Radical Kinship in the Capitalocene: Interspecies Ontologies and Biopolitical Resistance
Publisher: TRACE ∴ Journal for Human-Animal Studies
At a time of escalating climate disasters, pandemics, global conflicts, and genocides, it is more urgent than ever to critically examine the (more-than-human) body as a politically charged and contested terrain. In this context, precarious lives across species are increasingly targeted for military, territorial, or economic exploitation while simultaneously rendered surplus, disposable, or commodified (Pugliese 2020; Youatt 2020). These dynamics lay bare the structural violence and inequalities embedded within power systems, ecological degradation, as well as interhuman and interspecies injustices. The capitalist logic of accumulation plays a key role in these processes, especially by imposing an extractivist and expansionist model that reinforces global systemic injustices forcing us to confront the “real subsumption” of life.
The special issue invites contributors to build on critical examinations of the precarity of life under capitalism (Butler 2020; Stanescu 2012) to radically and creatively reimagine intra-human and interspecies relationships. Our collective focus will center kinship, reciprocity, and solidarity as forms of resistance to biopolitical violence. Drawing from Donna Haraway’s notion of “sympoiesis” (2016), we aim to subvert the exploitative nature of capitalist and neocolonial logics by celebrating audacious interspecies intimacy and mutual care that transcend the limitations of Western ontological models governing human-animal relations. Central to this issue is also the concept of “affirmative biopolitical solidarity” (Vint 2021, 2023), which offers a path to resistance outside the confines of “disembodied liberal politics,” while undermining “the depoliticizing stories of the Anthropocene” (Swyngedouw & Ernstson 2018).
We thus welcome contributions that engage with the political and existential value of multispecies personhood, emergent subjectivities, and generative forms of solidarity within globalized, industrial, and technological systems. Contributions that draw on decolonial perspectives, kinship ethics, interspecies interdependencies, queer ontologies, and abolitionist frameworks to dismantle ideologies of anthroparchy (human dominance) and extractivism are especially encouraged. By embracing these approaches, we aim to catalyze radical and resistant imaginaries that push beyond catastrophic narratives of necropolitics and extinction, fostering multispecies solidarity in the face of global crises.
Key questions for exploration include:
- How can we reimagine interspecies relationships to prioritize reciprocity over exploitation?
- In what ways can we recalibrate value systems, shifting from capitalist-driven productivity models to kin-centric, non-productive models of relationality?
- What alternative forms of solidarity and mutual care can emerge from non-extractive interspecies relationships? How can real-world and speculative case studies illuminate these possibilities?
- How can critiques of capitalist subsumption and biopolitical relationality open spaces for political resistance and multispecies justice?
We invite scholars, artists, and practitioners from diverse disciplines, including those engaging with critical practices in literature, visual arts, and cinema, to submit work that adopts transdisciplinary and intersectional methodologies. Our goal is to balance critiques of anthropocentrism, colonialism, racism, and capitalism, while exploring speculative visions of alternative ontologies and relationalities grounded in multispecies solidarity and justice. We seek contributions that blend theory and practice, fostering a dialogue that extends beyond traditional academia into creative, speculative, and activist realms.
Submissions are encouraged to engage with, but are not limited to, the following topics:
- Multispecies Worldbuilding
- Transgressive Kinships
- Non-Extractive Interspecies Relationalities
- Critical Accounts of Capitalist Subsumption and Biopolitics
- Revisiting Species Boundaries
- Narratives of Surplus and Commodification
- Decolonial, Abolitionist, Indigenous, and Vegan Frameworks
Submission Formats:
We invite submissions in a variety of formats, including:
- Scholarly essays (5000-7000 words)
- Creative non-fiction and experimental formats (e.g., memoir-theory, hybrid genres)
- Artistic and activist contributions (e.g., visual art, poetry, speculative writing, documentary reflections).
These submissions should be accompanied by a short critical statement (500-1000 words) situating the work in relation to the themes of the special issue.
We also welcome submissions in various media, including audio and video, in line with the journal’s broad engagement with diverse forms of scholarly and creative expression.
Submission Guidelines:
Proposals of 500 words (or optionally completed papers) and short bio are due by May 1, 2025. Please include a tentative title, a working bibliography, and a brief explanation of your contribution to the field. Submissions must be sent to: interspeciesontologies@gmail.com. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by May 15.
For accepted essays, full drafts (5000-7000 words) will be due by September 1, 2025. Final acceptance will be determined based on recommendations following a blind double peer-review. The editors are available to discuss ideas prior to the submission deadline. The issue will be published open access in Fall 2026.
Selected Bibliography
Agamben, Giorgio. 2015. The Use of Bodies. Translated by Adam Kotsko. Homo Sacer, IV, 2. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Armano, Emiliana, Cristina Morini, and Annalisa Murgia. 2022. “Conceptualizing Precariousness: A Subject-Oriented Approach.” In Faces of Precarity: Critical Perspectives on Work, Subjectivities and Struggles, edited by Emiliana Armano, Cristina Morini, and Annalisa Murgia, 1–22. Bristol, UK: Bristol University Press.
Barad, Karen. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press.
Butler, Judith. 2020. Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence. New York: Verso.
Calarco, Matthew. 2015. Thinking through Animals: Identity, Difference, Indistinction. Stanford, CA: Stanford Briefs, an imprint of Stanford University Press.
Cimatti, Felice, and Carlo Salzani, eds. 2024. The Biopolitical Animal. Animalities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Derrida, Jacques. 2010. Beast and the Sovereign, Volume I. Translated by Geoffrey Bennington. The Seminars of Jacques Derrida, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Esposito, Roberto. 2011. Immunitas: The Protection and Negation of Life. Oxford: Polity Press.
———. 2012. Third Person: Politics of Life and Philosophy of the Impersonal. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
Haraway, Donna Jeanne. 2008. When Species Meet. Posthumanities 3. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
———. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham: Duke University Press.
Mbembe, Achille. 2019. Necropolitics. Translated by Steven Corcoran. Theory in Forms. Durham and London: Duke University Press.
Pugliese, Joseph. 2020. Biopolitics of the More-Than-Human: Forensic Ecologies of Violence. London: Routledge.
Shukin, Nicole. 2009. Animal Capital: Rendering Life in Biopolitical Times. Posthumanities 6. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Stanescu, James. 2012. “Species Trouble: Judith Butler, Mourning, and the Precarious Lives of Animals.” Hypatia 27 (3): 567–582.
Swyngedouw, Erik, and Henrik Ernstson. 2018. “Interrupting the Anthropo-Obscene: Immuno-Biopolitics and Depoliticizing Ontologies in the Anthropocene.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 36 (3): 455–473.
Vint, Sherryl. 2021. Biopolitical Futures in Twenty-First-Century Speculative Fiction. Cambridge Studies in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
———. 2024. “Animality and Inoperativity: Interspecies Form-of-Life.” In The Biopolitical Animal, edited by Felice Cimatti and Carlo Salzani, 213–233. Edinburgh University Press.
Wadiwel, Dinesh Joseph. 2023. Animals and Capital. Animalities. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Wolfe, Cary. 2013. Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.
Youatt, Rafi. 2020. Interspecies Politics: Nature, Borders, States. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
interspeciesontologies@gmail.com
Elizabeth Tavella & Cagatay Emre Dogan
