Keynote Sessions

In this joint keynote, Kuura Irni and Eva Haifa Giraud will present 25-minute papers, each of which offers provocations and questions about the relationship between relational, more-than-human theory and critical politics. In particular, they explore whether it is possible to reconcile what has been valuable about relational ethics – particularly from the feminist STS tradition – with a more critical edge. Or, put differently, each paper asks whether it is possible to engage in critique about existing human-animal relations, without descending into the essentialism and trans-exclusive theorisation that has sometimes persisted in specific strands of animal studies. The papers will be followed by a 20-minute discussion between the speakers before a 20-minute Q&A with the audience. 

Eva Haifa Giraud (University of Sheffield): Indifferent, Complicit, and Incommensurable Relations?

Recognition of the non-innocence of care relations, or the entanglement of care and violence, is often the culmination, punchline, or take-home point of research examining entanglements between humans and non-human animals. But what if this recognition was the starting-point, rather than the end-point, of research; a problem to reckon with, rather than a series of relationships to trace via compelling description? In this paper, I use the above question as a jumping-off point for exploring how specific enactments and conceptions of relational ethics feed into the normalisation of violent multispecies relations. Focusing on two themes – embodiment and inclusion – I argue that particular constructions of relational ethics have been privileged in animal studies and environmental humanities research at the expense of others. In particular, the emphasis on knowledge generated through attentive, embodied relations has (seemingly) generated radically inclusive approaches to engaging with nonhuman animals. However, these approaches are often entwined with contractions in how contentious, counter-public activism is perceived to participate in political debates about nonhuman animals. These dynamics, I suggest, can make it difficult to reckon with hard questions about whether or how existing human-nonhuman entanglements could be otherwise. To close, I reflect on whether alternative conceptual trajectories can be found by centralising questions of complicity (Shotwell; Williams and Hollin), incommensurability (Liboiron), violence (Wadiwel) and indifference (Davé).

Kuura Irni (University of Helsinki): Understanding "Nature" in Trans and Animal Politics within Feminist Theory

In this presentation I analyse the controversies between on the one hand, Donna Haraway, who has become widely known for her technoscience and multispecies work and developed a relational approach to life since the 1980s, and on the other, ecofeminists who question animal exploitation, some of whom have been extremely critical of Donna Haraway’s work. In Haraway’s early work she not only questioned the usefulness of the sex/gender distinction for feminist theory, but also posited the importance of noticing the entanglements of the categories of sex, biology, race, and nature. Importantly, “nature” and “biology” were not left in her thought only as historicised objects of analysis, whereby her work differed from poststructuralist and marxist feminisms and provided broad inspiration for technoscience studies, new materialist, and relational research approaches. While Haraway herself has not exactly built transfeminist theory, her work has also inspired several scholars in the emerging field of transecology. In addition, as even her fiercest ecofeminist critics, such as Zipporah Weisberg, admit, her work is based on acknowledging the subjectivity of nonhuman animals. Despite this partial agreement, I suggest that different takes on the intertwined questions of relationality and animal politics form the central controversy between Haraway and the ecofeminist critics of animal exploitation. However, I argue that these controversies are also crucially, but more subtly, about whether feminist approaches to “nature” are conducted in a trans sensitive way. Some ecofeminist approaches have recently been problematised for being trans-exclusive, and trans-inclusive alternatives have been proposed from different theoretical backgrounds (Karhu 2024; Irni 2024). In this presentation I ponder the ways in which relationality is approached within this debate and what it entails for both trans and animal politics in feminist theory and beyond.