Some possible readings
Hello all,
I’ve been browsing my shelves and I have a few suggestions for future readings. I’m not sure what directions we want to take (maybe to be discussed in the next session?) but if the distinction, or lack thereof, between animal and human is on the agenda, this collection might work:
Cary Wolfe, ed. Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. U of Minn P, 2003. Wolfe has put together a collection of essays by David Wills, Judith Roof, Jacques Derrida, and others on the post-humanist critique of the “figure of the human as . . . constitutive” and the extra-academe reevaluation of nonhuman animals.
Donna Haraway. When Species Meet. U of Minn P, 2008. This would be a large reading commitment. Maybe Part 1 only? And only if we really decide to focus on the animal.
A couple of short pieces on other complications in constituting the human are available online in postmedieval: a journal of medieval cultural studies. Although written by medievalists, these pieces are not chronologically bound:
Jeffrey Jerome Cohen. “Stories of Stone.” Useful for complicating the animate/inanimate divide. 2/9/10
Karmen MacKendrick. “The multipliable body.” On wholeness and fragmentation and somatic integrity. 2/9/10
Indeed the whole inaugural issue is worth a look and many of the articles are free: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/pmed/journal/v1/n1/index.html.
One more suggestion/question: How would people feel about reading/viewing some primary sources? As we were introducing ourselves, it occurred to me that a guided look at anatomy theaters, robotic, etc would broaden all of our horizons.
best,
Sealy
At our last meeting, we discussed disgust (and I’m glad I don’t have to say that three times fast). Would Martha Nussbaums’s Hiding from Humanity be of interest? I thought of the second chapter, “Disgust and Our Animal Bodies.” I noticed that Cary Wolfe refers to to Thomas Nagel’s “What is it Like to Be a Bat.” I haven’t looked at that in a long time, but that’s another possibility.
Posted October 14, 2010, 17:39 #Thanks, Howard. I like the idea of reading Nussbaum. She grounds her work in classical philosophy and thus has a stronger historical sense than some. She also bridges the social, political and psychological.
apologies if this appears twice. I logged out too quickly the first time (I think).
Posted October 27, 2010, 09:09 #Hello again,
You might be interested in Barnard’s latest Medieval Studies conference offering:
http://www.barnard.edu/medren/
The Barnard group always puts on a good event – not huge and quite coherent.
Sealy
Posted October 27, 2010, 09:41 #Thanks, Sealy. I placed it on the front, under links, in case folks miss it here.
Posted November 2, 2010, 12:00 #We mentioned thinking about animal/human boundaries from a non-Western perspective. I thought of Steven Feld’s Sound and Sentiment: Birds, weeping, poetics and song in Kaluli expression – just the first chapter, The Boy who became a Muni Bird.
Posted November 9, 2010, 15:58 #