Call for Presentations: Zoosemiotics and Animal Representations

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animal communication studies, animal experience, animal relationships, animal representations, animal signals, animal subjects, biosemiotics, call for presentations, conference, human-animal studies, meaning, phenomenology, semiotic processes, sign studies, signs, Thomas A. Sebeok, University of Tartu, zoosemiotics

Tartu University Library, Struve 1

[Animals] never enter into relationships with neutral objects. Through every relationship the neutral object is transformed into a meaning-carrier, the meaning of which is imprinted upon it by a subject.

–Jakob von Uexküll Theory of Meaning

Zoosemiotics is an interdisciplinary research program introduced by an American semiotician Thomas A. Sebeok in the 1960s with the aim to merge semiotics and ethology and to launch semiotic studies of animal communication. The foundational idea in zoosemiotics is that relations between animals and their environment as well as between different individuals are not purely physical, but are to a large extent sign-mediated. This gives a significant role to the animal subjects, and recognizes more as well as higher forms of complexity in animals than previously assumed. A lot has happened since the concept of zoosemiotics was proposed: the rise of biosemiotics and cognitive ethology are two among the many important developments in the field of animal communication studies.

How Animals Talk: A Review

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adaptibility, animal communication, animal consciousness, animal emotions, animal stories, animal telepathy, chumfo, cognitive ethology, instinct, intuition, narrative, natural telepathy, nature writing, phenomenology, sensibility, sensory experience, sensory perception, sensualization, sentimentality, silent communication, super-sense

When I first picked up the book How Animals Talk written by William Long, I felt hesitant from his language, typical of the late 19th century.  He was truly an intellectual figure of the times: male, white, economically privileged.  And he used words like “civilized Man” and “savage” and “beast” and “negro.”  Not to mention, he was a sport hunter (though after reading, I later learned that he was of the sympathetic type, in juxtaposition to President Teddy Roosevelt, an avid trophy hunter and conservationist).  At the time, I couldn’t handle this worldview and had to put the book down for a couple of years until I was mature enough to read it through his lens and maintain open critique to this vastly different worldview from my own.

The foreword and preface, written by two revolutionary and radically different scientists/philosophers (Rupert Sheldrake and Marc Bekoff, respectively), introduce the work as a piece that provides great insight into animal psychic abilities and animal emotions.  However, neither the foreword nor the preface give any indication to the actual theses and details of the book.