Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory

Book Description
In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism and ethics by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Lévinas, Derrida, Žižek, Maturana, and Varela. Through detailed readings of how discourses of race, sexuality, colonialism, and animality interact in twentieth-century American culture, Wolfe explores what it means, in theory and critical practice, to take seriously "the question of the animal."



From the Inside Flap
In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism and ethics by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Lévinas, Derrida, Žižek, Maturana, and Varela. Through detailed readings of how discourses of race, sexuality, colonialism, and animality interact in twentieth-century American culture, Wolfe explores what it means, in theory and critical practice, to take seriously "the question of the animal."



About the Author
Cary Wolfe is a professor of English at the University at Albany, SUNY. He is the author, most recently, of Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the "Outside" and the editor of Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal.



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Now that supposedly distinguishing marks of humanity, from reasoning to tool use, have been found in other species, how can we justify discriminating against nonhuman animals solely on the basis of their species? And how must cultural studies and critical practices change to do justice to "others" who are not human? In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism, ethics, and animals by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Le vinas, Derrida, Z iZ ek, Maturana, and Varela. Through detailed readings of how discourses of race, sexuality, colonialism, and animality interact in twentieth-century American culture--Hemingway's fiction, the film The Silence of the Lambs, Michael Crichton's novel Congo--Wolfe explores what it would mean, in theory and critical practice, to take seriously "the question of the animal." A pathbreaking contribution to discussions of posthumanism, Animal Rites will interest readers in a wide range of fields, from science and literature to philosophy and ethics, from animal rights and ecology to literary theory and criticism.


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