- The focus on language and dialogue in relation to more-than-humans - Innovative new way of doing philosophy with more-than-humans - The work has social/political value and outlines an alternative to anthropocentrism In Multispecies Dialogues Eva Meijer develops a new understanding of the concept dialogue, which includes embodied, material and spatial interaction. Meijer does not do this alone: each chapter of the book is devoted to a dialogue, or set of dialogues with street dog Olli, a community of former lab mice, amphibian neighbours, the North Sea, and many other beings. Taking multispecies dialogues seriously is a way to do justice to more-than-human agency and to become more worldly in a time dominated by humans. Rethinking the model of the dialogue also opens up new ways of doing philosophy in multispecies world, which is urgently needed to address the ecological, political and philosophical problems of our time.
Chapter
1. (Introduction) All Thinking is Thinking with Others
Chapter
2. Conversations with Olli
Chapter
3. Learning to See Mice
Chapter
4. Assisting Amphibian Neighbors
Chapter
5. Conversations with and about the North Sea
Chapter
6. In Dialogue with Art
Chapter
7. Speaking with Myself about Depression
Chapter
8. Discussing Multispecies Futures with Children
Chapter
9. (Conclusion) Learning to Listen
Acknowledgements
References
Eva Meijer is a philosopher, writer, and artist. They write novels, philosophical essays, academic texts, poems and columns, and their work has been translated into over twenty languages. Recurring themes are language, madness, nonhuman animals, and politics. Meijer works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Amsterdam (Netherlands), and is the co-chair of the Dutch Study Group for Animal Philosophy. They also write columns and essays for Dutch newspapers and are a member of the Multispecies Collective.
