The Migration of Metaphysics into the Realm of the Profane
Theodor W. Adorno Reads Gershom Scholem
Series:
IJS Studies in Judaica, Volume: 20
Author: Ansgar Martins
Translator: Lars Fischer
Ansgar Martins’s The Migration of Metaphysics into the Realm of the Profane is the first book-length study focusing on Adorno’s idiosyncratic appropriation of Jewish mysticism in the light of his relationship to Gershom Scholem and their shared intellectual contexts.

Rather than merely posit vague associative connections, as previous authors have often done, Martins’s close reading of specific references in published and private texts alike allows him to highlight both commonalities and differences between Adorno’s and Scholem’s understanding of Kabbalistic tropes and the issue of metaphysics in the modern world, and to demonstrate the extent to which similarities resulted from mutual and/or third-party influences (especially Benjamin). Martins throws the specifics of their respective idiosyncratic appropriations of (Jewish) tradition into sharp relief.

https://brill.com/view/title/54818

https://archive.org/details/TheodorW.AdornoDreamNotes

A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking: Critical Theory After Adorno as Applied to Jewish Thought (Bloomsbury Studies in Jewish Thought) Kindle Edition

A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking is a search for authenticity that combines critical thinking with a yearning for heartfelt poetics. A physiognomy of thinking addresses the figure of a life lived where theory and praxis are unified. This study explores how the critical essays on music of German-Jewish thinker, Theodor Wiesengrund Adorno (1903-1969) necessarily accompany the downfall of metaphysics. By scrutinizing a critical juncture in modern intellectual history, marked in 1931 by Adorno's founding of the Frankfurt Institute for Social Research, neglected applications of Critical Theory to Jewish Thought become possible. This study proffers a constructive justification of a critical standpoint, reconstructively shown how such ideals are seen under the genealogical proviso of re/cognizing their original meaning. Re/cognition of A New Physiognomy of Jewish Thinking redresses neglected applications of Negative Dialectics, the poetics of God, the metaphysics of musical thinking, reification in Zionism, the transpoetics of Physics and Metaphysics, as well as correlating Aesthetic Theory to Jewish Law (halakhah).

https://www.amazon.com/New-Physiognomy-Jewish-Thinking-Bloomsbury-ebook/dp/B00N2MPDUK/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1450478412&sr=8-2&keywords=Glazer+aubrey

 Theodor W. Adorno, Gershom Scholem, and the‘German-Jewish Dialogue’ 

Lars Fischer UCL (University College London)

 Abstract 

The publication of the correspondence between Theodor W. Adorno and Gershom Scholem in 2015 is a major landmark, offering fresh insights into their personalities and the remarkable intellectual relationship and growing personal friendship between them. In this short piece, some of the evidence for the intensity of the relationship between Adorno and Scholem is presented, followed by a discussion of their shared emphatic negation of the notion that any such thing as a ‘German-Jewish Dialogue’ had existed prior to 1933. Henceforth, anyone who wants to continue dismissing Scholem’s remarks about the non-existence of a ‘German-Jewish dialogue’ prior to 1933 out of hand in the cavalier fashion in which it has become common-place to do so will need to reckon not only with Scholem but also with Adorno

The Twilight of Reason: Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer and Levinas Tested by the Catastrophe

Orietta Ombrosi

Series: Emunot: Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah
ISBN: 9781936235759 (hardcover) / 9781644696675 (paper)
Pages: 234 pp.
Publication Date: October 2011

“Think of the disaster” is the first injunction of thought when faced with the disaster that struck European Jews during the Shoah. Thinking of the disaster means understanding why the Shoah was able to occur in civilized Europe, moulded by humane reason and the values of progress and enlightenment. It means thinking of a possibility for philosophy’s future.

Walter Benjamin, who wrestled with these problems ahead of time, Theodor Adorno, Max Horkheimer, and Emmanuel Levinas had the courage, the strength and the perception—and sometimes simply the desperation—to think about what had happened. Moved by indignation and the desire to testify, they felt the urgent need to address the cries of agony of Auschwitz’s victims in their thinking.

