Eva Kotátková: Animal Touch

Our imagination of the more-than-human world is very often deformed by an anthropocentric perspective that sees nature as a freely accessible subject of value extraction. The bars of a cage and the glass of an aquarium allow us a safe and comfortable view of the lives of animals, constrained by limited space and the rules of surveillance.

Animal Touch explores some of the most important critiques of human-animal relations – centring questions of labour – with an emphasis on an equitable distribution of resources, symbiotic relations and the sentience of the more-than-human world. With thirteen newly commissioned contributions, this interdisciplinary publication shows the ways that activist, literary, scientific, feminist, sociological and artistic strands of work meet, sharing common concerns and challenges. New possibilities of relating to the more-than-human world are explored through environmental issues and animal rights – but also through consumption, the body, language and desire. Through these encounters, this book aims to advance our thinking and imagination about the ways we can establish more ecological and equitable relations with nature in its broadest sense.

Animal Touch is dedicated to all animals, those close to us and those not so close, to the privileged, the abused and the overlooked, real and imaginary.