{"id":1788,"date":"2024-11-04T17:57:44","date_gmt":"2024-11-04T16:57:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/?post_type=tribe_events&p=1788"},"modified":"2024-11-04T17:57:44","modified_gmt":"2024-11-04T16:57:44","slug":"the-politics-of-the-sociable-self-sociability-animality","status":"publish","type":"tribe_events","link":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/evenement\/the-politics-of-the-sociable-self-sociability-animality\/","title":{"rendered":"\u00ab\u00a0The Politics of the Sociable Self\u00a0\u00bb – ‘Sociability & Animality’"},"content":{"rendered":"
First thematic session on ‘Sociability & Animality’, Universit\u00e9 de Rennes 2, 8 November 2024 (5-7 PM)<\/span><\/h6>\n

Chairs: Sophie Mespl\u00e8de (Universit\u00e9 de Rennes 2) & Kimberley Page-Jones (Universit\u00e9 de Bretagne Occidentale)
\n– Silvia Sebastiani (EHESS Paris) <\/strong>– A social orang-utan? Enlightenment Debates on the borders of humanity
\n– Jane Spencer (University of Exeter) <\/strong>– A ‘fellowship of sense with all that breathes’: the representation of human\u2014animal bonds in eighteenth-century and Romantic writing<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Abstracts<\/h3>\n

* A social orang-utan? Enlightenment debates on the borders of humanity<\/span><\/p>\n

Silvia Sebastiani<\/strong><\/a>, EHESS Paris<\/strong><\/p>\n

The \u201corangutan\u201d, or \u201cman of the woods\u201d, entered Europe in the mid-17th century through early treatises on medical casuistry. Its anatomy, behavior, tool use, and sociability prompted eighteenth-century anatomists, naturalists, and <\/span>philosophes<\/span><\/em> to question its nature and, by extension, the nature of \u201cman\u201d through comparative reasoning. Is society a uniquely human prerogative, or do structured animal societies exist? Is man inherently social or solitary? Is bipedalism natural to humans, or is an upright posture the result of education? Is language exclusive to humans? Conversely, does the great ape belong to the human species? Is it perfectible? Is it sociable? Defining the boundaries of humanity became central to Enlightenment debates, where great apes played a pivotal role.<\/span><\/p>\n

___________________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

* A \u2018fellowship of sense with all that breathes\u2019: human\u2014animal bonds and human sociability in poems by Barbauld, Cowper, Byron and Clare<\/span><\/p>\n

Jane Spencer<\/strong><\/span><\/a>, University of Exeter<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

As interest in the \u2018animal question\u2019 intensified in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the idea of possible sympathy between human and animal based on shared sensation \u2013 what Anna Letitia Barbauld called the \u2018fellowship of sense with all that breathes\u2019 \u2013 began to influence expectations about human sociability. This paper identifies a tension at the heart of the discourse of human\u2014animal sympathy. Compassion for animals acted as a guarantor of \u2018humanity\u2019 (understood both as human status and humaneness), and was therefore a prerequisite for human friendship; on the other hand, a very high degree of animal sympathy could set a human being apart from his or her own species and thus preclude full entry into human society. Barbauld\u2019s \u2018The Caterpillar\u2019, William Cowper\u2019s <\/span>The Task,\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Byron\u2019s \u2018Mazeppa\u2019 and John Clare\u2019s birds\u2019 nest poems explore in different ways the relationship between sympathetic human-animal bonds and the pleasures and demands of human sociability.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

First thematic session on ‘Sociability & Animality’, Universit\u00e9 de Rennes 2, 8 November 2024 (5-7 PM) Chairs: Sophie Mespl\u00e8de (Universit\u00e9 de Rennes 2) &…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1789,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_tribe_events_status":"","_tribe_events_status_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tribe_events_cat":[39],"class_list":["post-1788","tribe_events","type-tribe_events","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tribe_events_cat-seance-de-seminaire","cat_seance-de-seminaire"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/1788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/tribe_events"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/1788\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1791,"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events\/1788\/revisions\/1791"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"tribe_events_cat","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites-recherche.univ-rennes2.fr\/ace\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tribe_events_cat?post=1788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}