Orietta Ombrosi (PhD University of Paris X-Nanterre) is assistant professor of moral philosophy at the Sapienza, University of Rome. She is the author of Le crepuscule de la raison. Benjamin, Adorno, Horkheimer et Levinas a l’epreuve de la Catastrophe, (Hermann, 2007) and L’umano ritrovato. Saggio su Emmanuel Levinas (Marietti, 2010), and the editor of Tra Torah e Sophia. Orizzonti e frontiere della filosofia ebraica (Marietti, 2011).
Table of Contents

Preface by Catherine Chalier
Foreword
Prelude

THE NOSTALGIA OF ODYSSEUS
Regression: subjugated in order to subjugate
The circle of the Same
Why Odysseus?
Chapter I: FACING BEHEMOTH
I. The Jews, a problem in Horkheimer’s analysis of anti-Semitism
II. Anti-Semitism: a product of civilization, according to Horkheimer and Adorno
III. Hitlerism: paganism according to Levinas
Chapter II: ON THE THRESHOLD: WALTER BENJAMIN
I. From the before to the after: catastrophes
1. Catastrophe and technological progress
2. Catastrophe and the historical continuum
3. Catastrophe and redemption
II. From the after to the before: fl ashes of remembrance
1. Dialectic of remembrance
2. Dialectic of memory and forgetting
Interlude
A PHILOSOPHY OF TESTIMONY
Silences of the witnesses
Words of the saved
The here and the now of testimony
Chapter III: THOUGHTS OF EXILE: THEODOR W. ADORNO AND MAX HORKHEIMER
I. Adorno: a “sad knowledge”
1. Philosophical thought after Auschwitz: a truth of feeling
2. Ethics of physical suffering
3. Theoretical thought in the face of pain and death
4. A death worse than death
5. Education after Auschwitz, or against coldness
II. Horkheimer: between lucid despair and mute hope
1. Reason and its shadow: self-destruction
2. Reason and nomination
3. A Jewish intellectual after Auschwitz
Chapter IV: “THE PRESENTIMENT AND THE MEMORY OF THE NAZI HORROR”: EMMANUEL LEVINAS
I. Philosophizing after Auschwitz: three lessons
II. A subjectivity of fl esh and blood
1. Subjectivity as sensibility
2. Subjectivity as vulnerability
3. Subjectivity as persecution
III. A humanism of the “suffering servant”
1. Auschwitz as a paradigm of useless suffering
2. Ethical resistance afterwards

Conclusion
Indicative Bibliography


ADORNO and the NAME of GOD

by David Kaufmann

Thus God, the Absolute, eludes finite beings. Where they desire to name him, because they must, they betray him. But if they keep silent about him, they acquiesce in their own impotence and sin against the other, no less binding, commandment to name him.1

The critique of metaphysics is by now a venerable tradition in Western thought and has been tied since the end of the eighteenth century to the principle of emancipation. The drive to disenchant the world -- the ongoing tendency to wrest rational control from what previously could only be seen as blind fate -- has always been closely associated with the Enlightenment’s concerted attack on the institutional privileges and intellectual status accorded to revealed religion. The story is well known. Kant saved faith from Hume and philosophy from dogmatism by curtailing the speculative pretensions of the one and the reach of the other. At the same time, he submitted religion to the court of reason and thus left space for autonomy. The Left Hegelians (particularly Feuerbach and Marx) took the humanization of the world a step further by reducing metaphysics to anthropology and religion to need. The history of religion became the history of man’s alienated but authentic hope, a hope that needed to be reclaimed in the name of freedom. Nietzsche -- the apostate son of a Lutheran pastor -- launched his own, anti-Hegelian critique of metaphysics. He sought to psychologize the urge for atemporal, necessary, and universal Truth and thus to cure the nostalgia for a sovereign God and a sovereign Subject by revealing them both to be fictions of grammar and bad faith. And to this day, we find the emancipatory interest in overcoming metaphysics pursued literally by Left Hegelians and rhetorically by Nietzscheans -- by Marxists and Heideggerians, by Leftists and Deconstructionists.

