With Dogs at the Edge of Life: Columbia University Press

Colin Dayan

Published by Columbia University Press 2015

With Dogs at the Edge of Life

Colin Dayan

https://doi.org/10.7312/daya16712

Overview
Contents

About this book

Dayan makes a powerful case for questioning what we think of as our deepest-held beliefs and, with dogs in the lead, unsettles the dubious promises of liberal humanism. She takes politics and animal studies in a new direction—one that gives us glimpses of how we can think beyond ourselves and with other beings. Theoretically sophisticated yet aimed at a broad readership, With Dogs at the Edge of Life illuminates how dogs—and their struggles—take us beyond sentimentality.

Rethinking what it means for dogs and humans to live together in the twenty-first century, taking us beyond sentimentality and into a form of thought that sees the world in a radically different way.

Author / Editor information

Colin Dayan is Robert Penn Warren Professor of the Humanities and professor of law at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons, The Story of Cruel and Unusual, and Haiti, History, and the Gods. She has also written for the New York Times, London Review of Books, and Boston Review.

Reviews

Emotionally and intellectually challenging, the volume boasts a rich, resonant message: Not everyone sees the dog the same.

Erudite and imaginative as the book asks why only members of our species get to be persons...

Stimulating and lyrical... intellectually fierce reading for philosophically minded readers, especially dog lovers.

Rei Terada, University of California, Irvine:
In an inimitable mode of testimony and confession, Colin Dayan argues that relations with dogs, from the southern United States to Turkey, structure violence, vulnerability, and antagonism. Extending her work on the physical exploration of unnameable states, Dayan shows how bonds with dogs uniquely condition the creation of social value. And I say that as a cat person.

Lori Gruen, author of Entangled Empathy and Ethics and Animals:
Whether openly acknowledged or not, we are all in relationships with dogs—as companions, as lovers, as protector and protected. Some relationships are marked by fear, perhaps hatred. Most are contradictory, many escape description. In her poetic, political, autobiographical homage to life and death with dogs, Dayan helps us stay with them as we traverse treacherous edges. We are fortunate to have so gifted an interpreter and loving a guide.

Avery F. Gordon, University of California, Santa Barbara:
Colin Dayan has again produced a probing and brilliant examination of that long 'history of extermination masked by the veneer of enlightenment.' Always writing with justice in mind, Dayan's consideration of our relationship with dogs yields a complex meditation on humanity and life's uncertain possibilities. Beautiful, 'more than just another dog story,' as only Dayan could write it.

David L. Clark, McMaster University:
In three lively and beautifully written movements, Colin Dayan offers a memorable tour de force that threads together memoir and an analysis of the deprivations of life, human and nonhuman and human with nonhuman, that so pervasively characterize our neoliberal world-historical moment. Intelligent and moving, With Dogs at the Edge of Life is an extraordinary book, a courageous and compelling intermingling of arresting cultural critique and autobiographical reflections of a life lived in the company of canines.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Preface Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
by way of beginning Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part One. Like a Dog
Chapter One. Dogs and Light Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	13
Chapter Two. Back Talking Like I Did Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	31
Chapter Three. They Killed My Dog Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
Part Two. When Law Comes to Visit
Chapter Four. Dead Dogs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
Chapter Five. Speaking About Extinction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	77
Chapter Six. Fable for the End of a Breed Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
Part Three. Pariah Dogs
Chapter Seven. Through the Eyes of Dogs Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	111
Chapter Eight. If I Sense the Beauty Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
Coda Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	157
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	177
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	183

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 208
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 38
- Other: 38 b&w photographs

eBook

Published: December 8, 2015
ISBN: 9780231540742