Rethinking Fables in the Age of Global Environmental Crisis

寓言是一种以非人类为特色的文学体裁：在寓言中，动物、其他生物，甚至非生命形式都占据了中心舞台来讲述他们的故事。它有着悠久的全球历史，在塑造人类文化和思维方式方面发挥了重要作用；我们生活在大量会说话和人性化的生物中，它们居住并丰富了我们的语言和文化想象力。尽管如此，也正因为如此，寓言一直是有争议的，经常被批评为一种代表非人类世界的模式。它们被视为对自然的虚假描述，甚至是我们以人类为中心的态度的体现，这导致我们使用非人类来讲述人类故事。然而，最近，作为重新评估我们与非人类关系的一种重要文化形式，人们越来越多地欣赏这一寓言。寓言至关重要地提供了一种独特的方式来应对当前对以人为中心的思维方式的挑战，同时了解将非人类拟人化的风险。此外，伊索寓言《乌鸦和水壶》一直被科学家用作他们实验的框架。将寓言用作科学范例并非没有批评者，但它支持这样一种观点，即寓言是一种生物文化形式，由我们对其他物种的观察和与其他物种的互动塑造而成。《全球环境危机时代的反思寓言》旨在将学者、动物专家、艺术家、理论家和寓言实践者聚集在一起，研究动物(和其他非人类)寓言的重要性。该团队包括著名的寓言学者，我们将合作开发该流派的新理论和实践。该项目将对这一主题采取创新和批判性的方法，以促进活跃的讨论和跨学科合作，不仅在艺术和人文科学领域，而且在社会科学和自然科学领域。它将涉及广泛的文本(文学作品、科学论述、档案材料)和文化实践(艺术、戏剧、媒体、人类学等)，作为“寓言”。我们还将与艺术家、创意作家和动物专家合作，制作适合讲述我们时代故事的新寓言。与此同时，我们将借鉴不同文化和语言传统的寓言，包括非欧洲和土著寓言，以及新的和创新的寓言，庆祝寓言传统作为世界文学的丰富。这个项目的核心是将寓言作为一种多物种讲故事的艺术来欣赏，与政治、道德和教育价值相关：寓言通常带有故事的寓意，它教会我们成为更好的人。我们将利用寓言的力量作为一种多功能的工具和重要的资源，它可以帮助我们以不同的方式思考紧迫的全球问题以及我们面临的环境、政治和技术挑战。通过批判性和创造性地参与寓言，我们寻求评估我们与其他物种关系的性质，包括开发、驯化和合作，并学习成为更好的同类物种。该项目将通过一系列讲习班和一次会议发展一个跨学科网络。我们的讨论、主要发现和实验性的“寓言”将为寓言流派的多媒体互动在线展览提供基础，其中将用寓言手稿、视觉艺术、博物馆物品、动物照片等图像进行丰富的说明。其中一些页面将致力于解决全球环境危机和其他当代挑战，通过与寓言的多物种接触来探索。该项目将生成一系列寓言主题的播客和共同编辑的散文集。闭幕会议还将在坎特伯雷举行一次公开讲故事活动。

The fable is a literary genre characterised by its unique focus on nonhumans: in a fable, animals, other organisms, and even non-living forms take centre stage to tell their stories. It has a long global history and has played a significant role in shaping human cultures and ways of thinking; we live with a multitude of talking and humanised creatures, which have inhabited and enriched our languages and cultural imagination. Despite, and because of, this, fables have been controversial and often highly criticised as a mode of representing nonhuman worlds. They have been seen as false representations of nature, or even as the embodiment of our anthropocentric attitude, which leads us to use nonhumans to tell human stories. Recently, however, there has been an increased appreciation of the fable as an important cultural form to re-evaluate our relations with nonhumans. Fables crucially offer a unique means of addressing current challenges to human-centred ways of thinking, while being knowledgeable about the risks of anthropomorphising nonhumans. Moreover, Aesop's fable, 'The Crow and the Pitcher,' has been used by scientists as a framework for their experiments. This use of a fable as a scientific paradigm is not without its critics, but it supports the idea that the fable is a biocultural form, shaped by our observations of, and interactions with, other species. 'Rethinking Fables in the Age of Global Environmental Crisis' aims to bring together scholars, animal experts, artists, theorists, and practitioners of the fable, to examine the importance of animal (and other nonhuman) fables. The team includes leading scholars of the fable, and collaboratively we will work towards developing new theories and practices of the genre. The project will adopt innovative and critical approaches to the subject to foster lively discussions and interdisciplinary collaborations, not only within the arts and humanities but also with social and natural sciences. It will engage with a wide range of texts (literary works, scientific discourses, archival materials) and cultural practices (art, theatre, media, anthropology, etc) as 'fables'. We will also collaborate to produce new fables, befitting to tell stories of our times, in collaboration with artists, creative writers and animal experts. At the same time, we will celebrate the richness of the fable tradition as world literature by drawing on fables of different cultural and linguistic traditions, including non-European and indigenous fables, alongside new and innovative fables. At the heart of this project is the appreciation of the fable as an art of multispecies storytelling, associated with political, moral, and educational values: the fable typically comes with a moral of the story, which teaches us to be better humans. We will draw on the power of the fable as a versatile tool and important resource, which can help us to think differently about pressing global issues and the environmental, political, and technological challenges we face. By engaging critically and creatively with the fable, we seek to evaluate the nature of our relationship with other species, including exploitation, domestication, and cooperation, and to learn to be a better fellow species. This project will develop an interdisciplinary network through a series of workshops and a conference. Our discussions, key findings, and experimental 'fables' will provide the basis for a multimedia interactive online exhibition about the fable genre, which will be richly illustrated with images of fable manuscripts, visual arts, museum objects, animal photos, etc. Some of the pages will be dedicated to addressing the global environmental crisis and other contemporary challenges, explored through multispecies engagements with fables. This project will generate a series of fable-themed podcasts and a co-edited essay collection. The concluding conference will be accompanied by a public storytelling event in Canterbury.