READ ON https://www.flashpointmag.com/adorno.htm



Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin 

(15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German Jewish philosopher, literary critic, social critic, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist. Combining elements of German idealism or Romanticism, historical materialism and Jewish mysticism, Benjamin made enduring and influential contributions to aesthetic theory and Western Marxism, and is associated with the Frankfurt School. Among his major works as a literary critic are essays on Goethe's novel Elective Affinities; the work of Franz Kafka and Karl Kraus; translation theory; the stories of Nikolai Leskov; the work of Marcel Proust and perhaps most significantly, the poetry of Charles Baudelaire. He also made major translations into German of the Tableaux Parisiens section of Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du mal and parts of Proust's À la recherche du temps perdu.

His turn to Marxism in the 1930s was partly due to the influence of Bertolt Brecht, whose critical aesthetics developed epic theatre and its Verfremdungseffekt (defamiliarisation, alienation). An earlier influence was friend Gershom Scholem, founder of the academic study of the Kabbalah and of Jewish mysticism.

Influenced by the Swiss anthropologist Johann Jakob Bachofen (1815–87), Benjamin coined the term "auratic perception", denoting the aesthetic faculty by means of which civilization may recover an appreciation of myth. Benjamin's work is often cited in academic and literary studies, especially the essays "The Task of the Translator" (1923), "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction" (1936) and his unfinished magnum opus the Arcades Project.

Benjamin committed suicide in Portbou at the French–Spanish border while attempting to escape from the Nazis.



SEE https://plawiuk.blogspot.com/2007/04/kabbalistic-kommunism.html

The Persistence of the Feminine: Negative Dialectics and Feminist Thought

by Ariane McCullough

The women’s liberation movement (WLM) can only produce its positive goal of autonomy if the woman question is not reduced to any principle or system of thought. This paper advances a feminist philosophy as a critique of civilization, understood as capitalist-patriarchy. The introductory section, entitled “Capitalist-Patriarchy and its Discontents”, elaborates on the theory of capitalist-patriarchy (developed by Maria Mies) and outlines modern philosophy, from the Enlightenment to Marxism to postmodernism, as its theoretical reflection. This critique of modernity follows from the contributions of Theodor Adorno of the Frankfurt School, with his conception of 'negative dialectics' as dialectics without identity or system. “’Subjection’ and ‘Subjectivization’” responds with an alternative theory of the subject that escapes the impasse of the object-relation which characterizes patriarchy. The feminist subject is established without object-relation, but as a radically solitary embodiment of the real, borrowing from the contemporary theoretical work of Katerina Kolozova, Alain Badiou, and Francois Laruelle,  as well as from the psychoanalytic discourse of Jacques Lacan. “Feminist Theory and Practice” expands on the theory of the subject to explain the implications of the patriarchal object-relation in the concept of labor and inthe separation of revolutionary theory and practice. The section furthermore discusses feminism as the invocation of “the feminine” as a virtual reality in which the subject appears without object, but as the instance of the real. The final section "The Body in Pain, Care of the Self" considers blackness as social death in relation to the feminist critique of capitalist-patriarchy. Black women occupy an especially vulnerable space incapitalist-patriarchy which is often taken for granted in the WLM. "The Body in Pain" advances a thesis that the critique of capitalist-patriarchy must be enacted with concern to the designation of black bodies as sentient but dead. This paper proposes to struggle with the persistence of the real against identity-thinking.

 STUDIES ON MARX AND HEGEL  PDF

Jean Hyppolite

translated, with an Introduction, Notes,

and Bibliography, by

JOHN O'NEILL

Marx and Lukács: Reason and Revolution inthe Philosophy of Praxis   PDF

Andrew Feenberg 

Table of Contents 

Preface  

The Philosophy of Praxis 

The Demands of Reason 

. Reification and Rationality 

. The Realization of Philosophy 

 History and Nature 

Reconciliation with Nature

Marx at the Margins  PDF

O n  N a t i o n a l i s m ,  E t h n i c i t y , a n d  N o n - W e s t e r n S o c i e t i e s 

Kevin B. Anderson

Marx and Teleology  PDF

SEAN SAYERS

ABSTRACT: 

Marx sees history as a progressive development. This

account is often criticized for portraying history in a Hegelian

fashion as a single teleological process culminating ultimately in

a classless communist society. Is this criticism justified? What role

— if any — do teleological ideas play in Marx’s philosophy? Marx

himself is unclear on these issues. Through a critical discussion

of Althusser’s view that history is a process without a subject, it

is argued that Marxism is best seen as a theory which involves a

naturalistic concept of teleology and which describes the historical

 emergence of the human subject. This interpretation is supported

 by comparison of Marx’s theory of history with Darwinian

evolutionary theory.

