Animal Writing : : Storytelling, Selfhood and the Limits of Empathy / / Danielle Sands.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Edinburgh University Press Complete eBook-Package 2019
• VerfasserIn: Sands, Danielle,
• Place / Publishing House: Edinburgh : : Edinburgh University Press, , [2022]; ©2019
• Year of Publication: 2022
• Language: English
• Series: Crosscurrents : CROSS
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (224 p.)

Navigates various literary and philosophical approaches to the representation of the nonhuman5 chapters each explore a different element of the human–nonhuman relationship by placing philosophical theories in dialogue with literary textsEncounters fiction writers Yann Martel, Karen Joy Fowler, Han Kang and Jim Crace beside the philosophy of Graham Harman, Donna Haraway, Jacques Derrida and Roger CailloisPursues underexplored facets of Animal Studies, particularly insects and their relationship to ecofeminismGenerates a conversation between Animal Studies and scholarship on objects, such as actor network theory and object oriented philosophyExplores the implications of the nonhuman for our understanding of aesthetics, ethics and politicsCombining recent insights from animal studies, critical plant studies and the new materialisms, Danielle Sands reads fiction and philosophy alongside each other to propose a method of thinking of and with animals that draws on a bestiary of affects. She challenges the claim that empathy should be primary mode of engagement with nonhuman life. Instead, she looks at the stories that we tell, and are told, by insects – beings at the edges of animal life. The indifference, even disgust, that these creatures evoke in us forms the basis for a new ethics not limited by empathy.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Series Editor’s Preface -- Introduction: Ten Statements about Empathy and Animal Studies -- 1. Fragile Bodies, Cross-species Empathy and Suspended Allegories: ‘It hurt, it was painful – that’s all there is to say’ -- 2. Anthropomorphism and the ‘Ends of Man’ in the Anthropocene: ‘My chimp nature’ -- 3. Telling Nonhuman Stories: ‘The secret contours of objects’ -- 4. The Sexual Politics of Nature Writing and Lepidoptery: ‘The siren song of entomology’ -- 5. Insect Ethics and Aesthetics: ‘Their blood does not stain our hands’ -- Conclusion -- Bibliography -- Index