The main objective of the paper is to examine the three “mythico-ritual scenarios of the Wolf ” in Chechen culture: the lycomorphic mythical Ancestor, actualization of a primordial event and military initiation. Elements of these scenarios may be observed in the song Аварское село by the contemporary Chechen bard Timur Mutsuraev. The military initiation presented in the song re-actualizes the Chechen myth of the She-Wolf. The phenomenon of the wolfish identity of the Chechens and their struggle are analyzed in the context of Sigmund Freud’s category of das Unheimliche (the uncanny).

The article focuses on various strategies of artists who use live animals in their works. The author
presents several examples of works which, in many cases, raised a lot of controversies. His aim is not to judge, but to discuss different approaches, which have one thing in common: they all come from the tradition of conceptual or preconceptual art.

Marlen Haushofer’s novel, The Wall (Die Wand), published in 1963, elevated the author to fame, winning the admiration of readers and critics beyond the German-speaking world. As a result of a twist of fate she can neither grasp let alone understand, the heroine is cut off from the external world by an invisible obstacle – the titular wall. Behind it, human and animal life dies away, literally. She is the sole survivor of the catastrophe. From then on, she has to live in complete seclusion, left to her own devices and to fend for herself. Her only companions are a small group of animals giving sense to her existence. The sense of responsibility she feels for those living beings, her care for them, and the total isolation and sense of hopelessness become the determinants of her everyday life. This paper aims to present the main character’s uncommonness
of daily living conveyed by the title and caused by an unexpected disaster. It seems important to investigate the protagonist’s attempts to reconstruct her own social space, where human interactions are replaced by interactions with animals. It is no less important to investigate her survival strategies, which are based on the strategies she had known before the disaster. The character has to take on a new role in a new reality that turns out to be a kind of reflection of her previous social role. This paper attempts to review the established social rules which had to become devalued to a certain extent when the character was faced with a radical change. Haushofer’s work can also be interpreted as a parable of the present time, in which fear of what is unknown (a disaster, a war, a pandemic) determines the way that the individual lives day by day. This paper is based primarily on the source text, namely M. Haushofer’s The Wall, and the analysis in this paper refers to feminist discourse, ecocriticism and animal studies.

According to Rosi Braidotti, insects are determined by their in-between-ness and continuous becoming. The paper analyses the assemblage of insect figurations on two levels: non-human technology and unnatural narrative in stories about a transformation. Following Jussi Parikka’s media archaeology research, becoming-insect is examined on transmedial examples from literature (Franz Kafka—The Metamorphosis), film (David
Cronenberg—The Fly), video games and VR (All in! Games—Metamorphosis) and networked media. According to Jan Alber, exploration beyond human stances and defamiliarization in narrative fiction leads to the shift of cognitive frameworks. Radically Other insects transgress the anthropocentric paradigm and execute posthuman assumptions by a hybrid entanglement with humans and machines.

The subject of this analysis is what the life conditions of farm animals in the Polish People’s Republic looked like and how they were reflected in professional discourse. My main aim is to show how good practices in husbandry were understood before the rise of the notion of animal welfare. As I demonstrate, their evolution was strictly linked with rhetorical changes in the discourse. I delineate the main material-discursive historical shifts that shaped further breeding practices.

Our aim in this study is to demonstrate a mutual relationship between the classes of signs, mechanisms of learning, and types of the umwelt. This is necessary in order to describe and understand the animal ways of meaning-making in the context of various forms of semiosis. We assume that semiosis only occurs in the present, in the subjective Now. An account of the linkage of vegetative, animal, social, and cultural umwelten with corresponding classes of signs and mechanisms of learning (imprinting, conditioning, imitating, conventioning) is provided. We also formulate two general rules of semiotic development that characterise the ontogeny of the umwelt.

In the author’s opinion, locusts mentioned in the Book of Revelation by no means represent the
species of common insects classified in the family Acrididae, also known from the Book of Exodus and its description of the plagues of Egypt. As far as the locusts in the Old Testament are concerned, they were a destructive force completely in line with their biological nature; however, the “locusts” in Saint John’s vision are depicted rather as smart micro-robots created by wielders of highly advanced technologies – most probably by extraterrestrials. The author claims that Saint John, limited by the then state of knowledge about the universe, was unable to express his thoughts in the categories of advanced technologies; therefore, he found names and images for his visions, which were understandable primarily to himself. Hence, the comparison of nanotechnological “insects” to locusts and scorpions the apostle was familiar with, as these animals are native to the area where he lived, and he must have been well aware of their natural habits.

The article discusses regulations concerning the crimes of killing and abusing animals in the Polish legal system. The provisions of the Regulation of the President of the Republic of Poland of March 22, 1928 and the Act on the Protection of Animals of August 21, 1997 are analyzed. The following topics are discussed: the history of the provisions on crimes against animals, the subject of protection of the provisions of the Act on the Protection of Animals, along with considerations regarding the subjectivity of animals. The subject-matter of crimes that fall within this category is also considered, i.e., a description of the premises which make it possible to classify a given act as a crime. The subject of prohibited acts as well as the subjective side in the form of the perpetrator’s motivation are analyzed as well.

The text is a review of Aleksandra Ubertowska’s book, Historie biotyczne. Pomiędzy estetyką a geo­traumą [Biotic histories. Between aesthetics and geotrauma]. The starting point becomes the biocentric lens applied by the researcher and the geo­story behind it. Equally interesting and important are the possibilities of ecocritical theories in interpretation and their application in the Polish ground.