LENIN AND HEGEL 

TELOS SPECIAL ISSUE 

OF RADICAL AMERICA

VOL IV  #6, 1970

 NATURE, HISTORY AND THE DIALECTIC OF NEGATIVITY:

THE CATEGORY OF NATURE IN MARX’S WRITINGS

CHRIS DUARTE ARAUJO

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TOTHE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTSFOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIALAND POLITICALTHOUGHTYORK UNIVERSITY

TORONTO, ONTARIO

MAY 2017

MARXISM AND THE ABORIGINAL QUESTION:THE TRAGEDY OF PROGRESS

 David Bedford Department of Political Science University of New Brunswick P.O. Box 4400 Fredericton, New Brunswick Canada, E3B 5A3 

Abstract/Résumé 

Aboriginal concerns are among the least studied areas of Marxist thought. Historically, Aboriginal people have ignored or rejected Marxist ideas. The author suggests that recent events in Canada have given Marxists an opportunity to begin building a practical relationship with Aboriginal people. The left, he notes, must treat Aboriginal demands for cultural survival seriously. 

ADORNO ON NIHILISM AND MODERN

SCIENCE, ANIMALS, AND JEWS

Babette Babich (Fordham University)

Adorno, no less than Heidegger or Nietzsche, had his own critical notions of truth/untruth. But Adorno’s readers are unsettled by the barest hint of anything that might be taken to be antiscience. To protest scientism, yes and to be sure, but to protest “scientific thought,” decidedly not, and the distinction is to be maintained even if Adorno himself challenged it. For Adorno, so-called “scientistic” tendencies are the very “conditions of society and of scientific thought.” And again, Adorno’s readers tend to refuse criticism of this kind. Scientific rationality cannot itself be problematic and E. B. Ashton, Adorno’s translator in the mid-1960s, sought to underscore this with the word “scientivistic.” Rather than science, it is scientism that is to be avoided. So we ask: is Adorno speaking here of scientific rationality or scientistic rationality? How, in general, are we to read Adorno?

Pink Floyd and Philosophy, Careful with that Axiom Eugene!

https://docer.com.ar/doc/n55cv5c

 From Marshall McLuhan to Harold Innis, or From the Global Village to the World Empire

Gaëtan Tremblay Université du Québec à Montréal 

ABSTRACT 

The author presents a personal reading of the pioneering contribution to communication studies made by two Canadian thinkers: Marshall McLuhan and Harold A. Innis. Running countertop the general trend stressing their similarities, he highlights their differences. Rejecting their technological-determinist standpoint, the author proposes a comprehensive and critical summary of their analytical frameworks and methodologies, seeking to assess the influence they have had on his own perspective, tracing the contributions they have made to the evolution of communication research. The author’s viewpoint is condensed in the title: we should go back from McLuhan to Innis, from a framework inspired by the global-village metaphor to one based on the expansion of empire. Keyword's Innis; McLuhan; Media theory; Technology theory; Globalization

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/2461/052b29f05b97336a489bdde4f0cd21d7eb3c.pdf

The Toronto School of Communication Theory:

Interpretations, Extensions, Applications

Rita Watson & Menahem Blondheim (Eds.), 

https://www.academia.edu/30222120/Rita_Watson_and_Menahem_Blondheim_Eds_The_Toronto_School_of_Communication_Theory_Interpretations_Extensions_Applications

 Toronto/Jerusalem: University of Toronto Press/The

Hebrew University Magnes Press, 2007, 366 pp., $32.95 (paperback).

