Papers and Book Chapters by Sune Borkfelt
Pedaling Resistance: Sympathy, Subversion, and Vegan Cycling. Ed. Carol J. Adams and Mike Wise. University of Arkansas Press, 2024
Making connections between his personal experiences of being vegan and of being a cyclist in cont... more Making connections between his personal experiences of being vegan and of being a cyclist in contemporary Denmark, the author of this chapter is led to reflect on animal agriculture, hunting, categorizations of wild and domesticated animals, and loss of insect life, among other issues. A literary animal studies scholar, he emphasizes the importance of both real and imaginary animal encounters, for which he finds cycling to be conducive. Cycling, he finds, ultimately heightens his senses to the surrounding world, makes for a fine-tuning of care, and connects the abstract or imaginary animals in his daily work-life to the real animals that can be seen, touched or heard while cycling.
The Edinburgh Companion to Vegan Literary Studies. Ed. Laura Wright and Emelia Quinn. Edinburgh University Press, 2022. pp. 93-106
Squirrelling Human–Animal Studies in the Northern-European Region. Ed. Amelie Björck, Claudia Lindén, and Ann-Sofie Lönngren. Södertörns Högskola, 2022, pp. 155-172., 2022
Research into the naming of literary characters has so far limited itself to a few particular str... more Research into the naming of literary characters has so far limited itself to a few particular strands of inquiry, in which the naming or namelessness of nonhuman animal characters tend to be mentioned only in passing, if at all. With the aim of beginning to remedy this oversight, this chapter explores ways in which the theory and research on literary onomastics may be especially relevant to talking about animal narratives. Thus, it introduces literary animal onomastics, argues for its importance, and exemplifies this through the discussion of a number of literary works in which named or nameless animals play crucial roles.
'Animal Encounters: Kontakt, Interaktion und Relationalität'. Eds. Alexandra Böhm & Jessica Ullrich. Metzler, 2020, pp. 225-240.
In literary analysis as in real life, the visual holds a privileged position as the experience mo... more In literary analysis as in real life, the visual holds a privileged position as the experience most often intellectualized and/or aestheticized. However, increased analytical focus on the phenomena of sound and smell often open up new perspectives on the experiences of literary characters and on the nature of experience as such. This is especially compelling in the case of texts in which humans encounter nonhumans (and vice versa). Through a focus on encounters with animal markets and slaughterhouses in texts from the nineteenth century onwards, this paper attempts to theorize the literary experience of the sounds and smells of nonhuman animals. Hence, it is argued that a heightened focus on other senses than the visual opens up different potential and allows for reading experiences that are perhaps more emotive and intuitive, rather than rationalized, and which can highlight nonhuman agency. In particular, reading scenes of slaughter through the senses in this way may lead to a heightened awareness of the distance or proximity of slaughter in readers’ lives.
Leviathan: Interdisciplinary Journal in English
This article introduces student readers to the realm of the interdisciplinary, with a primary foc... more This article introduces student readers to the realm of the interdisciplinary, with a primary focus on the humanities. We first introduce interdisciplinarity and other related terms as concepts. We then present eight specific examples, on which we illustrate interdisciplinary research. Finally, we address the question of when one should be interdisciplinary.
Liberazioni, 2017
Translated by Feminoska.
Introduction for special issue of Otherness: Essays and Studies (5.2), on animal alterity.
As public awareness of environmental issues and animal welfare has risen, catering to public conc... more As public awareness of environmental issues and animal welfare has risen, catering to public concerns and views on these issues has become a potentially profitable strategy for marketing a number of product types, of which animal products such as dairy and meat are obvious examples. Our analysis suggests that specific marketing instruments are used to sell animal products by blurring the difference between the paradigms of animal welfare used by producers, and the paradigms of animal welfare as perceived by the public. These instruments rely on ethical, political and sustainable consumption discourses in order to sell one image of animal welfare in intensive animal production while the actual production at the same time presupposes a quite different paradigm of animal welfare. Specifically, product advertising utilizes representations tied to concepts of naturalness in depictions of both animal lives and product processes as “natural”. Product marketing suggests a coherence between nature, production process (farm, animal), and end product, thereby creating associations that the lives of production animals are lived in nature and that their products bring a wholesome and sustainable naturalness to the consumer—thus attempting to display a green, eco-, climate-, and animal friendly production. By analyzing a number of cases from the Scandinavian food market, this paper thus illustrates the tensions between paradigms of animal welfare and concepts of naturalness as these are used in animal product marketing, discusses the ethical implications of this type of marketing communication, and stresses the need for transparency in the area of animal welfare.
