Paper short abstract:

This paper considers how ecobiography can reframe the subject-historian-reader relationship. With reference to my research on the animal-human history of Victorian vegetarians, I seek to explain how this method can engage both emotions and ideas.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper I will argue that the micro-historical approach of biography makes it particularly suitable as a means through which to recover the co-constitution of our subject’s lives and thoughts through their being-in more-than-human worlds. Throughout, I will illustrate my points by drawing on examples from my PhD research into the animal lives of three largely forgotten Victorian vegetarians.

In the first part of the paper, I will discuss my theoretical grounding of such an approach within a phenomenological ontology as a basis for historical investigation, drawing the parallels between co-constitution and intersubjectivity but also animal-human interagency. Moreover, I’ll gesture towards how this might complicate the subject-historian-reader relationship and how, as a historian, I see my methods as at least partly informed by my subjects themselves. In the second part, I will seek to explain how, as a methodological approach, biography is best placed to analyse the emotional history of subjects and how emotions ought to be put into conversation with intellectual productions. Finally, I will seek to end my paper with some impressions about the place of biography within history (being a method that has long been eschewed by historians): in particular, what is the place of emotions within the act of history writing?