Overview

Animals have been subjects and objects of an ageless discourse in Western culture, which seeks through reincarnations, metamorphoses and philosophical vision to define the human and the animal and the nature of the border that separates the two. At a moment in history when the human being is about to be replaced by the machine, there is a blurring of the old line separating humans from animals. There is a desire to look for human uniqueness in the animal body, not the rational mind; a desire to re-examine the historical record in search of a lost tradition of zoomorphic shamans, trainers, poets and philosophers. Animal Acts records the history of that fluctuating boundary between animals and humans as expressed in literary, philosophical and scientific texts, but also in the visual arts and historical practices such as dissections, the hunt, zoo construction, and circus acts. Against a general background of the progressive exclusion of animals from human space and consciousness since the Enlightenment, the essays document a persistent return of animality, a becoming animal that has always existed within and at the margins of Western culture from the Middle Ages to the present. Essays on Marie de France, Boccaccio, Rabelais, La Fontaine, Schelling, Nietzsche, Flaubert, Kafka, Audubon, E.B. White, Levinas, Derrida, Heidegger, Dian Fossey and Gary Larson trace the lineage of those who have sought to enact the animal: to mime, tame, research, befriend and capture the beast within. Contributors include: Karla Armbruster, James Armstrong, David Clark, Tom Conley, Paul Fry, Jennifer Ham, Marie-Helene Huet, Dennis Minahen, Joyce Salisbury, Marian Scholtmeijer, Matthew Senior and Gregory Stone.

Full Product Details

Author:   Jennifer Ham ,  Matthew Senior
Publisher:   Taylor & Francis Ltd
Imprint:   Routledge
Edition:   annotated edition
Dimensions:   Width: 15.20cm , Height: 2.10cm , Length: 22.90cm
Weight:   0.657kg
ISBN:  

9780415916097

ISBN 10:   0415916097
Pages:   270
Publication Date:   01 April 1997
Audience:   College/higher education ,  General/trade ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  General
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

"Introduction 1. Human Beasts and Bestial Humans in the Middle Ages 2. The Philosophical Beast: On Boccaccio’s Tale of Cimone 3. Pantagruel-Animal 4. ""When the Beasts Spoke"": Animal Speech and Classical Reason in Descartes and La Fontaine 5. Revolutionary Monsters 6. Audubon’s Ornithological Biography and the Question of ""Other Minds"" 7. What Is ""Human""? Metaphysics and Zoontology in Flaubert and Kafka 8. Taming the Beast: Animality in Wedekind and Nietzsche, 9. On Being 'The Last Kantian in Nazi Germany"": Dwelling with Animals after Levinas 10. Animal Speech, Active Verbs, and Material Being in E. B. White 11. ""Surely, God, These Are My Kin"": The Dynamics of Identity and Advocacy in the Life and Works of Dian Fossey 12. Humanimals and Anihumans in Gary Larson's Gallery of the Absurd"

Reviews

The volume contains impressively scholarly essays....an altogether interesting...collection. <br>- New Comparison <br> An acute sensitivity about the subjugated status of animals, that is, an ethical consciousness, informs the essays. <br>- Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences <br>

The volume contains impressively scholarly essays....an altogether interesting...collection. - New Comparison An acute sensitivity about the subjugated status of animals, that is, an ethical consciousness, informs the essays. - Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences

Author Information

Jennifer Ham, Matthew Senior

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