Call for Proposals
Critical Legal Conference, University of Dundee, 2–4September 2021
ECOCIDE/SPECIESISM: LEGISLATING HIERARCHY, INTERDEPENDENCE, DEATH (online stream)
The once oak trunk now your coffee table; the once bouncy
calf now your steak; the once mink mother now your fur coat; the anchovy tribe
now your omega-3 supplement. Our lives consist of corpses. Speciesism, as a
form of discrimination, manifests as violence against “inferior” non-humans.
Our speciesist beliefs and institutions are currently driving ecocides around
the world. Just like racism, sexism, or colonialism, speciesism renders certain
lives inferior, thus suited for discrimination and subjugation. Jurisprudence
is crucial to the environmental crisis: law is shaped by what we consider
normal and it determines what we normalize. The norm now remains the massive
killing, torture, exploitation of non-humans for the benefit of humans. The
myth of independence and autonomy pervasive in Western liberal democracies has
supplanted the awareness of inevitable (inter)dependence. Our ideal unity as
co-guardians of our common home collides with the hierarchization of needs,
rights and bodies, driven by speciesist logics. The life of some rests on the death
of many; and law condones it.
QUESTIONS
What are the conscious, unconscious, subconscious factors
skewing the way we ascribe worth to different forms of life? How are speciesist
beliefs driving the rights–duties dialectic embedded in our laws and institutions?
How can we conceptualize the aggregate and intergenerational damage, to humans
and to nature, of the violence normalized against some forms of life to the
benefit of others? Why has the neoliberal ethos rendered interdependence (in
both life/prosperity and death/downfall) marginal to individual beliefs and to
state responsibilities? What would critical earth jurisprudence look like?
FORMAT
Research papers (environmental law, animal law, criminal
law, critical legal theory, green criminology, environmental ethics,
ecopsychology, conservation psychology, animal thanatology, extinction studies)
& creative submissions (electronic/acoustic composition, sound & video
art, documentary, photography, collage, painting, drawing, poetry, flash
fiction — if informed by research in the above disciplines). Creative pieces
can be circulated in advance or presented during the panel (if the format
permits); artists can discuss the creative process and how it relates to the
stream thematic. This online stream consists of two/three panels of 90 min each
(3 x 20 min presentations + 30 min discussion).
SUBMISSIONS
Please submit a 200-word proposal and 3 keywords to rimona.afana@yahoo.com. Deadline: 30
June 2021.
STREAM CONVENER
Rimona Afana, Visiting Scholar, Vulnerability Initiative,
Emory University School of Law
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