Seeing Animals after Derrida

Edited by Sarah Bezan and James Tink - Contributions by José Alaniz; David Brooks; Megan E. Cannella; Bonnie Gill; David Huebert; Nicole Mennell; Malin Palani; Rodolfo Piskorski; Gavin Rae and Kirsten Strom

This volume charts a new course in animal studies that re-examines Jacques Derrida's enduring thought on the visualization of the animal in his seminal Cerisy Conference from 1997, The Animal That Therefore I Am. Building new proximities with the animal in and through - and at times in spite of - the visual apparatus, Seeing Animals after Derrida investigates how the recent turn in animal studies toward new materialism, speculative realism, and object-oriented ontology prompts a renewed engagement with Derrida's animal philosophy. In taking up the matter of Derrida's treatment of animality for the current epoch, the contributors to this book each present a case for new philosophical approaches and aesthetic paradigms that challenge the ocularcentrism of Western culture.

Lexington Books

Pages: 272 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-4059-9 • Hardback • November 2017 • $122.00 • (£94.00)

978-1-4985-4060-5 • eBook • November 2017 • $115.50 • (£89.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Nature, Science / Life Sciences / Ecology, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory

Seeing Animals after Derrida

Hardback

eBook

Summary

This volume charts a new course in animal studies that re-examines Jacques Derrida's enduring thought on the visualization of the animal in his seminal Cerisy Conference from 1997, The Animal That Therefore I Am. Building new proximities with the animal in and through - and at times in spite of - the visual apparatus, Seeing Animals after Derrida investigates how the recent turn in animal studies toward new materialism, speculative realism, and object-oriented ontology prompts a renewed engagement with Derrida's animal philosophy. In taking up the matter of Derrida's treatment of animality for the current epoch, the contributors to this book each present a case for new philosophical approaches and aesthetic paradigms that challenge the ocularcentrism of Western culture.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 272 • Trim: 6¼ x 9½

978-1-4985-4059-9 • Hardback • November 2017 • $122.00 • (£94.00)

978-1-4985-4060-5 • eBook • November 2017 • $115.50 • (£89.00)

Series: Ecocritical Theory and Practice

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Subjects & Themes / Nature, Science / Life Sciences / Ecology, Literary Criticism / Critical Theory / Ecocritical Theory

Author

Sarah Bezan is PhD candidate in English at the University of Alberta.

James Tink is associate professor in the Department of English Literature at Tohoku University, Sendai.

Table of Contents

Introduction Seeing Animals - Sarah Bezan & James Tink

Part One: New Orientations in Derrida’s Philosophy
The Wolves of the World: Derrida on the Political Symbolism of the Beast and the Sovereign - Gavin Rae
The Loaded Cat - David Brooks

Part Two: Posthumous Encounters
“The Most Famous Dog in History”: Mourning the Animot in Abadzis’ Laika - José Alaniz
The Anterior Animal: Derrida, Deep Time, and Immersive Vision of Paleoartist Julius Csotonyi - Sarah Bezan
“The Dignity of Mankind”: Edward Tyson’s Anatomy of a Pygmie and the Ape-Man Boundary - Nicole Mennell

Part Three: Beyond Ocularcentrism
Chris Marker’s Alter Egos: The Camera and the Cat - Bonnie Gill
Scenting Wild: Olfactory Panic and Jack London’s Ocular Dogs - David Huebert
Do Androids Dream of Derrida’s Cat? The Unregulated Emotion of Animals in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Megan E. Cannella

Part Four: New Arrivals
Be/Holding Each Other: Transgenic Invisibilities, Anomaly, and Subjectivity in the GFP Bunny Project - Malin Palani
The Surreal Gaze of the Animal Other: Uncanny Encounters in Magritte and Buñel - Kirsten Strom
Becoming Animal and the Two Meanings of Animality: A Derridean Reading of Black Swan - Rodolfo Piskorski
Approaching Apocalypse: The Typology of Animals in Nicola Barker’s In the Approaches - James Tink