Sensing Multispecies Encounters
Art, Affect, and Ontology in Other-Than-Human Worlds
Routledge (Publisher)
1st Edition
Will be published approx. on 27. August 2026
Book
Paperback/Softback
200 pages
978-1-032-83350-7 (ISBN)
Description
This book explores the 'animal turn' that has reshaped humanities and social science scholarship over recent decades.
Chapters describe the nuanced engagements between humans, animals, plants and landscapes, challenging conventional anthropocentric perspectives and paving the way for a deeper understanding of multispecies relations. This volume navigates the contested territory of aesthetics, examines the intersections of art and anthropology, and sheds light on cross-cultural and cross-species interpretations. Through insightful essays and analyses, readers are invited to explore the theoretical and methodological challenges within multispecies worlds, while highlighting the influence of Indigenous knowledge on our perceptions and theories of non-human entities. It includes contributions from artists, archaeologists, historians and environmental humanities scholars.
This volume will be an essential resource for those seeking to expand their understanding of art, performance, and the intricate relationships between humans and non-humans. Whether exploring the complexities of nature/culture dichotomies or reimagining the boundaries of aesthetics, it offers a compelling journey into the vibrant tapestry of multispecies aesthetics.
Chapters describe the nuanced engagements between humans, animals, plants and landscapes, challenging conventional anthropocentric perspectives and paving the way for a deeper understanding of multispecies relations. This volume navigates the contested territory of aesthetics, examines the intersections of art and anthropology, and sheds light on cross-cultural and cross-species interpretations. Through insightful essays and analyses, readers are invited to explore the theoretical and methodological challenges within multispecies worlds, while highlighting the influence of Indigenous knowledge on our perceptions and theories of non-human entities. It includes contributions from artists, archaeologists, historians and environmental humanities scholars.
This volume will be an essential resource for those seeking to expand their understanding of art, performance, and the intricate relationships between humans and non-humans. Whether exploring the complexities of nature/culture dichotomies or reimagining the boundaries of aesthetics, it offers a compelling journey into the vibrant tapestry of multispecies aesthetics.
Reviews / Votes
"Sensing Multispecies Encounters is wonderful in its scope in terms of thinking across species, cultures, landscapes and temporalities. This volume also pushes disciplinary boundaries to include archaeology, anthropology and art, while allowing for different sensorial and multispecies conceptual and methodological approaches".Natsha Fijn, Associate Professor, The Australian National University
"This volume re-evaluates long-standing debates on aesthetics from a post-humanist and multispecies standpoint, to offer a powerful and necessary intervention for scholars seeking to move beyond anthropocentric models. The collection senses out the groundwork for acknowledging the agency of non-human beings and shifting paradigms for knowledge production, a worlding characterized by generative relationships, alive with camelids, silver-fish and kangaroos. The book's strength lies in its diverse, intra-active, situated explorations, bridging disciplines including archaeology, anthropology, art, history, and environmental humanities."
Louisa Minkin, Reader Senior Lecturer in Visual Art Practices - University of the Arts London, UK
"In the growing movement to extend ways of knowing other-than-humans within various modes of relationality, this theoretically grounded collection brings art, materiality, and performance into clear focus. Its interdisciplinary case studies provide fresh means of conceptualizing how aesthetics can be seen within unfolding relationships across species and among humans, landscapes, and materials. Extending models of (human) cross-cultural aesthetics to include multispecies interactions offers a welcomed and decisive way forward for scholars, educators, and students to explore sensing multispecies encounters."
Gala Argent, Psychology/Animal Studies Faculty Emerita - Eastern Kentucky University, USA
"This interdisciplinary collection dismantles nature/culture dichotomies, offering powerful arguments that beauty and aesthetics are not just the purview of human cultural production but generative and relational inter-species contact zones. Complex webs of human-animal relations, art, archeology and storytelling are braided into culturally diverse and transtemporal case studies. From ancient rock art to contemporary artistic practices, these essays are your thinking companions in moving away from the anthropocentric and towards the ecocentric."
