Vita

André Krebber is a research associate in Social and Cultural History (Human-Animal Studies) at the University of Kassel (FB05) and an associate member of the Department of Theoretical Philosophy. He studied Environmental Sciences at the Leuphana University of Lüneburg and received his doctorate from the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies at the University of Canterbury with the thesis "Raising the Memory of Nature: Nonidentity, Animals and Enlightenment Thought". During his doctoral studies, he spent several months as a research fellow at the University of Oxford (St. Antony's College, Prof. Sho Konishi). In 2017/2018 he was a Susan Manning Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh.

With Mieke Roscher, he published the volume Animal Biography: Re-framing Animal Lives (Palgrave Macmillan) on biography as a method for interdisciplinary animal research. He also publishes the Handbook of Historical Animal Studies (De Gruyter Oldenbourg) with Mieke Roscher and Brett Mizelle. In 2019/2020, he organized two international exhibitions and a conference on octopuses with colleagues from the University of Tasmania (Dr. Yvette Watt; Dr. Toby Juliff).

Research profile

André Krebber has an interdisciplinary career in which he has consistently focused on topics in the theory of science and epistemology, the history of philosophy, animal and natural philosophy, environmental philosophy and aesthetics. Special emphasis is placed on the critical theory of the Frankfurt School and the European Enlightenment. His work also focuses on questions of the philosophy of history.

André Krebber is particularly interested in the history and nature of human knowledge cultures in relation to nature and animals, as well as their influence on society's treatment of nature in the context of the current environmental crisis. Of particular relevance are questions about the relationship between scientific, artistic and non-European cognitive practices, which also includes the search for new approaches to knowledge, as well as historical-philosophical questions about the relationship between nature and history, i.e. whether and how nature and history are mediated with each other in the current context of the Anthropocene.

Research projects (in the field of philosophy)

Understanding Living Organisms: Towards a Theory of Expression and Aesthetic Sensibility of Living Organisms

Cooperation project with Prof. Dr. Pauline Phemister, University of Edinburgh, Scotland; anticipated project start: February 2022 (funding requested)

Research in the field of environmental philosophy considers non-human entities ascribed to nature as beings with their own agency and thus emphasizes their active participation in the creation of the world. This perspective raises the question of the qualitative basis on which non-human beings interact with their environment and shape it, and sometimes how they exercise their agency. In order to provide an answer to this question, we are pursuing and developing an aesthetic approach to the behavior of living organisms with the project "Understanding Living Organisms", which attempts to grasp them as aesthetically acting. In doing so, we envisage that an aesthetics of beauty will make it possible to conceptualize the behaviour of living organisms as self-determined action.

The project develops a conceptual and theoretical framework for a theory of expression and aesthetic sensibilities of living organisms. To this end, it pursues the clarification and further development of the following conceptual tools: expression (Leibniz, Benjamin, Adorno and Darwin); signs, symbols and signification (Leibniz and Peirce); the idea of universal communication or understanding based on the understanding of communication as translation between the different perspectives of organisms on their environments (Leibniz, Benjamin and Adorno); and aesthetic preference and choice (Peirce and Darwin). The concept of beauty with regard to preference and choice, experience and expression, and the harmony of difference connects and integrates the different levels of theory formation.

The overarching goal is to develop an integrated theory of the experience, communication (with their environment as well as with each other), and choice behavior or decisions of living organisms from the perspective of a reconsideration of the active influence of living organisms on the creation of environments. The project thus contributes to a paradigm shift in nature research from a focus on materialistic functionalism in the consideration of living organisms to a recognition of living organisms as experiencing beings with their own desires and interests.