Empirical cases from the Danish food market are examined in order to critically discuss the respe... more Empirical cases from the Danish food market are examined in order to critically discuss the respective modes of communication in light of the premises of socially responsible consumer marketing. This analysis suggests that specific marketing instruments are used to sell animal products by blurring the difference between the paradigms of animal welfare used by producers, and the paradigms of animal welfare implicit in the public understanding of the concept. These instruments rely on the ethical, political and sustainable consumption discourses in order to sell one image of animal welfare in intensive animal production while the production at the same time presupposes a quite different paradigm of animal welfare. Two cases are used to illustrate this: (1) the Danish dairy company Arla Foods’ campaign with the tagline ‘Closer to nature’; and (2) selected ‘quality brands’ that present themselves as welfare-oriented alternatives to conventionally produced animal products, but with only marginal improvements. The rhetoric of both cases specifically manifests a deep coherence between nature, farm, animal and end product, and thereby creates associations of production tied to lives living in nature - thus attempting to display a green, eco-, climate-, and animal friendly production. The tension between marketing and the idea of ethical consumerism is apparent as the need for independent information to make value-based choices is challenged by the liberal rules of the market and more specifically by the lack of a restrictive food labelling policy. The relationship between the ways in which animal welfare is communicated and emphasized through food marketing, and commonly held perceptions of acceptable standards for animal welfare, is discussed and the need for transparency in the area of animal welfare stressed.
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In this chapter, I argue – using a number of examples from representations of non-human animals –... more In this chapter, I argue – using a number of examples from representations of non-human animals – that there are close connections between the exotic otherness of animals in Occidental representations and the othering of some human groups. Therefore, discourse on imperialism, colonialism and postcolonialism provides a framework within which the connections between human and non-human otherness may be explored.
Moreover, I argue that there is a need for discussing new ways of representing non-human animals in order to avoid traditional othering and stereotypes. Some authors, such as J.M. Coetzee and Barbara Gowdy, have tried to grapple issues of animal alterity in their fiction and have benefitted from their postcolonial context in doing so. Yet both the traditional stereotypes of animal otherness and contemporary attempts at dispensing with these raise questions and dilemmas when it comes to representing non-human animals.
Animals, Jan 1, 2011
The act of naming is among the most basic actions of language. Indeed, it is naming something tha... more The act of naming is among the most basic actions of language. Indeed, it is naming something that enables us to communicate about it in specific terms, whether the object named is human or non-human, animate or inanimate. However, naming is not as uncomplicated as we may usually think and names have consequences for the way we think about animals (human and non-human), peoples, species, places, things etc. Through a blend of history, philosophy and representational theory—and using examples from, among other things, the Bible, Martin Luther, colonialism/imperialism and contemporary ways of keeping and regarding non-human animals—this paper attempts to trace the importance of (both specific and generic) naming to our relationships with the non-human. It explores this topic from the naming of the animals in Genesis to the names given and used by scientists, keepers of companion animals, media etc. in our societies today, and asks the question of what the consequences of naming non-human animals are for us, for the beings named and for the power relations between our species and the non-human species and individuals we name.
Through history, the differences between human bodies have always been used as a means of definin... more Through history, the differences between human bodies have always been used as a means of defining and justifying unequal power relations between different groups of human beings. Not least, bodily differences such as skin colour, height, facial features, dress and supposed sexual or dietary habits, have been used by European powers seeking to justify colonial expansion and imperialism through centuries. Often overlooked in this connection are the intersections between European descriptions and treatment of Non-European humans on one hand and human, especially European, views on and treatment of non-human animals on the other. This paper examines these intersections as they occurred within British imperial and colonial discourse. Arguing that the connection between views on Non-European humans and on non-human animals has been of great importance to European imperial attitudes in general and to British imperialism in particular, this paper connects such different issues as meat-eating, environmental control, slavery, human and non-human physical features and the connections between the views of bodies and the language used about them. Finally, it shows how remnants of such attitudes are found in some societies today and suggests a way forward.
English Studies, Oct 1, 2009
Books by Sune Borkfelt
Reading Slaughter: Abattoir Fictions, Space, and Empathy in Late Modernity examines literary depi... more Reading Slaughter: Abattoir Fictions, Space, and Empathy in Late Modernity examines literary depictions of slaughterhouses from the development of the industrial abattoir in the late nineteenth century to today. The book focuses on how increasing and ongoing isolation and concealment of slaughter from the surrounding society affects readings and depictions of slaughter and abattoirs in literature, and on the degree to which depictions of animals being slaughtered creates an avenue for empathic reactions in the reader or the opportunity for reflections on human-animal relations. Through chapters on abattoir fictions in relation to narrative empathy, anthropomorphism, urban spaces, rural spaces, human identities and horror fiction, Sune Borkfelt contributes to debates in literary animal studies, human-animal studies and beyond.
