The project ”Meat/animals: Relations between humans and farm animals in cultural representations” aims to illuminate the role played by farmed animals, especially cows, oxen and pigs, in modern and contemporary literary and visual arts. The study belongs to the growing field of cultural and critical animal studies, challenging the traditional anthropocentric outlook of the humanities by granting non-human creatures special attention. The perspective demands an undoing of the impulse of the schooled literary scholar to understand the animals who figure in the symbolic order as meaningful only to the extent that they say something about the human world and human-to-human relations. The animal studies scholar looks to the animal interests, thereby widening the perspective to a more-than-anthropocentric scope.

The design of the study went through some changes during the early explorative phases of the work. Most importantly time and temporality came forth as central dimension when trying to understand the human handling of these domesticated species –  in reality and in the (creation and reading of) artistic works, since these two are entangled practices.

For farmed and industrialised species modernization has meant an increasing temporal oppression, a chronoppression as I choose label it. These species are ceaselessly used for labour and production by means of a totalitarian human control over their time: reproduction, growth, time of death, all is scheduled in detail for maximum human profit. Human beings are in many ways subject to versions of the same capitalist chrononormativity (some bodies more fiercely than others), but with one important difference. Hope for a better future is kept alive, supported by our symbolic system and most evidently by different kinds of success stories, stories of development, Bildungsromanen etcetera. For the farmed and industrialised domestic species there has been no such support, these animals have to a large extent been marginalised from these kinds of teleological stories of progression. When present in them they are usually still strictly conditioned by a human (narrative) chrononormativity.

From the starting point of this insight the project was oriented towards an investigation of farmed animal presence in relation to temporal aspects in a number cultural expressions – literary, theatrical and belonging to the visual arts. An important inspiration came from Elizabeth Freemans book Time Binds (2011), in which she explores how queer humans tend to get marginalised in chrononormative cultural expressions, while as soon as the structure of teleological progression is abandoned giving room for what she calls “queer time” they thrive in new ways. My soon to be finished monography – with the working title “Zooësis – lantbruksdjuren i konstkulturen” (accepted for publishing in 2019) could be said to apply Freemans frame to another category, the farmed animals, a procedure which of course also raises many new issues.

The chapters of the book concern “historiography”, “nostalgia”, “relational time” and “hauntings” in connection with human-farmed animal presence in a selection of examples.
The first two chapters engage in critical readings, or “paranoid readings” with a term from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, focusing on aesthetic patterns that support anthropocentric hierarchies wither by marginalise

 farmed animals in stories of modern progression (Swedish agri-proletarian literature) or, instead, idealise them and position them as “timeless” objects of human longing away from the rush of modernity (examples from idyllic pastorals and neo-pastoral traditions). In both cases, there is a lack of support for thoughts about domestic animal futures: in the examples their function as human support is cemented.

The last two chapters engage in “reparative readings”, firstly of a spectrum of cultural expressions that in hopeful ways explore alternative, and more mutually designed human-animal temporalities and relations, secondly of expressions in which dead or dying animals are allowed to comeback (or stay) to speak as ghosts, deterritorialising the human power position and re-negotiating present and future relations. (Marlen Haushofer, Lydia Davis, Les Murray, Miru Kim, Ted Hughes, Sonja Åkesson, Robert Rauschenberg, Damien Hirst m fl)
The main scientific contribution of the study is its conceptual frame and its suggestion of kinds of reading that are new to the field of animal studies. In that respect it is a piece of basic research offering a useful prism when approaching new materials.

The production of the monography has involved a thorough interdisciplinary study of texts in the fields of animal studies, philosophy, literature, performance and live art, and a mapping to find and read/experience relevant artistic works including the presence of farmed animals. I also saw relevant exhibitions and followed the repetitions of the music-theatre-piece Hjälp sökes at Orionteatern, Stockholm, to gather first-hand material. In the last phases of writing I have had great help of peer-reviewers (artistic researcher Mara Lee and literary scholars Elisabeth Friis and Karl Axelsson).

The international dimensions and academic communication of the project
Animal studies is configured as an international and interdisciplinary field and my study dialogues intensively with a European and American research discourse. The monography is, however, written in Swedish language and wishes to communicate with readers in a wider intellectual field than the animal studies expertise. The plan is to, with a following step, get it published also in English, and the process of translating and proof reading has already been started, in order to present chapters to the international publishing house Palgrave Macmillan, which has shown initial interest.

During the project time most parts of the study have on some occasion been presented and subjected to comments from Swedish and international peers. I have also continually taken part in seminars with the network HumAnimal Group at Uppsala University http://www.gender.uu.se/forskning/forskning-vid-centrum/humanimal-group/, and kept up contacts with several animal studies networks and colleagues, including Susan McHugh, Annie Potts, Philip Armstrong, Manuela Rossini, Ann-Sofie Lönngren and Helena Pedersen.

The following list overviews presentations from the project on conferences, symposia and guest lectures:

12 March 2018 ”Relationella tidsligheter. Om litterära försök att göra icke-krononormativ tid med kor och grisar”, guest lecture, Litterär Gestaltning, Valand
22 January 2018 guest lecture, "The Human-Animal Relation: Cultural representations" vid CEMUS, Uppsala universitet
4-6 May 2017 "Ecocriticism": conference paper: ”Listening for the ghostly voices of animals in literature” Mälardalens högskola, Västerås.
26 January 2017 HAS@SU conference, paper: ”Teaterns berättelser om kommunikation mellan arter”, Stockholms universitet
14-17 June 2017 ”SLSA Conference: Control”, paper: ”Reading Time and Animals”, Stockholms Universitet
14 April 2016 minisymposium "Gender and Animals", paper: “Cow-Woman and Pig-Man. Zoo-poetic voices folding the rough textures of time”,  Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala university.
17-20 March 2016 ACLA annual meeting "Zoo Poetics", paper: ”The untimeliness of literary cows and pigs”, Harvard University, Boston, US.
4-6 June 2015 "Ethics of Storytelling: Historical Imagination in Contemporary Literature, Media and Visual Arts", conference paper: ”Telling stories about farmed animals and in vitro meat futures”, Turku university, Åbo-Turku, FIN.
10 April 2015 HumAnimal Group seminar, ”Animals and Time: a work in progress”, Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala university.
16 March 2015 guest lecture, "The Human-Animal Relation: Cultural representations" vid CEMUS, Uppsala universitet
29 January 2015 HAS@SU conference, Stockholm University
25 October 2014, "Animals: Ethics, Sustainability, Sentience Conference", Edge Hill University, UK

Knowledge from the project is communicated to students at Södertörns högskola through teaching on many levels, but with highest density in the master course ”Reading for the animals” which I designed and teach for the third time in 2018.

Communication of the project outside academia
Knowledge produced through the project has been communicated through a couple of guest lectures, for example at Nordiska folkhögskolan Biskops Arnö and at the Performance platform Skogen in Gothenburg. Knowledge from the project has, furthermore, been channelled into two cultural magazine issues on animal theme: Glänta nr 2, 2015 and Fronesis nr 55-56, 2017, both of which I co-edited.