Reviewed by

Bob Hanke

York University, Canada

 This book focuses on Harold Adams Innis and Marshall

McLuhan as scholars at the geographical centre of the Toronto School

of communication theory. It thus joins a substantial list of Canadian

works that have examined and assessed the contributions and legacies

of these two foundational thinkers in the field of communication

(Kroker, 1984; Stamps, 1995; Willmott, 1996; Acland & Buxton, 1999;

Babe, 2000; Theall, 2001; Cavell, 2002; Heyer, 2003; Marchessault,

2005; Genosko, 2005). This volume is the product of a transnational

network of 17 authors, two editors and two university presses. It

emerged out of the Toronto School sessions at the 9th Biennial

Jerusalem Conference of the Israeli Association for Canadian Studies,

held at Hebrew University in 2002. It contains a Forward by Elihu Katz,

an afterword by David Olson, and 13 chapters organized into three

parts: Interpretations, Extensions and Applications. The contributors

are mainly from Canada, Israel and the U.S. Four of the five chapters

in Part I were based on previous articles or are reprinted from the

Canadian Journal of Communication. 

For readers who may still be unfamiliar with the academic lives of

 these two towering figures, the editors have provided brief biographies. 

 

texts

Dialectic of Enlightenment - Theodor W. Adorno, Max Horkheimer.pdf

 

Prometheanism: Technology, Digital Culture and Human Obsolescence (Critical Perspectives on Theory, Culture and Politics) 

Annotated Edition, Kindle Edition

Review

Although Günther Anders (1902-1992) is considered one of the most important philosophers of technology and although he spent many years exiled in the US, he received scant attention within the English-speaking world itself. Christopher John Müller’s comprehensive and sophisticated presentation and his nuanced translation of Anders’ crucial writing “On Promethean Shame” should hopefully change this. It demonstrates vividly the significance of Anders as a shrewd and original thinker who was able to anticipate a number of recent societal and technological developments. Müller’s book is crucial reading for anyone wishing to gain a better understanding of the workings of our technology-driven world. (Konrad Paul Liessmann, Professor of Philosophy, University of Vienna)

Who was Günther Anders? In this brilliant book, Christopher Müller not only reconstructs Anders’s crucial place in the history of modern philosophy of technology but shows that Anders still has much to say to us about our own postmodern technological condition. This book is essential reading for anyone interested in critical theory, philosophy of technology and the history of 20th century thought more widely. (Arthur Bradley, Professor of Comparative Literature, Lancaster University)

Building upon (and exceeding) Heidegger on technology, Günther Anders diagnosed the “obsolescence of humanity.” In the posthuman, transhuman era, the Anthropocene dominates obscenity. Departing from Jean-Luc Nancy’s analysis of our technology ‘fetish,’ Christopher Müller’s Prometheanism examines our bodily relation to technology, noting our naked vulnerability, including a cultural critique of the technologies of our lives, our finitude and “Promethean Shame.” (Babette Babich, Professor of Philosophy, Fordham University, NYC)

Modernity aims at placing mankind in the position of being the divine maker of the world while at the same time condemning human beings to see themselves as out of date. German philosopher Günther Anders remains one of the best thinkers of this tragic paradox. It is a shame that his work is almost unknown in the English-speaking world. Christopher Müller’s admirable book will no doubt fill this blatant gap. (Jean-Pierre Dupuy, Professor of Philosophy, École Polytechnique, Paris; Author of A Short Treatise on the Metaphysics of Tsunamis)

Around Anders’s ‘On Promethean Shame’, Müller [describes] the way in which contemporary technology both enhances our perception and obscures our vision, increases our capacity to control while at the same time giving rise to what Gilles Deleuze called a society of control, itself now running out of control. As an attempt at thinking these limits, and at taking thinking to the limit, Müller’s step back to Anders’s finite thinking promises to provide resources for a new thinking in and of the Anthropocene. (Daniel Ross Lo Sguardo)

