Conference 2025

To eat or not eat nonhuman animals is not just an ethical question but also a political one.

Because more-than-human animals are subjects and political actors, and relations between humans and nonhuman animals are governed by unequal power structures. Because eating animal products contributes to the rise of zoonoses and pandemics as well as the climate crisis – one of the biggest political problems worldwide. And because the exploitation and exclusion of more-than-human animals is intertwined with the exploitation and exclusion of marginalized groups of humans, symbolically and materially.

In this two-day conference we investigate the patterns of oppression that currently legitimate eating nonhuman animal products, discuss the politics of not eating animals in relation to multispecies justice, climate justice and human rights, and collectively search for more just ways forward.

Confirmed keynote speakers include: Stacy Banwell (University of Greenwich), Claire Jean Kim (UC Irvine), Anat Pick (Queen Mary University of London), Sunaura Taylor (UC Berkeley).

We invite philosophers, other scholars, artists, writers, and activists to discuss the politics of not eating animals collectively. We invite abstracts on the following and related themes:

• Critical veganisms, such as Black veganism, queer veganism, Indigenous veganisms, vegan ecofeminism
  
• Interlinked oppressions, hierarchical anthropocentrism, animalizing groups of humans as well as nonhuman animals
  
• Farmed animals and disability: breeding sick animals, zoonoses, destruction of animal cultures, life-worlds and habitats in animal farming, caring for formerly farmed animals, the politics of multispecies care
  
• Multispecies education, unlearning speciesism, critical animal pedagogies
  
• Global structures of injustice following from industrialized animal agriculture
  
• Animals and labor: animal workers, Marxist approaches to animal exploitation, interconnected oppression of human and nonhuman animal workers, the future of multispecies work
  
• The future of food and just agriculture
  
• The role of patriarchy, capitalism, carnism and other ideologies in legitimating eating animals
  
• The language of animal oppression: euphemisms, objectification and linguistic othering
  
• Apologizing to animals, reparations for exploitation and domestication, developing rituals of remembrance
  
• Taking nonhuman animals seriously in climate advocacy
  
• Multispecies justice: connecting animal rights, plant rights, and children’s rights

To submit a paper, please send an abstract of no more than 250 words and a short biography to dierfilosofie@gmail.com before February 1st 2025. We also invite proposals for performances and exhibitions. To propose a creative engagement with the theme please send a description of the proposed event, a proposed budget, and a list of requirements (e.g. venue and technology needs) before February 1st 2025