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

Cary Wolfe

University of Chicago Press, Feb 1, 2003 - Nature - 237 pages

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."

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

User Review  - Jennifer - Goodreads

I think this is one of those books that I will re-read periodically, as my own experience and philosophical reference grows. Wolfe synthesizes philosophy, activism, and cross-disciplinary studies ...

Contents

• Introduction: 1
• PART ONE: 19
• Old Orders for New Ecology Animal Rights and the Poverty of Humanism: 21
• In The Shadow of Wittgensteins Lion Language Ethics and the Question of the Animal: 44
• PART TWO: 95
• Subject to Sacrifice Ideology Psychoanalysis and the Discourse of Species in Jonathan Demmes The Silence of the Lambs with Jonathan Elmer: 97
• Aficionados and Friend Killers Rearticulating Race and Gender via Species in Hemingway: 122
• Faux Posthumanism The Discourse of Species and the Neocolonial Project in Michael Crichtons Congo: 169
• Postmodern Ethics the Question of the Animal and the Imperatives of Posthumanist Theory: 190
• Notes: 209
• Index: 233

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.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory
• Author: Cary Wolfe
• Edition: 2
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 2003
• ISBN: 0226905136, 9780226905136
• Length: 237 pages
• Subjects: Nature / Animal Rights; Nature / Animals / General; Philosophy / General