Session: 4g
Day: Thursday 16 April
Time: 9.15–11.00
Room: JK2–3 2.19
Chair: Emelia Quinn
Émile Dardenne (Université Rennes 2), “Zooinclusivity”
Abstract: Fifty years after the publication of Animal Liberation, by Peter Singer, the widespread adoption of animal-friendly practices remains elusive. Despite growing public concern for nonhuman animals, their sentience and agency, behavioural change remains slow and inconsistent. This paper introduces zooinclusivity as a conceptual and practical tool to support incremental and inclusive transitions toward better human-animal relations. Drawing from animal studies, moral philosophy, and insights from social psychology, zooinclusivity recognises the psychological and social barriers preventing radical lifestyle shifts. Rather than imposing strict ethical standards, it starts from the acceptability of usages, and promotes a flexible and pragmatic approach that values all efforts to include nonhuman animals in human ethical, political, and social frameworks.
Defined as the disposition to include nonhuman animals in our spheres of consideration and action, zooinclusivity encompasses a wide range of domains—from individual dietary choices to public policy, education, business, urban planning, and law. It seeks to integrate other-than-human animals into practices, discourses, and institutional arrangements, empowering individuals and groups who are already inclined toward change but may not be prepared for radical shifts. Positioned in contrast to animal welfare, ethical veganism, and antispeciesism, zooinclusivity emphasises inclusiveness and supports a spectrum of pro-animal actions. It shares affinities with Tobias Leenaert’s pragmatic approach, while extending beyond dietary concerns to a systemic perspective on interspecies justice.
This paper outlines existing zooinclusive practices, such as wildlife-respecting photography, and animal-friendly urban charters. It also shows how zooinclusivity can serve as a basis for developing new tools, such as a corporate label to assess and encourage animal-friendly business practices. It also critically examines the limits of zooinclusivity, including the risk of animal-welfare washing and the challenge of establishing robust standards. Ultimately, zooinclusivity offers a non-binary, adaptable framework for rethinking our relationships with nonhuman animals in a diverse and unequal world, aiming for solidarity and ethical progress without exclusion.
Bio: Émilie Dardenne is currently a professor in English and animal studies at Université Rennes 2, France, and a senior member of the Institut universitaire de France.
She has published two books, Introduction aux études animales (2022), as well as Considérer les animaux. Une approche zooinclusive (2023). Since 2019, she has headed the Animals and Society University Programme, at Université Rennes 2, and since 2024 she had co-headed the Observatoire de Recherche sur la Condition Animale (CNRS), a French-speaking network of animal studies scholars.
Aylin Walder (TU Braunschweig), “An Introduction to Affinity Studies: Embracing Material Identity to Be(Come) More”
Abstract: Contemporary speculative fiction demonstrates a particular ability to imagine dark speculative ecologies creating anti-anthropocentric worlds that focalize more-than-human agencies and foreground human dependency on the more-being world. In tracing the negotiation of alterity and identity within speculative fiction for my PhD, I conceptualized the notion of affinity as a recognition of the materiality of identities that bind the Self and other Selves across time and space. By enmeshing New Materialism (Bennett; Alaimo) with concepts from queer studies – such as Freeman’s queer belonging and Muñoz’s queer futurity –, I not only argue for affinity as a concept of identity, but also for an affinitive turn within the Humanities.
To introduce the idea of Affinity Studies, I will first elaborate on the notion of affinity and trace my theoretical development from anthropocentrism and heteropatriarchy via trans-corporeality and queer belonging to affinity. Second, I will exemplify the application of affinity to literature by discussing N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth trilogy and Premee Mohamed’s The Butcher of the Forest as prominent examples of imagining a dark sublime in which Nature strikes back through a vertically configured power dynamic. While Jemisin’s series introduces readers to an exploited Father Earth, who comes alive to plague human civilization with natural catastrophes, Mohamed imagines a forest of horrific vitality, emphasizing human powerlessness in the face of Nature and subverting the patriarchal hierarchies – both examples foregrounding the importance of being as being with Nature.
Although both narratives center on the darker agency of Nature, I argue that they neither romanticize nor demonize Nature. Rather, these narratives critique human extractivism and exploitation by foregrounding its consequences. Considering speculative fiction as an affective archive, I propose that the study of affinity in speculative fiction offers valuable insights for developing new modes of living that prioritize solidarity over division.
