Skip to content
1981
Illuminating the Non-Representable
  • ISSN: 2052-0204
  • E-ISSN: 2052-0212

Abstract

Pain can be isolating: the pain of others is hard to imagine. This difficulty can become more significant still when attempting to bear witness to the pain of groups deemed different, lesser or other, such as non-human animals. Exploring frameworks for pain which emphasize its relational and connective qualities, especially across species borders, as well as considering activism and illustration alongside each other as practices in which bodies are used to advocate for others, how might the application of queer and ecofeminist lenses to these disciplines reveal their affinities? This article experiments with the terms TRANSLATION, AMPLIFICATION and REFRACTION to describe modes of illustrative activism which implicate the body. Through such modes of creative and corporeal empathy, what can be imagined, reached for, or described of a non-human being’s suffering?

Loading

Article metrics loading...

/content/journals/10.1386/jill_00100_1
2025-01-31
2026-04-14

Metrics

Loading full text...

Full text loading...

References

  1. Adams, Carol (2007), ‘Caring about suffering: A feminist exploration’, in J. Donovan and C. Adams (eds), The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics, New York: Colombia University Press, pp. 198226.
    [Google Scholar]
  2. Ahmed, Sara (2006), Queer Phenomenology: Orientations, Objects, Others, London: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  3. Ahmed, Sara (2014), The Cultural Politics of Emotion, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  4. Atterbury, D. (2013), ‘Pinning down: A conversation with Catrin Morgan’, The Paris Review, 5 June, https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2013/06/05/pinning-down-a-conversation-with-catrin-morgan/. Accessed 19 June 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  5. Bourke, Joanna (2014), The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  6. Crawley, Ashon T. (2020), The Lonely Letters, Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  7. Davis, K. (2017), ‘Interspecies sexual assault: A moral perspective’, Animal Liberation Currents, 13 June, https://animalliberationcurrents.com/interspecies-sexual-assault/. Accessed 3 September 2023.
  8. Donaldson, Sue and Kymlicka, Will (2011), Zoopolis: A Political Theory of Animal Rights, London: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  9. Finger, Stanley (1994), Origins of Neuroscience: A History of Explorations into Brain Function, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  10. Green, Graeme (2020), ‘Jo-Anne McArthur: These stories haunt me’, https://www.newbig5.com/jo-anne-mcarthur-interview/. Accessed 2 March 2024.
  11. Hardy, Rich (2020a), Not as Nature Intended: An Undercover Journey into the Secret World of Animal Exploitation, London: Unbound.
    [Google Scholar]
  12. Hardy, Rich (2020b), ‘You were sacrificed for religion’, Instagram, 6 July, https://www.instagram.com/p/CCTnW_TJ4kc/. Accessed 2 January 2023.
  13. Hirtenfelder, C. (2021), ‘S239: Survivors with pattrice jones’, The Animal Turn, Australia, 29 December, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1uDj1BYfS22eN4dbEahvZy?si=21fa0eb080664906. Accessed 10 January 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  14. Hirtenfelder, C. (2024), ‘S6E7: Animal Photojournalism with Jo-Anne McArthur’, The Animal Turn, Australia, 15 January, https://open.spotify.com/episode/3k7lJ3hsVw4cWIjWRe3Tjf. Accessed 24 January 2024.
    [Google Scholar]
  15. Hribal, Jason (2011), Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance, Chicago, IL: AK Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  16. Kulick, Don (2017), ‘Human–animal communication’, Annual Review of Anthropology, 46:1, pp. 35778, https://www.engagingvulnerability.se/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/Kulick_2017_Human-Animal_Comm.pdf. Accessed 12 October 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  17. Lemos, Sophia (2020), ‘Astrida Neimanis: We Are All at Sea’, Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art, https://open.spotify.com/episode/1o5ybadIjU3Im4aJPZrwtn?si=aeeebf61a0f34b9e. Accessed 15 August 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  18. Lewis, Sophie (2017), ‘Amniotechnics’, The New Inquiry, 25 January, https://thenewinquiry.com/amniotechnics/. Accessed 12 March 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  19. Morgan, Catrin (2023), ‘Bodies in space: Illustration at the university’, Journal of Illustration, 9:1–2, pp. 1529.
    [Google Scholar]
  20. Neimanis, Astrida (2017), Bodies of Water: Posthuman Feminist Phenomenology, London: Bloomsbury.
    [Google Scholar]
  21. Ogino, Y., Nemoto, H., Inui, K., Saito, S., Kakigi, R. and Goto, F. (2007), ‘Inner experience of pain: Imagination of pain while viewing images showing painful events forms subjective pain representation in human brain’, Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y.: 1991), 17:5, pp. 113946.
    [Google Scholar]
  22. Rütgen, Markus, Seidel, Eva-Maria, Silani, Giorgia, Riečanský, Igor, Hummer, Allan, Windischberger, Christian, Petrovic, Predrag and Lamm, Claus (2015), ‘Placebo analgesia and its opioidergic regulation suggest that empathy for pain is grounded in self pain’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 112:41, pp. 563846.
    [Google Scholar]
  23. Scarry, Elaine (1985), The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World, New York: Oxford University Press.
    [Google Scholar]
  24. Serafinski (2016), ‘Blessed is the flame: An introduction to concentration camp resistance and anarcho-nihilism’, Pistols Drawn, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/serafinski-blessed-is-the-flame#toc12. Accessed 17 March 2023.
  25. Smuts, Barbara (1999), ‘Reflections’, in J. M. Coetzee (ed.), The Lives of Animals, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 10720.
    [Google Scholar]
  26. Sontag, Susan ([2003] 2019), Regarding the Pain of Others, 4th ed., London: Penguin Random House.
    [Google Scholar]
  27. Taylor, Sunaura (2012), ‘Drawing attention: Sue Coe’, BOMB, https://bombmagazine.org/articles/drawing-attention-sue-coe/. Accessed 24 March 2023.
    [Google Scholar]
  28. Taylor, Sunaura (2017), Beasts of Burden: Animal and Disability Liberation, New York: The New Press.
    [Google Scholar]
/content/journals/10.1386/jill_00100_1
Loading
/content/journals/10.1386/jill_00100_1
Loading

Data & Media loading...

This is a required field
Please enter a valid email address
Approval was a success
Invalid data
An error occurred
Approval was partially successful, following selected items could not be processed due to error
Please enter a valid_number test