Rethinking Non-human Sentience and Sapience: Cross-Cultural Perspectives

The new boom in research and interest in non-human sentience and sapience (in particular, “critical plant studies” and the Rights of Nature movement) calls for a deeper theoretical engagement with ethics, ontology, religious studies, and metaphysics. This panel explores the biological and ethical promises of these new frameworks, while critically analyzing their incompleteness. While welcoming the agency and personhood of our non-human kin is one way to enter into deeper, and perhaps decolonial, relationships with the more-than-human world, this panel explores the complexities involved, asking questions like: When do our frameworks of analysis perpetuate the very violence and colonial assumptions we seek to do away with? When do our imaginaries and cosmologies promote ecological hope? And what philosophical and religious frameworks can create mutually beneficial relationships nonhumans? Muslim environmentalism, Black Studies, Hindu perspectives on animals, Buddhist perspectives on trees, Dark Green Religion, and Korean mythology on big cats are considered.