Theoria

I suspect most readers already know at this point, but myself, Greg of Animal Obscura and Scu of Critical Animal have organized a collective “critical animal studies” themed blog entitled The Inhumanities. Being new, content is quite limited to a picture of a unicorn in a cage, a group statement, and an announcement of our first event, a discussion of Matthew Calarco’s Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. Matthew has kindly agreed to contribute a reply to the discussion.

Matthew Calarco is a major name in the growing critical animal studies field. He is the co-editor of Animal Philosophy, along with editing several other books. He also was a participant in the recent analytical/continental get together over the question of the animal, in The Death of the Animal. In my view, his work is noteworthy in that it adopts a Levinasian approach in opposition to the usual deontological or utilitarian approaches to animal ethics, thus sidestepping, on the one hand, the problem that utilitarianism seems to allow that pain and suffering, but not death, are a harm to the animal while, on the other hand, avoiding the metaphysics of rights.

We hope you find the site interesting and we are already discussing future “events” (e.g., Derrida’s The Beast and the Sovereign is to be published soon). If you are interested in joining the blog, either as a regular contributor or participating in future events or just want to get in touch with us, we can be contact at inhumanitiesblog[at]gmail[dot]com.