Thinking Plant Animal Human: Encounters With Communities of Difference PDF
Preview Thinking Plant Animal Human: Encounters With Communities of Difference
THINKING PLANT ANIMAL HUMAN Cary Wolfe, Series Editor 56 Thinking Plant Animal Human: Encounters with Communities of Difference David Wood 55 The Elements of Foucault Gregg Lambert 54 Postcinematic Vision: The Coevolution of Moving- Image Media and the Spectator Roger F. Cook 53 Bleak Joys: Aesthetics of Ecology and Impossibility Matthew Fuller and Olga Goriunova 52 Variations on Media Thinking Siegfried Zielinski 51 Aesthesis and Perceptronium: On the Entanglement of Sensation, Cognition, and Matter Alexander Wilson 50 Anthropocene Poetics: Deep Time, Sacrifice Zones, and Extinction David Farrier 49 Metaphysical Experiments: Physics and the Invention of the Universe Bjørn Ekeberg 48 Dialogues on the Human Ape Laurent Dubreuil and Sue Savage- Rumbaugh 47 Elements of a Philosophy of Technology: On the Evolutionary History of Culture Ernst Kapp 46 Biology in the Grid: Graphic Design and the Envisioning of Life Phillip Thurtle 45 Neurotechnology and the End of Finitude Michael Haworth 44 Life: A Modern Invention Davide Tarizzo 43 Bioaesthetics: Making Sense of Life in Science and the Arts Carsten Strathausen (continued on page 238) posthumanities 42 posthumanities 43 posthumanities 44 posthumanities 45 posthumanities 46 posthumanities 47 Thinposkthuimnanigties P48lant Animpostahuml aHnitiesu 49man posthumanities 50 Encounters with Communities of Difference posthumanities 51 posthumanities 52 posthumanities 53 David Wood posthumanities 54 posthumanities 55 posthumanities 56 posthumanities 57 posthumanities 58 posthumanities 59 University of Minnesota Press Minneapolis posthuLmonadnoitnies 60 posthumanities 61 Portions of chapter 1 were previously published as “Homo Sapiens,” in Edinburgh Com- panion to Animal Studies, eds. Lynn Turner, Undine Sellbach, Ron Broglio (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2018). An earlier version of chapter 3 was published as “Trees and Truth,” in Rethinking Nature, ed. Robert Frodeman (Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2004); republished with permission from Indiana University Press. Chapter 6 was previously published as “Mirror Infractions in the Yucatan (after Robert Smithson),” in Journal of Visual Arts Practice (London: Intellect Arts and Creative Media Collection, Met- ropolitan University, 2010); www.tandfonline.com. Chapter 8 was previously published as “If a Cat Could Talk,” Aeon (July 2013). Chapters 10 and 11 were previously published as “The Truth about Animals,” Cogito 80 (2015). Chapter 12 was previously published as “Humanimality: The Silence of the Animal,” PhiloSophia 3, no. 2 (2013). Chapter 13 was previously published as “Toxicity and Transcendence: Two Faces of the Human,” Angelaki 16, no. 4 (2011). Copyright 2020 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys- tem, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. Published by the University of Minnesota Press 111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290 Minneapolis, MN 55401- 2520 http://www.upress.umn.edu Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Wood, David, author. Title: Thinking plant animal human : encounters with communities of difference / David Wood. Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2020. | Series: Posthumanities ; 56 | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Summary: “Collected essays by a leading philosopher situating the question of the animal in the broader context of a relational ontology” —Provided by publisher. Identifiers: LCCN 2019053544 (print) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0721-1 (hc) | ISBN 978-1-5179-0722-8 (pb) Subjects: LCSH: Animals (Philosophy) Classification: LCC B105.A55 W66 2020 (print) | DDC 113/.8—dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019053544 UMP BmB 2020 To John Llewelyn fellow traveler extraordinaire This page intentionally left blank Contents Preface ix Acknowledgments xvii Declaration of Interdependence xix 1. Homo sapiens: The Long View 1 2. Adventures in Phytophenomenology 23 3. Trees and Truth: Our Uncanny Arboreality 35 4. Sand Crab Speculations 51 5. On Track for Terratoriality: Of Goats and Men 71 6. The Absent Animal: Mirror Infractions in the Yucatán 79 7. Kinnibalism, Cannibalism: Stepping Back from the Plate 109 8. Creatures from Another Planet 111 9. Thinking with Cats 117 10. The Truth about Animals I: 137 Jamming the Anthropological Machine 11. The Truth about Animals II: “Noblesse Oblige” and the Abyss 153 12. Giving Voice to Other Beings 167 13. Toxicity and Transcendence: Two Faces of the Human 185 Notes 201 Index 227 This page intentionally left blank Preface There is much that is strange, but nothing surpasses man in strangeness. Sophocles, Antigone If philosophy begins in wonder, it is a salutary challenge to have our eyes turned from the starry heavens to more earthly occasions for astonishment. What has come to seem familiar becomes extraordinary once more. Irigaray’s candidate was the sexual Other. For her this was not just an interesting philosophical topic but the question of the age (in the 1970s). Although it is overdramatic to elevate one question to such preemin ence, the significance of sexual difference shows no signs of di- minishing. But there are other contenders for the spotlight of historical intensity. Climate change is an obvious example, portending unthinkable change in the conditions of terrestrial life. No less pressing and deeply inter twined with it is the question of the animal, starting with the utili- tarianism of Singer’s Animal Liberation through to Foucauldian questions of biopower, Agamben’s anthropological machine, and Derrida’s extensive musings on the animal. For continental thinkers these reflections took place in the shadow (or light) of Heidegger and his repeated attempts to think “the animal.” The Heideggerean opening was especially prom- ising because it ran alongside his attempt to radically displace Man, the Human, first by addressing more fundamentally the question of Being and our distinctively problematic access to it, and later by other decenterings (language, technology, the Fourfold, and so on). Meanwhile beyond phi- losophy, animal studies has exploded right across the board, colonizing traditional disciplines and shaping new interdisciplinary programs. With every revolution in thought there is a period of wide- eyed excite- ment followed by settling back into a new normal. This happens for myriad reasons, many of them quite understandable. But if philosophy takes the · ix ·
The list of books you might like