Edited Collections by Sune Borkfelt
Interrogating Boundaries of the Nonhuman: Literature, Climate Change, and Environmental Crises as... more Interrogating Boundaries of the Nonhuman: Literature, Climate Change, and Environmental Crises asks whether literary works that interrogate and alter the terms of human-nonhuman relations can point to new, more sustainable ways forward. Bringing insights from the field of literary animal studies, a diverse and international group of scholars examine literary contributions to the ecological framing of human-nonhuman relationships. Collectively, the contributors to this edited collection contemplate the role of literature in the setting of environmental agendas and in determining humanity’s path forward in the company of nonhuman others.
Literary Animal Studies and the Climate Crisis connects insights from the field of literary anima... more Literary Animal Studies and the Climate Crisis connects insights from the field of literary animal studies with the urgent issues of climate change and environmental degradation, and features considerations of new interventions by literature in relation to these pressing questions and debates. This volume informs academic debates in terms of how nonhuman animals figure in our cultural imagination of topics such as climate change, extinction, animal otherness, the posthuman, and environmental crises. Using a diverse set of methodologies, each chapter presents relevant cases which discuss the various aspects of these interstices. This volume is an intersection between literary animal studies and climate fiction intended as an interdisciplinary intervention that speaks to the global climate debate and is thus relevant across the environmental humanities.
Edited journal issue by Sune Borkfelt
Reviews by Sune Borkfelt
Textual Practice, 2023
Review of Dominic O'Key's book "Creaturely Forms in Contemporary Literature: Narrating the War ag... more Review of Dominic O'Key's book "Creaturely Forms in Contemporary Literature: Narrating the War against Animals" (Bloomsbury, 2022)
EurSafe News 16.1, pp. 11-12, Jun 2014
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Papers and Book Chapters by Sune Borkfelt
https://books.google.dk/books?id=KXuV_Rfp2XUC&pg=PA195&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=false
Moreover, I argue that there is a need for discussing new ways of representing non-human animals in order to avoid traditional othering and stereotypes. Some authors, such as J.M. Coetzee and Barbara Gowdy, have tried to grapple issues of animal alterity in their fiction and have benefitted from their postcolonial context in doing so. Yet both the traditional stereotypes of animal otherness and contemporary attempts at dispensing with these raise questions and dilemmas when it comes to representing non-human animals.
Books by Sune Borkfelt
Edited Collections by Sune Borkfelt
Edited journal issue by Sune Borkfelt
A special issue of the interdisciplinary, open source journal Otherness: Essays and Studies, devoted to animal alterity.
With articles of relevant across anumber of disciplines, including literary studies, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and biology.
Reviews by Sune Borkfelt
https://books.google.dk/books?id=KXuV_Rfp2XUC&pg=PA195&lpg#v=onepage&q&f=false
Moreover, I argue that there is a need for discussing new ways of representing non-human animals in order to avoid traditional othering and stereotypes. Some authors, such as J.M. Coetzee and Barbara Gowdy, have tried to grapple issues of animal alterity in their fiction and have benefitted from their postcolonial context in doing so. Yet both the traditional stereotypes of animal otherness and contemporary attempts at dispensing with these raise questions and dilemmas when it comes to representing non-human animals.
A special issue of the interdisciplinary, open source journal Otherness: Essays and Studies, devoted to animal alterity.
With articles of relevant across anumber of disciplines, including literary studies, philosophy, sociology, anthropology and biology.
In literary analysis as well, the visual holds a privileged position as the experience most often intellectualized and/or aestheticized. However, increased focus on the phenomena of sound and smell often open up new perspectives on the experiences of literary characters and on the nature of experience as such. This is especially compelling in the case of texts in which humans encounter nonhumans (and vice versa), perhaps also because other animals often have different sensory capacities and therefore may privilege other senses than the visual in their modes of experience.
Through a particular focus on encounters with animal markets and slaughterhouses in texts from the nineteenth century onwards, this paper attempts to theorize the literary experience of the sounds and smells of nonhuman animals. In doing so, I argue that a heightened focus on other senses than the visual allows for reading experiences that are often more emotive and intuitive, rather than rationalized, which creates potential for more empathetic encounters with literary animals as subjects rather than objects.
