Animal spirit: other bodies in relation

Abstract

This thematic issue provides provocation to the way in which other-than-human agencies are taken up in the discipline of religious studies and/or in relation to religious themes. It also considers what studies in religion can offer other disciplines grappling with other-than-human agencies. The articles in this issue explore the role of embodiment and a range of knowledge and perception systems as they appear, (de)limit, enable and make knowable relations with other-than-human bodies, especially other animal bodies. Going beyond discussions of nonhuman animals as cyphers, metaphors or symbols for human belief or worldviews, this issue’s focus is the ethics of living and relating in a multi-epistemological world with other (animal) bodies. These questions are particularly relevant at a time of a global environmental crisis that threatens all life.