Animaladies

Do depictions of crazy cat ladies obscure more sinister structural violence against animals hoarded in factory farms? Highlighting the frequent pathologization of animal lovers and animal rights activists, this book examines how the “madness” of our relationships with animals intersects with the “madness” of taking animals seriously. The essays collected in this volume argue that “animaladies” are expressive of political and psychological discontent, and the characterization of animal advocacy as mad or “crazy” distracts attention from broader social unease regarding human exploitation of animal life. While allusions to madness are both subtle and overt, they are also very often gendered, thought to be overly sentimental with an added sense that emotions are being directed at the wrong species. Animaladies are obstacles for the political uptake of interest in animal issues-as the intersections between this volume and established feminist scholarship show, the fear of being labeled unreasonable or mad still has political currency.

Do depictions of crazy cat ladies obscure more sinister structural violence against animals hoarded in factory farms? Highlighting the frequent pathologization of animal lovers and animal rights activists, this book examines how the “madness” of our relationships with animals intersects with the “madness” of taking animals seriously. The essays collected in this volume argue that “animaladies” are expressive of political and psychological discontent, and the characterization of animal advocacy as mad or “crazy” distracts attention from broader social unease regarding human exploitation of animal life. While allusions to madness are both subtle and overt, they are also very often gendered, thought to be overly sentimental with an added sense that emotions are being directed at the wrong species. Animaladies are obstacles for the political uptake of interest in animal issues-as the intersections between this volume and established feminist scholarship show, the fear of being labeled unreasonable or mad still has political currency.

This book offers Posthumanist readings of animal-centric literary and cultural texts. The contributors put the precepts and premises of humanism into question by seriously considering the animal presence in texts. The essays collected here focus primarily on literary and cultural texts from varied theoretically informed interdisciplinary perspectives advanced by critical approaches such as Critical Animal Studies and Posthumanism. Contributors select texts that cut across geographical and period boundaries and demonstrate how practices of close reading give rise to new ways of thinking about animals. By implicating the “animal turn” in the field of literary and cultural studies, this book urges us to problematize the separation of the human from other animals and rethink the hierarchical order of beings through close readings of select texts. It offers fresh perspectives on Posthumanist theory, inviting readers to revisit those criteria that created species’ difference from the early ages of human civilization. This book constitutes a rich and thorough scholarly resource on the politics of representation of animals in literature and culture. The essays in this book are empirically and theoretically informed and explore a range of dynamic, captivating, and highly relevant topics. Comprising over 15 chapters by a team of international contributors, this book is divided into four parts: Contestation over Species Hierarchy and CategorizationAnimal (Re)constructionsInterspecies RelationalitiesIntersectionality- Animal and Gender This book will be essential reading for students and researchers of Critical Animal Studies and Environmental Studies.

This book offers an historical analysis of the culture of animal-dependent science in Britain from 1945 to the present, exploring key areas of animal experimentation such as warfare, medical science and law from a gendered perspective. Questioning the nature of knowledge production in this area, and how animal experimentation intersects with broader cultural norms and values concerning sex, and gender, it examines the impact of contemporary forms of capitalism on animal dependent science, its historical trajectory and gendered configuration. With close attention to the broad social context from the creation of the Welfare State and the loss of Empire, to the emergence of neoliberalism in the 1980s and its present day omnipotent manifestation, the author asks how animal experimentation and the use of nonhuman animals in specific areas of science is gendered and has implications for women. Drawing on a variety of sociological, philosophical, feminist and historical theories and engaging with a wealth of primary and secondary materials of scientific research of the time, Science, Gender and the Exploitation of Animals in Britain Since 1945 contends that there is a persistent, gendered ideology of animal use which remains inscribed within the policies of the British neoliberal state. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, history and philosophy with interests in gender and the treatment of nonhuman animals.

This new edition of Ecofeminism: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth begins with an historical, grounding overview that situates ecofeminist theory and activism within the larger field of ecocriticism and provides a timeline for important publications and events. Throughout the book, authors engage with intersections of gender, sexuality, gender expression, race, disability, and species to address the various ways that sexism, heteronormativity, racism, colonialism, and ableism are informed by and support animal oppression. This collection is broken down into three separate sections: -Affect includes contributions from leading theorists and activists on how our emotions and embodiment can and must inform our relationships with the more-than-human world -Context explores the complexities of appreciating difference and the possibilities of living less violently -Climate, new to the second edition, provides an overview of our climate crisis as well as the climate for critical discussion and debate about ecofeminist ideas and actions Drawing on animal studies, environmental studies, feminist/gender studies, and practical ethics, the ecofeminist contributors to this volume stress the need to move beyond binaries and attend to context over universal judgments; spotlight the importance of care as well as justice, emotion as well as reason; and work to undo the logic of domination and its material implications.

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals is a diverse and intersectional collection which examines human and more-than-human animal relations, as well as the interconnectedness of human and animal oppressions through various lenses. Comprising fifty chapters, the book explores a range of debates and scholarship within important contemporary topics such as companion animals, hunting, agriculture, and animal activist strategies. It also offers timely analyses of zoonotic disease pandemics, mass extinction, and the climate catastrophe, using perspectives including feminist, critical race, anti-colonial, critical disability, and masculinities studies. The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals is an essential reference for students in gender studies, sexuality studies, human-animal studies, cultural studies, sociology, and environmental studies.

India imposes stringent criminal penalties, including life imprisonment in some states, for cow slaughter, based on a Hindu ethic of revering the cow as sacred. And yet India is among the world's leading producers of beef, leather, and milk, industries sustained by the mass slaughter of bovines. What is behind this seeming contradiction? What do bovines, deemed holy in Hinduism, experience in the Indian milk and beef industries? Yamini Narayanan asks and answers these questions, introducing cows and buffaloes as key subjects in India's cow protectionism, rather than their treatment hitherto as mere objects of political analysis. Emphasizing human–animal hierarchical relations, Narayanan argues that the Hindu framing of the cow as "mother" is one of human domination, wherein bovine motherhood is simultaneously capitalized for dairy production and weaponized by right-wing Hindu nationalists to violently oppress Muslims and Dalits. Using ethnographic and empirical data gathered across India, this book reveals the harms caused to buffaloes, cows, bulls, and calves in dairying, and the exploitation required of the diverse, racialized labor throughout India's dairy production continuum to obscure such violence. Ultimately, Narayanan traces how the unraveling of human domination and exploitation of farmed animals is integral to progressive multispecies democratic politics, speculating on the real possibility of a post-dairy society, based on vegan agricultural policies for livelihoods and food security.

In Print and the Poetics of Modern Drama, W. B. Worthen asks how the print form of drama bears on how we understand its dual identity.