A book that provides a new inroad to an often overlooked thinker’s work. … When it comes to the great critics of technology Günther Anders is criminally overlooked. … With Prometheanism Müller has done a great two-fold service to Anders – he has provided a wonderful translation of part of one of the key works by Anders, while also providing several chapters that help place Anders’ thought into present discussions … Luckily Müller has done an excellent job of capturing Anders’ wit and pithiness which makes “On Promethean Shame” a pleasure to read despite its considerable pessimism. Yet, what makes Prometheanism particularly noteworthy is the second half of the book wherein Müller considers Anders “in the digital age” – as these four chapters demonstrate the continuing utility of Anders’ thought. This book is a wonderful introduction to a tragically overlooked figure!
The Librarian Shipwreck Blog

This is a very important book, and hopefully it will lead to a higher profile for [Günther] Anders’s provocative and essential thought. We owe Christopher Müller a debt of intellectual gratitude. (Thesis Eleven) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

About the Author

Christopher John Müller is an Honorary Research Associate of the School of English, Communication and Philosophy at Cardiff University and an Associate Teacher at the University of Bristol. His recent publications include ‘Desert Ethics: Technology and the Question of Evil in Günther Anders and Jacques Derrida’, Parallax (2015), 21 (1): 42-57 and ‘Style and Arrogance: The Ethics of Heidegger’s Style’, Style in Theory: Between Literature and Philosophy, ed. Ivan Callus, Gloria Lauri-Lucente, James Corby (Continuum, 2013), pp. 141-162. His work draws on Literature, Philosophy and Critical Theory to address the manner in which technological and linguistic structures shape human perception, agency and interaction. --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

https://www.academia.edu/27183799/Prometheanism_Technology_Digital_Culture_and_Human_Obsolescence

Edmonton city council to explore next steps towards decriminalization on Monday

Author of the article: Anna Junker
Publishing date: Apr 10, 2022 • 

A pedestrian walks past advertisements for opioid dependence treatment outside the City Centre Clinic,10264 100 St., in Edmonton on Feb. 7, 2022. 

PHOTO BY DAVID BLOOM /Postmedia

Edmonton city council will debate the next steps on decriminalization of personal possession of drugs on Monday.

Council will hear an information report city administration put together on what it would take to pursue an exemption under the federal Controlled Drugs and Substances Act as one step to addressing the increasing drug poisoning crisis in the city.

Coun. Michael Janz, who asked for the report, said he’s heard widespread support for action and next steps from his council colleagues.

“We realize that decriminalization is one step that we can take to remove the stigma and help people move towards treatment and it helps us move towards a public health model rather than a carceral model,” Janz said.

“We know decriminalization is but one measure, there’s multiple measures that need to be taken. Safe supply, permanent supportive housing, harm reduction, drug testing, all of these, we need to try anything we can.”

Edmonton would be the latest jurisdiction in Canada to pursue decriminalization if council decides to move forward.

In January, Toronto Public Health, which sets the public health policy for the municipality of Toronto, submitted a request to Health Canada for an exemption to allow for personal possession of drugs. The City of Vancouver, with support of the Vancouver Coastal Health Authority, and British Columbia have also submitted exemption requests.

Montreal, Ottawa, and Winnipeg are also exploring the possibility of requesting an exemption.

The report notes that if council were to pursue an application for exemption, the preparation of evidence would be a “significant undertaking” that could require “substantial staff time, specialized external expertise and community outreach with ongoing communication and monitoring requirements should any exemption be approved.”

Janz said it is critical the city moves ahead with a broad coalition of community members, including researchers, public health experts, people with lived experience, people who use drugs, and centre a public health model.

“We need to treat this for what it is, a crisis resulting in inadequate action on poverty, mental health and trauma,” he said.

“This is not a criminality problem, but absent safe supply, and absent harm reduction, we see these impacts on our criminal justice system.”

Last year, 1,771 Albertans, including 674 Edmontonians, died of a drug poisoning.

“We need to have a much more empathetic, compassionate, frank conversation and that’s why this has to be a public health issue,” said Janz.

ajunker@postmedia.com

 Ideas

Can owning a dog be a 'selfish' pursuit? This academic thinks so

Social 

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People want animals in their lives as ‘accessories,' argues

PhD student Molly Labenski

Nicola Luksic · Posted: Apr 10, 2022 4:00 AM ET | Last Updated: April 10

PhD student Molly Labenski is one of about one million Canadians who became a pet owner during the pandemic. While finishing her dissertation examining the portrayal of dogs in American fiction, she rescued a two-year-old Australian shepherd named Duncan. (Hannah Greenwood)

Ideas53:59Of Dogs and Derrida

Digging into the stories of dogs in American literature led Molly Labenski to realize a disconnect in our relationship to canines. 