This paper explores ways in which narratives centred on animals undermine human and colonialist notions of time through techniques that merge the decolonial with the non-anthropocentric. In her decolonial writing Deborah Bird Rose has asserted that ‘[a]s long as those who need to change cling to the dead past, those who are hurt must remember’; while animals cannot be expected to remember history, multispecies narratives can nonetheless undermine and decentre anthropocentric and colonialist notions by challenging established temporal ideas on which such notions rely. Thus, by laying this reliance bare, these narratives ultimately demonstrate that it is perhaps, ultimately, humans who are ‘stuck in time’, and can help us rethink our ideas of time and what it means to be human.
This paper explores ways in which narratives centred on animals undermine human and colonialist notions of time through techniques that merge the decolonial with the non-anthropocentric. In her decolonial writing Deborah Bird Rose has asserted that ‘[a]s long as those who need to change cling to the dead past, those who are hurt must remember’; while animals cannot be expected to remember history, multispecies narratives can nonetheless undermine and decentre anthropocentric and colonialist notions by challenging established temporal ideas on which such notions rely. Thus, by laying this reliance bare, these narratives ultimately demonstrate that it is perhaps, ultimately, humans who are ‘stuck in time’.
Taking its starting point in previous uses of the phrase ‘sympathetic imagination’, and discussing its connections to the concepts of sympathy and empathy, this paper provides a critique of some of its uses and attempts to provide an answer to what the sympathetic imagination – and its limits – might be, and how the concept is useful in our thinking about nonhuman animals, and about literature.
Yet we may encounter such closed spaces of violence to nonhuman animals in fiction, which uneasily negotiates the relationship between the idealized visions found in our cultures and the realities behind the production of animal products. Drawing on a number of contemporary works of literary fiction, this paper explores the uneasy ways in which authors approach the subject of animals slaughtered for food, and of slaughterhouses specifically, as beings and spaces conceptualized as somewhere in between the green countryside and the realities of urban, industrialized modernity.
In this paper, I argue that approaches to literary empathy are lacking, insofar as they overlook, ignore, or misconstrue the nonhuman, and that this causes problems not only for theories on relations to animals (in and outside of fiction), but also for theories on empathy and literature more broadly. Including the nonhuman in considerations on literary empathy is important not just because such considerations reflect and mirror real-life instances of empathy, but also because theories made on a purely humanist or anthropocentric basis run the risk of flaws in their arguments and of overlooking their own more far-reaching potential. Finally, I suggest new ways of approaching the nonhuman animal in the context of literary empathy, using examples based on depictions of slaughter and abattoirs in literary fiction.
As an in reality often hidden space brought to light by literary depictions, the slaughterhouse as a setting is replete with unsettling dualities (e.g. seen/unseen, inside/outside, accessible/inaccessible) as well as potential renegotiations and blurrings of categories (e.g. human/animal, life/death, man/nature). These carry a destabilising potential and expose fears tied to our supposed control of, and separation from, nature, and therefore allows for readings of the slaughterhouse as a gothic space, unseen to most, but both evocative and inescapably tied to events that are both violent and uncanny.
With the above in mind, this paper examines selected depictions of slaughterhouses in different genres of contemporary literature, tying the slaughterhouse to our fears of nature as well as, ultimately, of ourselves.
In this paper, I argue that approaches to literary empathy are lacking, insofar as they overlook, ignore or misconstrue the nonhuman, and that this causes problems not only for theories on relations to animals in fiction, but also for theories on empathy and literature more broadly. Including the nonhuman in considerations on literary empathy is important not just because such considerations reflect and mirror real-life instances of empathy, but also because theories made on a purely humanist or anthropocentric basis run the risk of exposing themselves to flaws in their arguments and of overlooking more far-reaching potential of the theories. Finally, I explore and suggest new ways of approaching the nonhuman animal in the context of literary empathy, using examples based on depictions of slaughter and abattoirs in literary fiction.
Through readings of such depictions, this paper explores how discomfort at the proximity of slaughter and violence to animals helped to further arguments for the relocation of slaughterhouses and animal markets to the outskirts of cities, as Victorians were renegotiating their relationships to those they consumed and to the phenomenon of animal slaughter as such. Thus, these renegotiations can usefully be analysed in terms of the negative connotations given to sense impressions such as the sights, sounds and smells connected to animals and their slaughter in fiction and satire at the time. While some Victorians in these debates did protest animal cruelty outright, arguments for removal or relocation of slaughterhouses can thus be seen as a move towards cleansing civilized urban space of nonhuman animal presence and creating the psychologically comfortable distance to the processes of meat production and slaughter that has since become only more profound.