Teaching (in the field of philosophy)

• A thousand plateaus: postmodern histories (summer semester 2020)
• What is history? Theories of history from universal history to the Anthropocene (winter semester 2016/17 & summer semester 2020)
• Old and new materialisms: New Materialism in Context (WiSe 2019/20)
• Evolution: Animals and History in Darwin's Descent ofMan (SoSe 2016)
• Supervision of interdisciplinary student lecture series "Verhältnisse Verstehen", www.verhältnisseverstehen.de, funded by the Institute of Philosophy, (WiSe 2019/20 & WiSe 2020/21)

Publications (selection)

Monograph

• A. Krebber, Raising the Memory of Nature: Animals, Nonidentity and Enlightenment Thought, PhD dissertation, Christchurch: University of Canterbury, 2015(http://dx.doi.org/10.26021/4832).

Editorships

• M. Roscher, A. Krebber, B. Mizelle (eds.), Handbook of Historical Animal Studies, Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2021 (forthcoming).
• A. Krebber, Mieke Roscher (eds.), Animal Biography: Re-framing Animal Lives, London et al.: Palgrave Macmillan 2018.
• Research focus "Animal-Human Society" (eds.), Relationality, Bielefeld: transcript 2017.
• Research focus "Animal-Human Society" (eds.), Den Fährten folgen: Methods of interdisciplinary animal research, Bielefeld: transcript 2015.

Article

• A. Krebber, 'History of Ideas,' in M. Roscher, A. Krebber, B. Mizelle (eds.), Handbook of Historical Animal Studies, pp. 275-289, Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg (forthcoming).
• A. Krebber, 'Traces of the Other: Adorno on Natural Beauty,' New German Critique 47, 2 (2020): pp. 169-189 (doi: https://doi.org/10.1215/0094033X-8288181).

• A. Krebber, M. Riedinger, Y. Watt, 'Aesthetics and Imagining the Octopus's Minds,' open peer-commentary on Jennifer Mather, 'What is in an Octopus's Mind?', Animal Sentience 26(25) (2019): animalstudiesrepository.org/animsent/vol4/iss26/25/.

• A. Krebber, 'Washoe: Das Subjekt in der Tierforschung,' in M. Böhnert, K. Köchy, M. Wunsch (eds.), Philosophie der Tierforschung Vol. 3, pp. 187-220, Freiburg/München: Verlag Karl Alber 2018.
• A. Krebber, 'Negative Dialectics of Nature: From Nature's Death to New Materialisms,' in C. Novero (ed.), Of Rocks, Mushrooms and Animals: Material Ecocriticism in German-speaking Cultures, pp. 199-222, vol. 28, Otago German Studies, Dunedin: University of Otago 2017 (doi: 10.11157/ogs-vol28id299).
• A. Krebber, 'Reengaging Voices of Animal Suffering,' Food Ethics 1/3 (2017): pp. 273-282 (doi:10.1007/s41055-017-0012-6).
• A. Krebber, 'This Side of the Animal: A Commentary on Mimesis in Adorno,' Animal Studies 11 (2017): pp. 41-47.

Lectures (selection)

• 2020 Octopus I: New Materialisms and the Individual, 11th International New Materialisms Conference 'New Materialist Informatics: Computing and Worldmaking', University of Kassel, GER, 23-25 Mar
• 2019 Breaking the Spell of Identity: Animals at the End of Capitalism, Historical Materialism Conference at SOAS, University of London, UK, 7-10 Nov
• 2019Summerbirds of Indescribable Beauty: At the Margins of Merian's Metamorphosis-Pictures, International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology Conference 2019, University of Oslo, NO, 7-12 Jul
• 2019 Dialectics and Decolonizing Animal Knowledge, Decolonizing Animals, Australian Animal Studies Association, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, NZ, 1-4 Jul
• 2019 Descartes's Problem with Animals, hosted by Leeds Animal Studies Network, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, 16 May
• 2018 An End to Human History: Dialectics of the Anthropocene, Annual Meeting of the International Association of Environmental Philosophy, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA, 20-22 Oct
• 2018 Making Species: Sexual Attraction and Animal Agency, British Animal Studies Network Meeting 'Sex', University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, 27-28 Apr (Audio at www.britishanimalstudiesnetwork.org.uk/Portals/108/Krebber.MP3)