Cary Wolfe

This article examines American philosopher Cary Wolfe’s considerations on the need to redefine the notion of ‘posthuman’. The analysis is focused on the reflection over the difference between humanitas and animalitas and, in the general theoretical framework, its epistemological effects related to the study of life. Moving from some paradigmatic positions emerged in the recent American debate concerning the possibility of delineating a political perspective for the posthuman, the author points out how the reformulation of the term ‘posthuman’ in ‘posthumanism’ may represent an alternative way to the opposition between normative essentialism and aporetical critic.

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Table of Contents

1. In the beginnings: introducing Poetics of Deconstruction
2. The Animal Cure: inhaling the other in Dean Spanley
3. Raising Animals: between the basement and the kennel in The Woman
4. Speculations: gesture in Conceiving Ada and Absent Presence      
5. ‘Unfamiliar Unconscious’: the performativity of Infinity Kisses
6. Outlaws: towards a posthumanist feminine in Dancer in the Dark
7. In Lieu of Conclusion: cardiopedagogy in White God

In Poetics of Deconstruction, Lynn Turner develops an intimate attention to independent films, art, and the psychoanalyses by which they might make sense other than under continued license of the subject that calls himself man. Drawing extensively from Jacques Derrida's philosophy in precise dialogue with feminist thought, animal studies and posthumanism, this book explores the vulnerability of the living as rooted in non-oppositional differences. From abjection to mourning, to the speculative and the performative, it reposes concepts and buzzwords seemingly at home in feminist theory, visual culture and the humanities more broadly. Stepping away from the carno-phallogocentric legacies of the signifier and the dialectic, Poetics of Deconstruction asks you to welcome nonpower into politics, always sexual but no longer anchored in sacrifice.

Język, nierozerwalnie związany z rozumnością, traktowany jest w większości nowożytnych teorii polityki jako to, co określa człowieka i stanowi podstawę uspołecznienia. Echo tego pobrzmiewa w stwierdzeniu Jacques’a Rancière’a, że polityka – stanowiąca zawsze interwencję w nieegalitarny porządek w imię równości, biorąca w rachubę tych, którzy się nie liczą – ustanawia równość istot mówiących. Równość ta, która staje się widoczna w każdej politycznej interwencji, stanowi zarazem warunek możliwości polityki – tylko byty mówiące mogą się w nią angażować. Wydaje się więc z definicji obejmować tylko ludzi: zwierzęta, jako nieme, z konieczności nigdy nie będą się liczyć.
Nie jest to jednak oczywiste. Powiedzenie, że zwierzęta mówią (czyli myślą), oznacza zrewidowanie naszych poglądów na to, co znaczy mówić i myśleć. Chodzi tu przede wszystkim o zwierzęta i ich dobro – ale także o nas. Jesteśmy w końcu również zwierzętami i najwyższy czas, żeby to stwierdzenie przestało budzić oburzenie jako wyraz naturalistycznego redukcjonizmu.

This essay offers an account of what I call “a vegan form of life”. Reflecting on a moment when a vegan meal was presented to me as “your lesbian food” I begin with a critique the concept of species, drawing on Judith Butler’s deconstruction of the sex/gender opposition. Social life, I argue, is shaped by “compulsory humanity,” a disposition in which species functions is a regulatory ideal rather than a biological essence. I work this critical stance into a positive description of being vegan by turning to Ludwig Wittgenstein’s concept of the “form of life,” and the way his thought is developed in relation to animal ethics in the work of Stanley Cavell, Cora Diamond and Cary Wolfe. My claim is that thinking of veganism as a form of life allows for making sense of the profound form of identification with others that it expresses, one which evades and challenges the very notion of being human.

While it is Derrida's late work on the 'animal question' that brought his insistence on limitrophy between species to wider attention, it is also named as the general condition of the limits in the much earlier text, 'Tympan'. There, in dislocating the tympanum, the margins of philosophy are eaten. Equally, given the rhythmic address of the tympanum, we might say that the margins of philosophy are beaten.

Utilizzando come attivatore di ogni capitolo una "specie harawaiana", Federica Timeto nel suo Bestiario Haraway (Mimesis 2020) analizza e mette a sistema il pensiero di Donna Haraway a partire da una serie di figure zoo-tecnomorfe che hanno accompagnato e inquadrato il lavoro dell'autrice americana in maniera organica nella sua costante mutazione. Create PDF in your applications with the Pdfcrowd HTML to PDF API PDFCROWD

A chapter in KENNETH BURKE + THE POSTHUMAN ed. Chris Mays, Nathaniel Rivers, and Kellie Sharp-Hoskins, Penn State UP. This book is part of Penn State's "RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetorics."

While posthumanism is widely discussed today, so is the Anthropocene. What tends to pass without commentary is the irony of the coexistence of the two. As posthumanism continues decentering the human being, it appears that our geological epoch will be named after humankind. Indeed, talk of the Anthropocene is becoming the elephant in the room, but it needs to build on posthumanism, not abandon it, just as posthumanism needs to join the Anthropocene conceptually or risk marginalizing itself. The time is ripe for posthumanism to evolve into Anthropocenic posthumanism.
    My argument for this new posthumanism consists of four parts. Posthumanism (first part) is reoriented toward Anthropocenic posthumanism (fourth part) through the intervention of Burke's concept of counter-nature. Counter-nature theorized the Anthropocene avant la lettre (second part). It also prompted Burke's self-revision in his 1983 afterwords for the third editions of Permanence and Change (1935) and Attitudes Toward History (1937); in turn, this self-revision enriched the theorizing of the Anthropocene (third part), providing a framework for reorienting posthumanism.

There are two main axes concerning “The Animal Question” in philosophy: the Anglo-American (Bentham, Singer, Regan, Clark…) approach and the Continental approach (Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Derrida, Deleuze…). This article aims to deal with the question ontologically in order to reach proper ethical and political consequences through paths in the History of Thinking. The paper therefore intends to reinterpret the Human-Animal indiscernibility zone.

Reviewed by DAVID HEINIMANN Recently, "ecophobia" has arisen as a debilitating problematic for ecocriticism. The fear is over performative incapacity. A major aspect of that fear is the sketchy scientific understanding among some ecocritics. Stewart Cohen's Climate Change in the 21 st Century can help remedy that. Cohen is a professor of forestry at the University of British Columbia and, more ISSUE 8 FALL 2010