MEMBER BLOG TAG: roberto marchesini
| Tuesday, July 15, 2008 10:24AM | | | | H-NILAS Review, Derrida's "Animal" | Tags: Derrida, the Animal, Lucian Boia, Roberto Marchesini, Descartes
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Jacques Derrida. The Animal that Therefore I Am. Edited by Marie-Louise Mallet and translated by David Wills. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008. xiii + 176 pp. Notes. $20.00 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8232-2791-4.
Reviewed for H-NILAS by Boria Sax, Liberal Studies, University of Illinois at Springfield
Do you Believe in the Animal?
Theorists constantly remind us that words like "nature," "God," "civilization," or "consciousness," except in the most restrictive contexts, have nothing close to the sort of precision that we usually expect from academic work, and it is very easy to dismiss them as incoherent or even meaningless. But, to the immense frustration of many positivists, analytic philosophers, and... | | | | | | | Wednesday, May 7, 2008 12:11PM | | | | What is Human? What is Animal II | Tags: Human, Animal Studies, Donna Haraway, Companion Species, Roberto Marchesini
| | | | In her book When Species Meet (2008), Haraway is correct to point out that human identity is malleable, an insight that has previously been largely neglected in Animal Studies, though far less so in the study of cyberculture. I believe, in fact that our understanding of "humanity" is far more malleable than even Haraway fully realizes. Over the centuries the ways in which "humanity" has been understood has fluctuated enormously, just as it does today. At times "humanity" has included deities, household spirits, apes, and a huge variety of animals, while it has excluded nations and ethnic groups. Our working understanding of humanity has always included technologies as well, since those who lack them (so-called "savages") have often not been regarded as fully "human." Where I believe that Haraway, along with many... | | | | | |
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