Cosmopolitan Animals

by Nagai, Kaori; Jones, Karen; Landry, Donna; Mattfeld, Monica; Rooney, Caroline; Sleigh, Charlotte

• ISBN13: 9781137376275
• ISBN10: 1137376279
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2015-08-28
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

In what ways can we conceptualise cosmopolitanisms which are not solely human? What does it take to embrace other animals as fellow creatures; where and how are such relationships made possible?

With a preface by Donna Haraway, Cosmopolitan Animals is the first edited collection to place the question of animals at the centre of cosmopolitical inquiry. Drawing upon recent scholarship on cosmopolitanism and animal studies, the volume asks what new possibilities and permutations of cosmopolitanism can emerge by taking seriously our sharing, co-existing and 'becoming-with' animals. Edited by a team of six, and featuring chapters by leading scholars from a wide range of disciplines, this collective effort examines knots of human-animal relationships from different angles. It is argued that animals are important players in cosmopolitics, and that worldliness is far from being a human monopoly.

Author Biography

Kaori Nagai is an Honorary Research Associate at the University of Kent. She is the author of Empire of Analogies: Kipling, India and Ireland (2006), and the editor of Kipling and Beyond: Patriotism, Globalisation and Postcolonialism (co-editor; Palgrave, 2012) and Dream Writing (2008).

Karen Jones is a specialist in environmental history, with particular interest in parks and landscape, conservation, history and animals. She has written on the American West, wolves in Yellowstone, arks and garden and culture of history.

Donna Landry is Professor of English and American Literature at the University of Kent and a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. She is the author, co-author, or co-editor of six books, including Noble Brutes: How Eastern Horses Transformed English Culture (2008).

Monica Mattfeld is an Instructor at the University of British Columbia, specializing in the literature of the long eighteenth century. She has written widely on the role of horses and the question of animal performance.

Caroline Rooney is Professor of African and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Kent. She is also a Global Uncertainties Leadership Fellow (ESRC/AHRC), responsible for two programmes under this scheme. Her books include: African Literature, Animism and Politics and Decolonising Gender: Literature and a Poetics of the Real.

Charlotte Sleigh is Reader and Director of the Centre for the History of the Sciences at the University of Kent. Her books include Ant (2003), Six Legs Better: A Cultural History of Myrmecology (2007) and Frog (2012). She is learning to speak Chicken.

Table of Contents

Introduction; Kaori Nagai
PART I: COSMOPOLITICS
Introduction; Donna Landry
1. A Time After Copernicus; Simon Glendinning
2. The Cynic As Cosmopolitan Animal; Andrea Haslanger
3. 'Only A Spectacle': Frogs, Cosmopolitics And The Ecological Crisis; Charlotte Sleigh
4. Animal Religion And Cosmonautical Allegories; Caroline Rooney
PART II: HOSPITALITY
Introduction; Charlotte Sleigh
5. Death-Traps In The Flyways: Electricity, Glass, And Bird Collisions In Urban North America, 1887-2014; Nadia Berenstein
6. The Bullfight In 21st Century Spain: Polemics Of Culture, Art And Ethics
7. Sun-Chieh Liang, Hospitable Animals; Mª Verónica De Haro De San Mateo And Garry Marvin
8. Gandhi's Animal Experiments; Julietta Singh
PART III: COMPANIONSHIP
Introduction; Karen Jones
9. Becoming Wormy, Becoming Worldly: Parasitic Nematodes As Companion Species; David Andrew Griffiths
10. Baboon Cosmopolitanism: More-Than-Human Moralities In A Multi-Species Community; Samantha Hurn
11. Hounds, Hunting And The Canine-Human Alliance; Karen Jones
12. Horse-Human Companionship: Creaturely Cosmopolitanism Across Eurasia; Donna Landry
PART IV: THE POSTCOLONIAL
Introduction; Kaori Nagai And Caroline Rooney
13. Iguanas And Enemy Combatants: Reconsidering Cosmopolitanism Through Guantanamo's Creaturely Lives; Terri Tomsky
14. Violent Encounters: 'Stray' Dogs In Indian Cities; Anuradha Ramanujan
15. The Beast In The Chinese Boxes: The Jungle Books As An Imperial Beast-Fable; Kaori Nagai