds a Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis.