%0 Journal Article
%T Intellectual and Academic Identity of Animal Studies: An Introduction
%A Koryl, Jakub
%J Wielogłos
%V 2018
%N Issue 1 (35) 2018: Otwarcia: zwierzęta i ich zwierzęcości
%P 1-13
%K animal studies, animality, posthumanism, phenomenology, hermeneutics
%@ 1897-1962
%D 2018
%U https://ejournals.eu/en/journal/wieloglos/article/intelektualna-i-akademicka-tozsamosc-animal-studies-wprowadzenie
%X 
	Intellectual and Academic Identity of Animal Studies: An Introduction

	This article aims at a preliminary reflection upon the question of what animal studies are, in terms of their somewhat unprecedented subject matter and nomadic academic status. Consequently, it provides neither a history of animal studies nor a survey of recent trends or academic or political achievements. The article asks four questions about the intellectual assumptions and foundations of animal studies, namely, about the domains, lines, instruments and purposes of thought of this discipline. All this leads to a phenomenological description of a thinking which is finally capable of discovering and considering the animality of non-human animals on its own terms, instead of regarding it only as an aspect of humanity, its counterpart or antithesis. The article argues that right up until Husserl and Heidegger, different variants of Western metaphysics and the fixed confines of fields of academic studies constantly prevented thinking from grasping the essentially diversified animalities. Therefore also animal studies would have been nothing but an unfeasible project. Nowadays, regardless of their socio-

	-political implications and journalistic appeal, animal studies, being first and foremost a matter of thinking, remain an extremely challenging task.