"I think over the last few decades we've developed a bit more of an entitlement when it comes to our relationship with dogs," said Labenski, who is finishing her PhD in English at Queen's University in Kingston, Ont. 

Her deep dive into classics like Old Yeller — the story of a devoted dog who saves his human family on numerous occasions but gets a bullet in his head after contracting rabies — reveals a pattern in literature where dogs are discarded once their usefulness to humans subsides.

She says this attitude reflects our real-world relationship to dogs and other animals, arguing that people want them in their lives as "accessories" that can easily be discarded.

Author and professor emerita Josephine Donovan argues animals have a standpoint on the way they're treated. She adds that humans should pay attention to that standpoint when deciding how to treat animals. (Matt Cardy/Getty Images)

Labenski points to the high demand for so-called designer dog breeds, while thousands of dogs in shelters need good homes, as a clear example of that.

These designer dogs include mixed breeds such as goldendoodles (half golden retriever and half poodle) and cockapoos (Cocker spaniel/poodle), which are favoured because they don't shed as much, or pomskies (husky/Pomeranian), which are convenient for people who want smaller dogs.

"It's at the point where we've got designer dogs customized so they can come in any colour, any pattern, any size," said Labenski. "The word 'design' is perfect — you can design a dog in a way that really reduces them to more of a commodity than it does a companion."

According to statistics from the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Canadian Humane Society, in 2019 nearly 400,000 shelter dogs were euthanized across North America.  

"If we really love dogs, we would be trying to help ones that already exist rather than creating ones for our weirdly specific needs," said Labenski, who adopted an Australian shepherd shelter dog during the pandemic.  

"I think pet-keeping has become largely a selfish pursuit," she said. "We get dogs specifically for personal reasons that don't really benefit the dogs, whether it's to assuage our own loneliness or if you want to get more exercise, then getting a dog is the way to make that happen. Couples often get dogs to sort of test the waters before they have children."

• Dogs languish in some shelters as pandemic winds down, says Surrey shelter

• 19 malnourished dogs seized in Albert County recovering at Moncton animal shelter

High demand for dogs

Pets of all kinds have been in high demand during the pandemic. According to research by conducted by Abacus Data, about 900,000 more Canadians became new pet owners during the pandemic. (This data was collected through an online survey of 1,500 Canadian adults between June 4 and 9, 2021.)

Some animal shelters have noted an increase in pets being given up.

"It's been insane the number of surrenders we get — it's tripled in the time I've worked here," said Cassandra Ferrante, who for the past six years has been working as a dog trainer at Dog Tales, a private animal shelter and rescue near King City, north of Toronto. 

"We get at least five to 10 [surrender] applications a day. We can't even keep up with the surrender requests."

Cassandra Ferrante is one of roughly 50 employees caring for dogs at Dog Tales, a rescue shelter that sits on a 20-hectare farm north of Toronto. She’s pictured here with Goji, who has since been successfully adopted. (Submitted by Cassandra Ferrante )

Every year, Dog Tales is able to find adoptive homes for about 350 surrendered and rescued dogs. But for Ferrante, who now manages the kennel, dealing with the surrender requests is difficult. 

"It's the least favourite part of my job, I would say, because I can't relate to people who are surrendering their dogs… I can't understand how someone can just dispose of their dog, no matter how hard it is, if you're moving or whatever."

What we can learn about dogs in literature

For her PhD work, Labenski combed through canonical works of American fiction in which dogs are discarded, killed or left for dead. She's identified troubling dog scenes in classics such as Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye.

The working title of Labenski's thesis is "Who Let the Dogs Die?: Domestic Animal Abuse in American Fiction." 

"For me, the dog characters in literature are just as important as the human ones," said Labenski. "We think we have this great relationship with animals, but the reality of the fiction shows us otherwise…. The dog is really often ignored as an individual in itself in literature."