Bio: Aylin Walder is a research assistant at the TU Braunschweig, Germany, and studied English and History at universities in Cologne, London, and Istanbul. In her PhD, she introduces her concept of affinity. Her research interests include SFF in queer studies, ecocriticism, and postcolonial studies. She presented and published on eco-anxiety, cultural appropriation, and (inter)dependencies. Her work is featured in edited volumes such as The Palgrave Handbook of Global Fantasy, and she is co-editor of the proceedings of the Inklings Society.
Massih Zekavat (University of Groningen), “From Multispecies Justice to Emancipatory Worlding”
Abstract: Drawn from my forthcoming monograph, Leveraging Satire for Environmental Advocacy: Creative Arts in the Chthulucene (Palgrave Macmillan), this presentation offers a critical examination of the concept of multispecies justice, critiquing its limitations, particularly its anthropocentric and institutional biases, before positing emancipatory worlding as a radical alternative. Beginning with Derrida’s reading of Kafka’s fable “Before the Law,” I will show how the law derives its legitimacy from individuals appealing to it, even as it withholds justice. By stepping away from this unproductive cycle, individuals can defy the structures that perpetuate injustice and create new opportunities for emancipation. While justice is often perceived as passive, emancipation paves the way for revolutionary action, offering a more urgent and dynamic response to climate urgency for the “exhausted of the earth” (Chaudhary, 2024).
As opposed to the miscarriages of multispecies justice, emancipatory worlding is rooted in decolonial ecology (Ferdinand, 2022) and anti-capitalist principles such as interspecies commoning (Barca, 2024). It challenges the violence imposed on both humans and more-than-humans through colonial practices of inhabitation. It further opposes a mode of living that exploits planetary resources for the enrichment of a privileged few, while leaving entire populations in states of environmental degradation. Emancipatory worlding requires the rejection of simplified views of human identity as self-contained and human labor as inherently opposed to non-human nature. This involves resisting species supremacy and the resulting degradation of Earth’s systems. In advancing emancipatory worlding, this presentation calls for a radical reimagining of ecological and social relations that resists species supremacy, dismantles systemic oppression, and cultivates transformative modes of interspecies coexistence.
Bio: Massih Zekavat is researcher and postdoctoral fellow at the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. He is author of Satire, Humor and the Construction of Identities (John Benjamins) and co-author of Satire, Humor, and Environmental Crises (Routledge).
Sophie Ingle (Radboud University), “Reimagining the Ethics of Gene Drive Engineering Through Donaldson and Kymlicka’s Animal Citizenship Framework”
Abstract: The accelerating biodiversity crisis has prompted interest in more radical conservation strategies, including the use of gene drive technologies that bias genetic inheritance to alter or suppress populations. While supporters highlight their potential to combat extinction and mitigate ecological disruption, these interventions raise a series of ethical questions about justice for non-human beings. Traditional conservation methods and animal ethicists alike often falter in addressing cases where intervention affects non-humans directly, rather than via their environments. This paper turns, instead, to Donaldson and Kymlicka’s citizenship framework, which reconceptualises non-human animals as political subjects whose entitlements (from humans) vary according to their relationships with human communities.
Applying this framework to gene drive engineering, the paper examines different entitlements owed to three categories of animals: domesticated ‘co-citizens’, sovereign wild animals, and liminal animals who inhabit human spaces without full integration. This paper argues that while population suppression drives conflict with principles of fair intercommunity interaction, population replacement drives may, in certain circumstances, be justified – particularly when framed as a last resort to aid the survival of endangered species or to protect the health of domesticated co-citizens. The analysis further considers how concepts of assisted and interdependent agency complicate assumptions about autonomy, and how models of shared decision-making can resist paternalism while recognising the vulnerability of non-human communities.
Ultimately, the paper suggests that Donaldson and Kymlicka’s framework offers a valuable insights into non-human (in)justice because it foregrounds political membership, relational entitlements, and the risks of paternalism. Yet, it also exposes the need for stronger governance structures to ensure that interventions like gene drives do not overstep the bounds of justice for intercommunity interaction. In this way, the debate on gene drive technologies becomes not only a question of conservation, but of reimagining multispecies political community.
Bio: Sophie Ingle (MA) is a Research Master’s student in Ethics and Political Philosophy at Radboud University. Her background is in philosophy and politics, and she has been teaching at university level since August 2024. Sophie is also the editor-in-chief of a philosophy publication at Radboud University, Nijmegen. Her main research interests include the relationship between humans and non-humans, and the implications of such on the relationship between ethics and ontology.