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‘I'll see their trial first’: Law and Disorder in Lear's Animal Kingdom

Andreas Höfele

in Stage, Stake, and Scaffold: Humans and Animals in Shakespeare's Theatre

Shakespeare’s arguably most searching investigation into the nature of the human, King Lear, also offers his most varied and polysemous zoology. Older interpretations that see in the play a telos of ... More

Shakespeare’s arguably most searching investigation into the nature of the human, King Lear, also offers his most varied and polysemous zoology. Older interpretations that see in the play a telos of redemption in which humanity is purified in suffering and ultimately reclaimed from the bestial must founder on the rocks of un-distinction which the play strews out in its staging of order and chaos, sovereign and savage, man and beast. From the initial eruption of Lear’s self-bestializing wrath to the two trial scenes in Act 3, the play exposes the ascendancy of brute force over human ‘kindness’, the regression into a proto-Hobbesian state of nature revealing the bestial wildness lurking in the very core of the social order. This trajectory of bestialization intersects with a perception of the animal not as an emblem of human degeneracy but as fellow creature.Less

Always-Already Meat: The Human–Animal Boundary and Ethics

in Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

This chapter explores texts that define the human–animal boundary and the practices it supports, focusing on the consumption of animals as one of the demarcations of the human–animal interaction. It ... More

This chapter explores texts that define the human–animal boundary and the practices it supports, focusing on the consumption of animals as one of the demarcations of the human–animal interaction. It investigates the integration of animals into human social relations, which is brought about by the emergence of capitalism, and also analyses texts which are concerned with the ethics of who eats whom, arguing that humans can consume animals and that reversing this relationship is somehow unnatural.Less

Introduction: Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and Human–Animal Studies

in Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

This book explores the many ways in which animals are present in science fiction literature. It reviews a variety of science fiction texts with animal themes, comparing and contrasting ways in which ... More

This book explores the many ways in which animals are present in science fiction literature. It reviews a variety of science fiction texts with animal themes, comparing and contrasting ways in which animals address some of science fiction's questions about alterity and subjectivity. The book also explores the connection between science fiction and human–animal studies and reconsiders the entire logic of the human–animal boundary.Less

‘What beast was't then’: Stretching the Boundaries in Macbeth

Andreas Höfele

in Stage, Stake, and Scaffold: Humans and Animals in Shakespeare's Theatre

An initial charting of the field, the first chapter centres on Macbeth, a play that probes into what ‘may become a man’ across a precariously permeable line of species distinction and compellingly ... More

An initial charting of the field, the first chapter centres on Macbeth, a play that probes into what ‘may become a man’ across a precariously permeable line of species distinction and compellingly enlists the collaborative forces of the stake and the scaffold. The baiting references in Macbeth are fully in keeping with how the ‘hell-hound’ (5.10.3) ‘and his fiend-like queen’ (5.11.35) are seen by their righteous enemies. But when Macbeth’s severed head is finally presented like a hunting trophy, this image belies the lingering unease evoked by the play’s two central characters, the play having conveyed such a strong sense of the humanness of the bestial couple. The Macbeths are the most fully realized individuals. Paradoxically, the transgressive ‘more’ that pushes them beyond the bounds of the human is also ‘more’ humanness.Less

Existing for Their Own Reasons: Animal Aliens

in Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

This chapter evaluates the representations of animal aliens in science fiction texts, and explores the ways in which animal aliens in science fiction can be used to reinforce the human–animal ... More

This chapter evaluates the representations of animal aliens in science fiction texts, and explores the ways in which animal aliens in science fiction can be used to reinforce the human–animal boundary. It also discusses texts that depict the interest of humans in aliens, their fears of alien occupation, and war or conflict with alien animals.Less

Conclusion ‘Other Fashionings of Life’: Science Fiction, Human–Animal Studies and the Future of Subjectivity

in Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

This conclusion argues that a close examination of animals in science fiction offers promising ways in which human subjectivity can be reconceptualised. The presence of animals in science fiction ... More

This conclusion argues that a close examination of animals in science fiction offers promising ways in which human subjectivity can be reconceptualised. The presence of animals in science fiction shows the complexities of animals in/and human life, and potentially enables its readers to perceive the world and other species in a different way. Science fiction provides better insight into the difficulties of human–animal exchanges and prompts a rethinking of human subjectivity and the human–animal boundary.Less

Sapien Orientalism: Animals, Colonialism, Science Fiction,

in Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

This chapter explores the parallels between the human–animal boundary and the discourse of colonialism. It discusses science fiction texts that describe animals exploited by human culture, including ... More

