Animals in Focus

The monograph Animals in Focus brings together researchers from different fields of science and offers a multidisciplinary set of views on the animal who is not on the fringes of our perspectives but has become their centre or focus. The move to the centre can be diverse, though, as the articles are based on philosophy, literary studies, comparative studies, zoofolkloristics, anthropology, art history, critical animal studies, critical animal pedagogies and conservation biology. They all proceed, however, from a common starting point, i.e., thinking of animals in a different way, by rejecting the anthropocentric and speciesist view of animals, and placing their lives in the research and emotive focus. The aim is not to avert our intention from the animal that catches our gaze, whatever the mode of gaze it is; to really see the animal and not deny its existence, suffering and abuse.

The monograph discusses the determination of species, although it is clear that species exist only in the sense of taxonomy and not philosophy because merely physical presentation does not form a sentient being; differences in the corporeal do not mean that human presentation is more valuable than the animal’s but, as the dominant species, the former has been merely given a higher social and political value.