CFP: Benjamin's Animals. Figurations of the Animal

The Leibniz Centre for Literary and Cultural Research (Berlin) will be hosting a workshop focused on Walter Benjamin and Animals. VAS' own Carlo Salzani will be giving the keynote presentation, which is tentatively titled Bestial Relationships: Benjamin’s Animals Between Shame and Redemption. If this workshop is of interest consider applying. The deadline for applications is 31 May 2026. Below you can find all the details of the call, all of which have been directly taken from their website.

Workshop, December 3–4, 2026, Leibniz Centre for Literary and Cultural Research (Berlin)

Organization: Daniel Gönitzer (University of Vienna) & Melanie Konrad (Vienna)

Description (taken from ZFL website): The workshop is funded by the "Walter Benjamin Prize for Young Researchers" and supported by the Walter Benjamin Archive (Berlin), the Leibniz Centre for Literary and Cultural Research (Berlin) and the International Walter Benjamin Society.

Only one photograph of Walter Benjamin with an animal exists—it shows him in Heringsdorf in 1896, as a four-year-old on a donkey—yet animals appear in his texts with surprising consistency and in great diversity. They appear as childhood playmates, as hybrid beings at the thresholds of human identity, perception, and imagination, as ironic counter-images to technological progress, as media figures, and as melancholic companions of historical consciousness. Despite this abundance, Benjamin's engagement with the animal has not yet been explored as a coherent thematic field. This workshop aims to systematically examine the figures, constellations, and thought processes of the animal for the first time and to explore the role of the animal as an epistemological and poetological figure of thought in Benjamin's work.

Benjamin's early observation that children are far more drawn to talking and acting animals than to moralizing texts points to a form of knowledge beyond didactic discipline. From Bertuch's picture book for children to Benjamin's studies of children's literature and his radio work, it becomes clear: animals are mediators of playful discovery. In his Berlin childhood, butterflies, dogs, or the otter mark thresholds of perception, places of uncertainty and productive irritation where the objective world, imagination, and experience merge.

Animal figures also appear elsewhere as agents of critical sensitivity. In his short prose collection One-Way Street , Benjamin speaks of the "dark instinct" of animals to seek escape routes in dangerous situations. This image serves him as a counterpoint to rationalized perception and as a metaphor for resistant presence of mind. Particularly revealing are Benjamin's encounters with hybrid beings that blur the boundary between human and animal. The eccentric animal-human figures of J.J. Grandville or the disfigured creatures of Franz Kafka subvert stable concepts of identity and model transformation as a mode of thought.

Benjamin's engagement with animals in the contemporary media landscape also deserves special attention: from the zoo animals that become "speaking" through Kasperl's translation work on the radio, to the early Mickey Mouse cartoons. In the blurring of boundaries between bodies, Benjamin recognizes both the destructive power of modern technology and its utopian comedy: the possibility of satirizing humanity without negating it.

Finally, animals appear in the book on the tragedy in the form of the "Saturnian beasts" as a melancholic allegory of the historical process. They represent the enigmatic, the veiled, the forgotten, and thus Benjamin's engagement with historicity.

Benjamin's works are permeated by animal figures that serve as epistemic agents. They structure his reflections on perception, technology, history, and language. It is precisely this intertwining of aesthetics, anthropology, and media reflection that makes him a key author for interdisciplinary debates. Animal studies, ecocriticism, and posthumanism seek alternative models of subjectivity, relation, and mediality. Benjamin offers theoretical resources and concepts here—without himself being a posthumanist—such as creatureliness, mimicry, distinctions between human and divine language, and non-anthropocentric models of perception.

The workshop aims to identify which texts support these considerations. In particular, the following research questions will be pursued:

• To what extent do animal figures, does the animalistic aspect of Benjamin's work, have epistemic functions?

• How do animal figures function as markers of play, danger, mediumship, or melancholy?

• What perspectives does Benjamin's concept of the animal open up for contemporary research, which is increasingly engaged in dialogue with animal studies, eco-criticism, media anthropology, and posthumanism?

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The workshop is designed for 12–15 participants. Both days will include panel discussions, shared readings of Benjamin's works, and other activities. To ensure the workshop-like atmosphere, the focus will be on group discussions.

Interested individuals are invited to submit proposals for short presentations (15–20 min) in the form of a brief thematic outline (approx. 300 words) and their short bio (max. 150 words) by May 31, 2026 to daniel.goenitzer@univie.ac.at and melanie.konrad@protonmail.com .

Presentations can be given in German or English; the working language is German. Please indicate in your submission whether you require travel expense support.