Making Kin: Animal Series

Non-human animals have played an important role in western culture, from children’s fables to cartoon and movie characters in popular and occult media. We tend to represent animals as beings that bring us happiness and companionship; how many TikTok videos appear on your feed (if you have social media) of usually domesticated or captive animals being cute and silly, making us laugh or cry, hypnotizing us with their facial expressions and body language? It is undeniable that we have imposed a very humanistic relationship with specific animals (mainly mammals) in today’s capitalist culture. We usually see these representations responding to human emotions, conflicts, and needs. But a very important part of how we relate to animals under capitalism gets hidden through anthropocentric tactics inflicted on non-human bodies and voices. These popular strategies suppress a deeper understanding of how other sentient beings may perceive the world. But how can we create relationships in a less human-centered way? Even though every time we try to speak through a non-human voice we have to accept the impossibility of truly inhabiting another being’s vital experience, we can still find other means through creative practice to expand the way we sympathize or empathize with non-human animals. The literary genre of Xeno fiction proposes an exercise of ethological research and imagination, placing our bodies inside another’s perspective. The word, or concept of, Xeno may carry a curse and a gift in its meaning. It depends on the voice that speaks it, writes it, or signs it. For some, the presence or idea of something “alien” may trigger violent and discriminatory political, social, or colonial responses. Others may find hope for the future in the “unknown” body, real or fictional. Xeno is always foreign, and there lies its power to mobilize. This publication convenes writers and non-writers that have experimented with animal embodiment to create literary works and visual interpretations that explore different ways to experience “otherness.” In this volume of the Making Kin series, we focus on non-human animals and hybrid bodies. When we practice becoming with another’s experience, we practice empathy. When we embody collectiveness, we understand ourselves as a whole and therefore feel no separation. What would it be like to inhabit a body without limits or definition? Which words and meanings make us feel like “non-animals”? The literary genre of xeno fiction proposes an exercise of ethological research and imagination, placing our bodies inside another’s perspective. This publication convenes writers and non-writers that have experimented with animal embodiment To have fur, to detect fast movements, to be afraid, to breathe underwater, to see in the dark, to carry precious stones, to be aerial, to make silver trails, to drink from the lake, to care for your offspring, to live in song, to play, to create micro crevices on the ground, to know death, to move with the moon, to cure with herbs, to be extinct, to enter the middle earth, to inspire justice, to commune with the swamp Let´s make kin!