This chapter explores the parallels between the human–animal boundary and the discourse of colonialism. It discusses science fiction texts that describe animals exploited by human culture, including the domestication of animals and its role in shaping human cultures and producing the context for imperial expansion.Less

The Modern Epimetheus: Animals and/as Technology

in Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

This chapter focuses on the relationship between animals and technology in the emergent culture of science. It describes man-made animals that are prominent in science fiction and examines the ... More

This chapter focuses on the relationship between animals and technology in the emergent culture of science. It describes man-made animals that are prominent in science fiction and examines the negative consequences of their incorporation into culture. The many examples of animals in science fiction texts where the animal subject becomes a product or a technological intervention draw attention to the links between the human–animal boundary and the ethics of rationality and calculation.Less

‘The Female Is Somewhat Duller’: Gender and Animals¹

in Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal

This chapter discusses the relationship between animals and human categories of gender, reflecting on the various ways in which discourses about gender and discourses about animality intersect, ... More

This chapter discusses the relationship between animals and human categories of gender, reflecting on the various ways in which discourses about gender and discourses about animality intersect, overlap, and contradict one another. It also examines the link between the human–animal boundary and the cultural construction of women as closer to the being of animals. The chapter discusses science fiction texts that exemplify the similarity between the exploitation of animals and the exploitation of women, and argues that a better understanding of this oppression is valuable for feminists and for those interested in animal welfare.Less

Fur girls and wolf women: fur, hair and subversive female lycanthropy

Jazmina Cininas

in She-wolf: A cultural history of female werewolves

Humanity has long had an ambivalent relationship with fur and hair, reflecting the contested boundary of the human and nonhuman worlds. This ambivalence becomes amplified further still when ‘fur’ is ... More

Humanity has long had an ambivalent relationship with fur and hair, reflecting the contested boundary of the human and nonhuman worlds. This ambivalence becomes amplified further still when ‘fur’ is not worn, but rather ‘grown’ by the human body, with excessive body hair or hirsutism occupying an especially contentious space, particularly for the female sex. Since at least the early modern period, the hairy female body has been viewed as a manifestation of animalistic lust. Anxieties reach their zenith when a woman’s hair growth exceeds not only the social parameters set for her gender, but also those for her species. This chapter employs the figures of the hairy woman and the female werewolf throughout history to explore shifting social attitudes towards fur/body hair and the feminine, and its place in the re-evaluation of the human/animal boundary.Less

The rage of Caliban: Dorian Gray and the Gothic body

Andreas Höfele

in Gothic Renaissance: A reassessment

Andreas Höfele examines the ‘monstrous legacy of a Renaissance construe[d] as irrepressibly Gothic and ominously modern’ in a reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest through Oscar Wilde’s late ... More

Andreas Höfele examines the ‘monstrous legacy of a Renaissance construe[d] as irrepressibly Gothic and ominously modern’ in a reading of Shakespeare’s The Tempest through Oscar Wilde’s late nineteenth century Gothic novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. Höfele takes Wilde’s reference to Caliban in the preface of the novel as a starting-point for a comparative investigation into the human/animal boundary within early modern and post-Darwinian discourses revealing ‘the grounds of the late nineteenth century Gothicization of the Renaissance’ in the striking affinities between unstable early modern boundaries and the ‘metamorphic’, ‘abhuman’ Gothic body of the fin de siècle (Hurley). Foregrounding a fascinating ‘swap of epistemic affiliations’, Höfele shows how ‘Dorian Gray roots himself in Renaissance Knowledge culture’, while ‘Caliban is adopted into the image store of popular science’ turning into the ‘Shakespearean icon of Darwinism’.Less

Coda: Human, Animal, and Matthew Barney

Ron Broglio

in Surface Encounters: Thinking with Animals and Art

This concluding chapter focuses on Matthew Barney’s film Drawing Restraint 9. It considers how lifting the restraints of language, gesture, and ritual set in motion a transformation of human-animal ... More

This concluding chapter focuses on Matthew Barney’s film Drawing Restraint 9. It considers how lifting the restraints of language, gesture, and ritual set in motion a transformation of human-animal boundaries. It examines the film’s presentation of how restraint functions upon desire, how it bends and transforms desire, and what happens to bodies as the barriers of resistance are removed. It analyzes various parts of the film and relates it to the discussion of the whole text concerning animal phenomenology. One of these is the transformation in the tearoom scene which is analogous to Carolee Schneemann’s work of Dionysian myth where flesh is cut, dispersed, and transformed.Less