Animals and the Human Imagination

by Gross, Aaron; Vallely, Anne; Foer, Jonathan Safran; Doniger, Wendy (CON)

• ISBN13: 9780231152976
• ISBN10: 0231152973
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2012-05-15
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

Human beings have long imagined their subjectivity, ethics, and ancestry with and through animals, yet not until the mid-twentieth century did contemporary thought reflect critically on animals' significance in human self-conception. Thinkers such as French philosopher Jacques Derrida, South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, and American theorist Donna Haraway have initiated rigorous inquiries into the question of the animal, now blossoming in a number of directions. It is no longer strange to say that if animals did not exist, we would have to invent them. This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collection reflects the growth of animal studies as an independent field and the rise of "animality" as a critical lens through which to analyze society and culture, on par with race and gender. Essays center on the role of animals in the human imagination and the imagination of the human, a discourse that has evolved in tandem with discussions of--and more robust concern for--animals in popular culture. They consider the worldviews of several indigenous peoples, animal-human mythology in early modern China, and political uses of the animal in postcolonial India. They engage with the theoretical underpinnings of the animal protection movement, representations of animals in children's literature, the depiction of animals in contemporary art, and the philosophical positioning of the animal from Aristotle to Heidegger. The strength of this companion lies in its timeliness and contextual diversity, which makes it essential reading for students and researchers while further developing the parameters of the discipline.

Author Biography

Aaron Gross is a professor of theology and religious studies at the University of San Diego. Anne Vallely is a professor of religious studies at the University of Ottawa. Jonathan Safran Foer is the author of Eating Animals, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and Everything is Illuminated. Wendy Doniger is Mircea Eliade Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Religions at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. IX
Acknowledgments	p. XIII
Introduction and Overview: Animal Others and Animal Studies	p. 1
Other Animals: Animals Across Cultures	p. 25
Hunting and Gathering as Ways of Perceiving the Environment	p. 31
On Yeti and Being Just: Carving the Borders of Humanity in Early Modern China	p. 55
Pastoral Power in the Postcolony: On the Biopolitics of the Criminal Animal in South India	p. 79
Animal Matters: Human/Animal and the Contemporary West	p. 113
Discipline and Distancing: Confined Pigs in the Factory Farm Gulag	p. 121
Boys Gone Wild: The Animal and the Abject	p. 152
Animal Heroes and Transforming Substances: Canine Characters in Contemporary Children's Literature	p. 174
The Making of a Wilderness Icon: Green Fire, Charismatic Species, and the Changing Status of Wolves in the United States	p. 203
Thinking with Surfaces: Animals and Contemporary Art	p. 238
Animal Others: Theorizing Animal/Human	p. 259
Being with Animals: Reconsidering Heidegger's Animal Ontology	p. 265
Heidegger and the Dog Whisperer: Imagining Interspecies Kindness	p. 289
The Lives of Animals: Wittgenstein, Coetzee, and the Extent of the Sympathetic Imagination	p. 307
Animal, All Too Animal: Blood Music and an Ethic of Vulnerability	p. 331
Epilogue: Making Animals Vanish	p. 349
Contributors	p. 355
Index	p. 36I
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