Outside the Anthropological Machine: Crossing the Human-Animal Divide and Other Exit Strategies

Description

In the midst of the climate crisis and the threat of the sixth extinction, we can no longer claim to be the masters of nature. Rather, we need to unlearn our species’ arrogance for the sake of all animals, human and non-human. Rethinking our being-in-the-world as Homo sapiens, this monograph argues, starts precisely from the way we relate to our closer companion species. The authors gathered here endeavour to find multiple exit strategies from the anthropocentric paradigms that have bound the human and social sciences. Part I investigates the unexplored margins of human history by re-reading historical events, literary texts, and scientific findings from an animal’s perspective, rather than a human’s. Part II explores different forms of human-animal relationships, putting the emphasis on the institutions, spaces, and discourses that frame our interactions with animals. Part III engages with processes of "translation" that aim to render animals’ experience and perception into human words and visual language. Cover Half Title Series Page Title Page Copyright Page Contents Introduction: Ways Out of the Anthropological Machine, or How and Why to Defamiliarize Ourselves PART I “Playing a Part in the Dramaturgy of the Real”: (Hi)story on the Side of Animals 1 A Giraffe’s Journey to France (1826–1827): Recording the Encounter From the Animal’s Point of View 2 Structures of Captivity and Animal Agency: The London Zoo, ca. 1865 to the Present Times 3 Atlantic History From the Saddle: The Role of Horses in the Slave-Trading Atlantic World 4 Re-animalizing Animals, Re-animating Humans 5 Laika’s Lullabies: Post-anthropocentric Representations of the First Dog in Space 6 The Blind Spot of the Plot: Thinking Beyond Human With Karel Čapek Part II “I Relate, Therefore I Am”: Human-Animal Encounters 7 Animals and Their Keepers in Belle Époque Postcards of the Jardin des Plantes Menagerie 8 "Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly”? Blurring the Boundary Between Humans and Animals 9 Flesh, Fur, and Forgetting 10 Animals as Monsters, Victims, and Models in the Age of Decadence PART III “Across the Narrow Abyss of Non-comprehension”: Entering Animals’ Lives 11 Literature and Animal Expressiveness: On the Cognitive and Ethical Aspects of Zoopoetics 12 “Une langue ou une musique inouïe, assez inhumaine . . .”: Narrative Voice and the Question of the Animal 13 From Being a Beast to Becoming-Animal: Literary Experiments in Crossing the Species Divide 14 Cameras That Pose as Animals: Imagining Non-human Animals Through the POV Shot 15 Playing (With) the Non-human: The Animal Avatar in Bear Simulator Biographical Statements Index