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Col. Cassiopeia
(December 2024)
Title: Escrever com os Pardais: notas para uma zoopoética
Org. Helena I. Lopes (ILCML/ BIFEGA) and Ana Carolina Meireles (FLUP)
Contemporary literature has explored multiple approaches to animal imagery, largely motivated by the current environmental crisis, and looking for new ways of interacting with the world. Exploring the relationships between the human and the non-human, new theoretical currents are developed, such as ecocriticism and animal studies, which cross different areas of human and natural sciences (biology, philosophy, psychology, sociology). These studies analyze the political, ethical, social and cultural status of non-humans, contributing to the development of critical approaches such as post-humanism and post-anthropocentrism. The term ‘zoopoétique’, proposed by Jacques Derrida in L’Animal que donc je suis (2002), presupposes a contract of contemplation between human and non-human animals, perceiving the Other as an open subject. Thus, zoopoetics investigates the agency of the animal in the literary phenomenon, recognizing it as a sensitive subject, capable of producing language and thought. Contrary to Martin Heidegger’s theory (the animal is poor in the world due to its lack of language), Derrida states that only poetry can understand animal thought, going beyond conventional forms of thought: “For thinking concerning the animal, if there is such a thing, derives from poetry”. Or, in the words of Aaron M. Moe, in Zoopoetics animals and the making of poetry (2014): “when […] the poet discovers new gestures through his involvement with animals, the process of poiesis becomes a multispecies event.” It is in this sense that Adília Lopes, in Pardais (2022), writes: “I would like my poems to be brown, modest, small, Lisbon-like sparrows and to have the sound of sparrows chirping”, while learning how to write with the animal world.
This volume of the Cassiopeia collection aims, through the study of literature and other artistic practices, to deepen knowledge about animal representations in poetry and other arts, and contribute to the development of post-anthropocentric studies, motivating a better understanding of the world animal and the balance between human and non-human species.
Proposed thematic axes:
- representations of the non-human animal in literature and other arts
- narrative strategies: somatizations of the animal in literature
- exploitation of hybrid and/or metamorphosed animals
- archetypes and meanings of animals in different cultural contexts
- deconstruction of the civilization/nature binomial
- social, moral and ethical conflicts in the animal universe
- reception and influence of zooliterature
- impact of the digital age on the creation / analysis of animal imagery
- violence, manipulation and extinction
- contribution to raising awareness of animal and environmental causes
We invite submissions of works until July 15, 2024.
We accept complete and unpublished articles in Portuguese, English, French or Spanish. All texts will be subjected to an anonymous peer review process and must strictly comply with the publication standards corresponding to the journals of the Instituto de Literatura Comparada Margarida Losa, displayed HERE.
Articles must be sent to email: livrozoopoetica@gmail.com
For clarification of doubts or preliminary expressions of interest, please contact the organizers of the issue via email: livrozoopoetica@gmail.com