Engaging with the work of Freud, Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Derrida, this book reconceptualises the language divide between humans and animals within the context of animal ethics.

In this paper, I investigate Freud’s study of infantile zoophobias. According to Freud, in nearly all cases of infantile animal phobias, the feared animal functions as a father figure. The feared animal takes on the prohibitive role as the father substitute. The substitutability of the animal and the father is crucial for Freud, as it anchors his theory regarding the familial, social, and religious structure of a patriarchal society. In light of this standard animal-father substitution, Freud’s biography of Leonardo da (...) Vinci stands out as a provocative exception. In this psychoanalytic biography, Freud examines da Vinci’s relationship with a vulture—only here the vulture is an androgynous creature that serves as a mother substitute. More significantly, unlike other accounts of infantile zoophobia, the vulture has an empowering rather than crippling effect on the infant da Vinci. With the story of the androgynous vulture, I argue that Freud’s interpretation of da Vinci opens up a new way to understand our relationships with animals—a way that not even Freud himself anticipated. In short, I analyze the significance of this deviant case of animal obsession in Freud’s corpus and its ramifications for reconceiving the human-animal relationship. (shrink)

Ideal for students in philosophy, animal studies and gender studies, this volume explores an important question: what grounds our ethical responsibility? It covers a range of topics including maternal bodies, animal rights, capital punishment, depression and trauma, demonstrating the evolution of Kelly Oliver's seminal work in response ethics.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Secret Name, or the Secret of a NameAlison SuenIn HumAnimal: Race, Law, Language, Kalpana Seshadri carefully examines the secret of silence, the nonsovereign power of silence. She wants to conceive of silence as neither repressive nor transcendent; that is, on the one hand, she wants to resist the temptation to restore silence to speech, but on the other she also wants to resist the temptation to posit silence in (...) opposition to speech, as something above and beyond language. Rather, she wants to think of silence as "an empty space where the regulatory power of discourse is nullified" (Seshadri 2012, 35).Seshadri powerfully illustrates silence as an "empty space" that invalidates the power of speech through her provocative reading of Charles Chesnutt's story "Dumb Witness." In this story, about a mute slave who holds a secret, silence becomes a most unexpected secret weapon. The slave is mute because her master's nephew has brutally cut off her tongue. The irony of this story is that the nephew realized, only after cutting off her tongue, that the slave is the only person entrusted with the secret of the will—the will that the nephew needs in order to claim his right to his uncle's property, which would include the slave woman. As the story goes, the slave woman refuses to disclose the secret until after the nephew is dead. Her refusal is made possible by the wound of her tongue, by the brutal punishment inflicted by the nephew. As Seshadri points out, the secret of the slave woman's silence exceeds her knowledge of the will. This is the case because the slave woman's silence is not a simple silence, but rather "a capability of silence, which manifests as a withholding" (Seshadri 2012, 107). Indeed, it is through her silence that the law is rendered unenforceable. It is through her silence that the nephew failed to properly own her. [End Page 182]In Seshadri's reading, the silence of the slave woman is not a deprivation of speech, but rather a capability to withhold, a silent treatment designed to punish. I am fascinated by this notion of silence as an active resistance—a subversive power that confounds the law. Nonetheless, what is the political efficacy of this silence? Specifically, what can we do with this nonsovereign power, a power that seems contingent and conditional? After all, even if the slave woman was able to use her silence to outsmart her (would-be) master, at the end of the day she is still missing her tongue, and her nonsovereign "power" over the nephew may simply be a consolation prize.I am equally fascinated by the idea that silence is a "capability." Recasting silence as a kind of "capability" is noteworthy in light of contemporary debates on animal ethics, which often revolve around the kind of capacities that animals have. As is well known, Peter Singer, following Bentham, makes the capacity to suffer the ticket to the moral community, while for Tom Regan, one needs the capacity to experience life in order to become a moral patient. In other words, recasting silence as a capability actually conforms to, rather than challenges, a typical strategy in animal rights discourses.What is at stake in this story is also the power of the secret. In her chapter on literature and the secret, Seshadri articulates different ways the secret manifests itself in literature. She writes, "literature is allied to the secret because it emerges from what is suspended (for example, meaning, truth, the word, a determinate context) and therefore can only be read and interpreted as a sign" (Seshadri 2012, 46–47). Literature always harbors secrecies because its interpretation is never exhaustive. In this sense, language itself is also secretive because meaning is necessarily excessive of the sign. In a paradoxical way, every time we speak, we are necessarily withholding.I will say more about secrets and silence as a mode of resistance in the context of animal advocacy at the end of my commentary. For now, I want to turn to Seshadri's excellent discussion on "naming" and hospitality. Specifically, I want to connect it to questions of secrecy and resistance... (shrink)

In this essay, I analyze various ways in which pregnant bodies are rendered consumable. Tracing our preoccupation with pregnancy diets, I argue that a pregnant woman is made responsible for producing a consumable body. Indeed, producing and maintaining a consumable, fetus-friendly body is a responsibility that women carry before, during, and even after pregnancy. The sphere of this responsibility is also ever-expanding: it goes from detoxing the body to disinfecting the household, and even to protecting the environment at large. I (...) examine two conditions that help construct the maternal body as consumable: 1) the invisibility of the consumed body, and 2) the appeal to “nature” as a justification for consumption. As I will show, the default position of women as consumable is reinforced both by erasing the maternal body and by appealing to the “naturalness” of breastfeeding. (shrink)

In this paper, I offer justifications and strategies for teaching taboo, unpopular, or rarely contested views in undergraduate ethics courses. Teaching taboo topics, while challenging, forcefully demonstrates the commitment that few topics in ethics have obvious answers, and that the study of ethics is more than just debating right and wrong. Drawing from my experience teaching on the topic of bestiality, I articulate the importance of motivating topics that may appear remote and irrelevant to students. Inspired by Kathy Rudy’s queer (...) theory approach to the question of bestiality, I propose that we broaden and reframe taboo issues when teaching undergraduates. Instead of introducing these issues with the typical “Is it right or wrong to do X,” I recommend that we examine the essential political, metaphysical, and epistemological presumptions that inform and shape our moral judgments. (shrink)

"Stop slacking off " Your parents may have said this to you when you were deep into a video-gaming marathon. Or maybe your roommate said it to you when you were lounging on the couch scrolling through Instagram. You may have even said it to yourself on days you did nothing. But what is so bad about slacking? Could it be that there's nothing bad about not making yourself useful? Against our hyper-productivity culture, Alison Suen critically interrogates our disapproval of (...) slackers--individuals who do the bare minimum just to get by. She offers a taxonomy of slackers, analyzes common objections to slacking, and argues that each of these objections either fails or carries problematic assumptions. But while this book defends slacking, it does not promote the slacker lifestyle as the key to something better, as some pro-leisure scholars have argued. In fact, Suen argues that slacking is unique precisely because it serves no noble cause. Slacking is neither a deliberate protest to social ills nor is it a path to autonomy. Slackers just slack. By examining the culture of hyper-productivity, Suen argues that it is in fact OK to be a slacker. Key Features Demonstrates the uniqueness of slacking, via a critical examination of six distinct "pro-leisure" philosophical accounts. Articulates a taxonomy of slackers, as well as in-depth examinations of Hollywood slackers and slackers in academia. Examines common objections to slacking, and offers a rebuttal to each of them. Offers an understanding of our productivity culture from an existential perspective. (shrink)