Labenski draws on a framework known as animal standpoint theory, which aspires to analyze the literature from the animals' perspective. 

Author and professor emerita Josephine Donovan argues animals have a vantage point that humans need to respect, both in the real world and in literature. (Carl Court/Getty Images)

One of the founding figures of this theory is Josephine Donovan, professor emerita in the department of English at the University of Maine and the author of The Aesthetics of Care: On the Literary Treatment of Animals. 

"[Animals are] considered commodities," said Donovan. "And under the law, they're considered property. And in science, they're considered objects for laboratory experimentation. And so to the extent that literature comes to stabilize the objectification of animals, that's what animal standpoint criticism is [discouraging]."

Condemning violence against animals in literature is one thing, but Donovan goes further, arguing that animals should not be used in fiction without regard to their own point of view.

"Animals should not just be used as literary devices," said Donovan. "So often, they're just used as symbols or metaphors, or in some way to comment on the state of mind of the human character, and the animal herself is discarded and then basically ignored." 

Donovan, whose forthcoming book is called Animals, Mind and Matter, would like to see literature that would "give the animals more voice."

"My overall goal is to break through this objectification and change the whole cultural notion so that we see animals as living subjects who have points of view, who have minds, who have feelings, who have thoughts, who have inner worlds, needs and wishes."

Animals 'rich as metaphors'

While intrigued by certain aspects of animal standpoint theory, fellow author and dog lover Richard Teleky isn't convinced. 

"I'm genuinely puzzled about [Donovan's] attitude towards the imagination," said Teleky, editor of an anthology called The Exile Book of Canadian Dog Stories. 

"If you are too judgmental about the way writers in the past have used animals, you do a disservice both to the writer and to the past … you're going to wipe out much of Western literature."

Booker-prize winning author Yann Martel also finds the animal-vantage-point approach restrictive. 

"The usefulness of animals for me is precisely that they're very rich as metaphors," said Martel, whose novels Life of Pi and Beatrice and Virgil rely on animal characters to tell the story. 

Yann Martel — probably best known for his Booker Prize-winning novel Life of Pi — relies heavily on animal characters in all of his books, which serve in highly symbolic or metaphorical roles. (Geoff Howe/Vintage Canada)

"We tend to be very cynical about our own species. We tend not to be cynical about animals, especially wild animals. We imbue animals with a sense of wonder, of marvel, and that's very useful for a storyteller, because then I can take an animal character and right away get beyond your natural cynicism."

As for the violence toward animals in the novels Labenski is studying, Martel argues it can inspire empathy, adding that writing stories strictly from an animal vantage limits the imagination. 

"Stories are only useful for us. Animals don't have stories," said Martel, pointing out, for example, that telling the story of a slug from the slug's point of view serves no purpose for that creature. "And it'll be quite dull for us, because a slug has a very limited intellect."

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Labenski remains committed to advocating for animals — even fictional ones.

"There'll always be a bit of a discrepancy between the opinions of literary critics and authors," she said. "I would say [to authors] to consider animals more fully than they are right now. It is easy to make animals ornamental in literature, because they are rather ornamental in our lives already."

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Guests in this episode (in order of appearance):

Molly Labenski is a Queen's University PhD student in the English department. The working title of her thesis is "Who Let the Dogs Die?: Domestic Animal Abuse in American Fiction."  

Cassandra Ferrante is a dog trainer at Dog Tales animal sanctuary near Newmarket, Ont.

Josephine Donovan is a professor emerita in the department of English at the University of Maine and the author of The Aesthetics of Care: On the Literary Treatment of Animals. Her forthcoming book is called On Animals, Mind and Matter.

Richard Teleky is a retired professor in the humanities department at York University and author of Dog on the Bed: a Canine Alphabet. He's also editor of the anthology The Exile Book of Canadian Dog Stories. 

Yann Martel is the author of Life of Pi, which won the Man Booker Prize in 2002. Other novels include The High Mountains of Portugal and Beatrice and Virgil.

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Written by Nicola Luksic. This episode is part of the Ideas from the Trenches series, produced by Nicola Luksic and Tom Howell.