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Zoontologies

The Question of the Animal

2003
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Cary Wolfe, editor

Zoontologies

Explores the boundaries between the animal and the human—includes an original essay by Jacques Derrida

Those nonhuman beings called animals pose questions that go to the root not just of what we think but of who we are. Including an original essay by Jacques Derrida, Zoontologies explores how these issues have been represented in contemporary culture and theory.

Contributors: Steve Baker, Jacques Derrida, Ursula K. Heise, Charlie LeDuff, Alphonso Lingis, Paul Patton, Judith Roof, David Wills.

Zoontologies is a fascinating volume of current philosophical, theoretical, and cultural explorations of animality, animal subjectivity, and the premises behind the ethical treatment of animals.

—

Margot Norris, author of Beasts of the Modern Imagination: Darwin, Nietzsche, Kafka, Ernst, and Lawrence

Those nonhuman beings called animals pose philosophical and ethical questions that go to the root not just of what we think but of who we are. Their presence asks: what happens when the Other can no longer safely be assumed to be human? This collection offers a set of incitements and coordinates for exploring how these issues have been represented in contemporary culture and theory, from Jurassic Park and the “horse whisperer” Monty Roberts, to the work of artists such as Joseph Beuys and William Wegman; from foundational texts on the animal in the works of Heidegger and Freud, to the postmodern rethinking of ethics and animals in figures such as Singer, Deleuze, Lyotard, and Levinas; from the New York Times investigation of a North Carolina slaughterhouse, to the first appearance in any language of Jacques Derrida’s recent detailed critique of Lacan’s rendering of the human/animal divide.

Contributors: Steve Baker, U of Central Lancashire; Jacques Derrida, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris; Ursula K. Heise, Columbia U; Charlie LeDuff, New York Times; Alphonso Lingis, Pennsylvania State U; Paul Patton, U of Sydney; Judith Roof, Michigan State U; David Wills, SUNY, Albany.

Zoontologies

Cary Wolfe is professor of English at the State University of New York, Albany. He is the author of Critical Environments (Minnesota, 1998).

Zoontologies

Zoontologies is a fascinating volume of current philosophical, theoretical, and cultural explorations of animality, animal subjectivity, and the premises behind the ethical treatment of animals.

—

Margot Norris, author of Beasts of the Modern Imagination: Darwin, Nietzsche, Kafka, Ernst, and Lawrence

This sophisticated collection of essays achieves an admirable balance between theoretical rigor and imaginative suggestion as it confronts the epistemological challenges involved in moving beyond the metaphysical boundaries that have inhibited serious questioning of the animal.

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Christopher Fynsk, Binghamton University

Those nonhuman beings called animals pose philosophical and ethical questions that go to the root not just of what we think but of who we are. This collection offers a set of incitements and coordinates for exploring how these issues have been represented in contemporary culture and theory.

—

Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society

This collection of writings is thus not intended as a comprehensive overview of the animal in contemporary theory and culture, a futile gesture by any standards, but to provide ‘a set of co-ordinates’ for exploring further the question of the animal.

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Parallax

Zoontologies

Contents

Introduction Cary Wolfe

In the Shadow of Wittgenstein’s Lion: Language,Ethics,and the Question of the Animal Cary Wolfe
From Extinction to Electronics: Dead Frogs,Live Dinosaurs, and Electric Sheep Ursula K. Heise
Language,Power,and the Training of Horses Paul Patton
From Protista to DNA (and Back Again): Freud’s
Psychoanalysis of the Single-Celled Organism Judith Roof
And Say the Animal Responded? Jacques Derrida
Sloughing the Human Steve Baker
Animal Body,Inhuman Face Alphonso Lingis
At a Slaughterhouse,Some Things Never Die Charlie LeDuff

Contributors

Index