In literary analysis, especially, the visual holds a privileged position as the experience most often intellectualized and/or aestheticized. However, increased analytical focus on the phenomena of sound and smell often open up new perspectives on the experiences of literary characters and on the nature of experience as such. This is especially compelling in the case of texts in which humans encounter nonhumans (and vice versa), perhaps also because other animals often have different sensory capacities and therefore may privilege other senses than the visual in their modes of experience.
Through a particular focus on encounters with animal markets and slaughterhouses in texts from the nineteenth century onwards, this paper attempts to theorize the literary experience of the sounds and smells of nonhuman animals. In doing so, I argue that a heightened focus on other senses than the visual allows for reading experiences that are often more emotive and intuitive, rather than rationalized, which creates a potential for more empathetic encounters with literary animals as subjects rather than objects.
Debates on the abattoirs and cattle market at Smithfield, for instance, repeatedly discussed the problems caused by animal presence in the city, and the possibilities of removing animal trade and slaughter either from the city entirely, or from the sight of city dwellers. In these debates, the discourse on animal cruelty blended into discourses on issues such as hygiene, safety, moral depravity and aesthetics, and the debates therefore informs us about attitudes to animals among different classes and professions in Victorian society – from butchers and drovers to politicians, journalists and animal advocates – as well as about the role of the animal in the Victorian metropolis.
Through readings of fiction, journalism, laws and political debates, this paper explores how various issues came together to form the discourse on slaughter and animals in the city. This was a discourse, which played a significant part in the gradual marginalization of animals from human lives and the development of ways of concealing slaughter, which have received increased attention in recent years.
As we rarely encounter animal slaughter in real life, coming across it in fiction will, in a sense, function as a novel experience, while at the same time playing on our knowledge of that which we have willfully concealed, and on our own indirect involvement in the slaughter of non-human animals.
Drawing on literary theory regarding ethics and emotions, as well as on sociological theory on slaughterhouses and concealment, this paper discusses how depictions of abattoirs in fiction will necessarily play on the concealment of slaughter in real life, thus drawing attention to the fact of animal slaughter and to the non-human animal itself. In this way, the literary abattoir comes to function as a particular space within which attention is drawn to ethical questions surrounding animal slaughter, even when non-human animals are not the main focus of the narrative.
Through readings of fiction by authors as diverse as Upton Sinclair, Ruth L. Ozeki, Neil Astley and Tristan Egolf, this paper discusses how very different literary uses of slaughterhouses and slaughter lead to an emphasis on ethical questions surrounding slaughter and offer interesting possibilities for provoking empathic responses to non-human suffering and death.
As we rarely encounter animal slaughter in real life, coming across it in fiction will, in a sense, function as a novel experience, while at the same time playing on our knowledge of that which we have willfully concealed, and on our knowledge of our own role in affecting the slaughter of non-human animals.
Drawing on literary theory regarding ethics and emotions, as well as on sociological theory regarding slaughterhouses and concealment, this paper discusses how depictions of abattoirs in fiction will necessarily play on the concealment of slaughter in real life, thus drawing attention to the fact of animal slaughter and to the non-human animal itself. In this way, the literary abattoir comes to function as a particular space within which attention is drawn to ethical questions surrounding animal slaughter, even when non-human animals are not the main focus of the narrative.
Through readings of fiction by authors as diverse as Upton Sinclair, Ruth L. Ozeki, Neil Astley and Tristan Egolf, this paper discusses very different literary uses of slaughterhouses and slaughter, demonstrating that they ultimately lead to an emphasis on ethical questions surrounding slaughter and offer interesting possibilities for provoking empathic responses to non-human suffering and death.
Using examples from, among other things, the Bible, Martin Luther, colonialism/imperialism, mythology and the practice of keepers of non-human animals, this paper traces the importance of (both specific and generic) naming to our relationships with the non-human. It explores this topic from the naming of the animals in Genesis to the names given and used by scientists, owners of companion animals, media etc. in our societies today, and asks the question of what the consequences of naming non-human animals are for us, for the beings named and for the power relations between our species and the non-human species and individuals we name.
Moreover, I argue that there is a need for discussing new ways of representing non-human animals in order to avoid traditional othering and stereotypes. Some authors, such as J.M. Coetzee and Barbara Gowdy, have tried to grapple with issues of animal alterity in their fiction and have benefitted from their postcolonial context in doing so. Yet both the traditional stereotypes of animal otherness and contemporary attempts at dispensing with these raise other questions and dilemmas when it comes to representing non-human animals.