Tessa Laird, Lecturer in Critical and Theoretical Studies at the School of Art - Victorian College of the Arts, Australia
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Taylor & Francis Ltd
Target group
College/higher education
Postgraduate and Undergraduate Advanced
Illustrations
22 s/w Photographien bzw. Rasterbilder, 1 s/w Tabelle, 22 s/w Abbildungen
1 Tables, black and white; 22 Halftones, black and white; 22 Illustrations, black and white
Dimensions
Height: 246 mm
Width: 174 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-032-83350-7 (9781032833507)
Copyright in bibliographic data is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or its licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Ana Paula Motta | Andrew Meirion Jones
Sensing Multispecies Encounters
Art, Affect, and Ontology in Other-Than-Human Worlds
Book
approx. 08/2026
1st Edition
Routledge
€148.50
Not yet published
Ana Paula Motta | Andrew Meirion Jones
Sensing Multispecies Encounters
Art, Affect, and Ontology in Other-Than-Human Worlds
E-Book
approx. 08/2026
Routledge
€56.49
Not yet available
Ana Paula Motta | Andrew Meirion Jones
Sensing Multispecies Encounters
Art, Affect, and Ontology in Other-Than-Human Worlds
E-Book
approx. 08/2026
Routledge
€56.49
Not yet available
Persons
Ana Paula Motta is Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institut fuer Ur- und Fruehgeschichte, Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet zu Kiel supported by a Gerda Henkel Stiftung. Her work bridges multispecies archaeology, Indigenous studies, and decolonial theory, grounded on a dual background in anthropology and archaeology.
Andrew Meirion Jones is Professor of Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden. He has taught and written extensively on the archaeology of art, particularly focusing on rock art and portable art and art-archaeology collaborations in decolonial museum contexts.
Andrew Meirion Jones is Professor of Archaeology at the Department of Archaeology and Classical Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden. He has taught and written extensively on the archaeology of art, particularly focusing on rock art and portable art and art-archaeology collaborations in decolonial museum contexts.
Content
Abstract
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: On the challenges of Sensing Multispecies Encounters
Ana Paula Motta and Andrew Meirion Jones
Part I - Multispecies Landscapes and Materials
1 Multispecies Engagements and Cosmo-Politics: A Perspective from North-Central Chile (Southern Andes)
Andres Troncoso
2 Transtemporal Storytelling and Speculative Folklore of Extraction
Christina Fredengren
3 Kinmaking and Settle Response-ability: Cultivating Moral Obligations Through Interspecies Earth/Work
Ruth Burke
4 Visual Enchantment and Captivating Styles
Bruno Vindrola-Padros
Part II - Multispecies Encounters
5 Multispecies Dwellings and Deep Time Encounters: Kangaroos in Australian Identities
Ana Paula Motta
6 Thinking with Un-Charismatic Mini-Fauna
Caroline Owman
7 Genghis Khan's Golden Whip: Material-Affect through Ritualistic Self-Flagellation as Performative Justice for Racehorses
Madeleine Boyd
8 Killing for survival? Art, Landscapes and Emasculated Human-Elephant Relationships in Rhodesia (Present Day Zimbabwe), Southern Africa, c. up to the 1970s
Eddington Maseya
Afterword: Flying Fox Aesthetics
Natsha Fijn
List of Figures
List of Tables
List of Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: On the challenges of Sensing Multispecies Encounters
Ana Paula Motta and Andrew Meirion Jones
Part I - Multispecies Landscapes and Materials
1 Multispecies Engagements and Cosmo-Politics: A Perspective from North-Central Chile (Southern Andes)
Andres Troncoso
2 Transtemporal Storytelling and Speculative Folklore of Extraction
Christina Fredengren
3 Kinmaking and Settle Response-ability: Cultivating Moral Obligations Through Interspecies Earth/Work
Ruth Burke
4 Visual Enchantment and Captivating Styles
Bruno Vindrola-Padros
Part II - Multispecies Encounters
5 Multispecies Dwellings and Deep Time Encounters: Kangaroos in Australian Identities
Ana Paula Motta
6 Thinking with Un-Charismatic Mini-Fauna
Caroline Owman
7 Genghis Khan's Golden Whip: Material-Affect through Ritualistic Self-Flagellation as Performative Justice for Racehorses
Madeleine Boyd
8 Killing for survival? Art, Landscapes and Emasculated Human-Elephant Relationships in Rhodesia (Present Day Zimbabwe), Southern Africa, c. up to the 1970s
Eddington Maseya
Afterword: Flying Fox Aesthetics
Natsha Fijn