Thinking animals : why animal studies now? /

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Author / Creator:Weil, Kari.
Imprint:New York : Columbia University Press, ©2012.
Description:1 online resource (xxiv, 190 pages) : illustrations
Language:English
Subject:
Format: E-Resource Book
URL for this record:http://pi.lib.uchicago.edu/1001/cat/bib/11134060
Hidden Bibliographic Details
ISBN:9780231519847
0231519842
9780231148085
0231148089
9780231148092
0231148097
Notes:Includes bibliographical references and index.
English.
Summary:Animal studies has emerged as a major field within the humanities, despite its challenge to the very notion of the human" that shapes humanities scholarship. Kari Weil investigates the rise of animal studies and its singular reading of literature and philosophy through the lens of human-animal relations and difference, providing not only a critical introduction to the field but also an appreciation of its thrilling acts of destabilization. Weil explores the mechanisms we use to build knowledge of other animals, to understand ourselves in relation to other animals, and to represent.
Other form:Print version: Weil, Kari. Thinking animals. New York : Columbia University Press, ©2012 9780231148085
Review by Choice Review

Weil's book is a short, tightly argued presentation of the significance and direction of animal studies. Weil (Wesleyan Univ.) deftly synthesizes many of the important philosophical contributions in the field from the usual suspects--Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, Giorgio Agamben, Martin Heidegger, and Donna Haraway--in a clear but complex manner. Drawing primarily from literary and artistic examples, she demonstrates how animal studies provides a post-humanist rather than anti-humanist alternative to post-Enlightenment thought. Weil explores the ethical questions raised in philosophical treatments of animals in a set of texts addressing animal domesticity and animal death. She ends with an important provocation, suggesting that animal studies needs to turn to its ultimate promise, not just thinking with animals but thinking about animals, not just how animals are useful to humans but how humans might be useful to animals. Her final chapters suggest that the ethical and political challenge of animal studies must also be political, transforming how humans utilize the power they exercise on and with animals. Providing an accessible overview and casting new eyes on familiar literature, Weil makes a significant contribution to animal studies and critical theory. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduate, graduate, and research collections. C. E. Rasmussen University of Delaware

Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review