Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-b4m5d Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-17T13:28:21.090Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

From Animal to Animality Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Michael Lundblad
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

When Jack London's human characters interact with dogs and wolves in texts such as the call of the wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), erotic fireworks often light up the wild. The love between the dog Buck and his human partner, John Thornton, in The Call of the Wild is characterized as “[l]ove, genuine passionate love. … love that was feverish and burning, that was adoration, that was madness” (59–60). In White Fang, the half wolf of the title experiences a love for Weedon Scott that “manifested itself to [White Fang] as a void in his being—a hungry, aching, yearning void that clamored to be filled. It was a pain and an unrest; and it received easement only by the touch of the new god's presence” (244). Instead of reading these passionate nonhuman characters as “real” animals, literary and cultural critics often read them as “men in furs,” in Mark Seltzer's memorable phrase, leading to interesting and important discussions of, for example, homoerotic interactions between men.

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 124 , Issue 2 , March 2009 , pp. 496 - 502
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

“About ICAS.” Critical Animal Studies. Inst. for Critical Animal Studies, n.d. Web. 13 Aug. 2008.Google Scholar
Rachel, Adams. Sideshow U.S.A.: Freaks and the American Cultural Imagination. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2001. Print.Google Scholar
Jonathan, Auerbach. Male Call: Becoming Jack London. Durham: Duke UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Bruce, Bagemihl. Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity. New York: St. Martin's, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
Gillian, Beer. Darwin's Plots: Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot, and Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000. Print.Google Scholar
Bert, Bender. Evolution and “the Sex Problem”: American Narratives during the Eclipse of Darwinism. Kent: Kent State UP, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Bradford, Phillips Verner, and Blume, Harvey. Ota Benga: The Pygmy in the Zoo. New York: St. Martin's, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
George, Chauncey. Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Makings of the Gay Male World, 1890–1940. New York: Basic, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Midas, Dekkers. Dearest Pet: On Bestiality. 1992. Trans. Paul Vincent. London: Verso, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Scott, Derrick. “Making a Heterosexual Man: Gender, Sexuality, and Narrative in the Fiction of Jack London.” Rereading Jack London. Ed. Cassuto, Leonard and Reesman, Jeanne Campbell. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996. 110–29. Print.Google Scholar
Jacques, Derrida. “The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow).” Trans. David Wills. Critical Inquiry 28.2 (2002): 369–418. Print.Google Scholar
Michel, Foucault. An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon, 1978. Print. Vol. 1 of The History of Sexuality.Google Scholar
Sigmund, Freud. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. 24 vols. London: Hogarth, 1953–75. Print.Google Scholar
Marjorie, Garber. Dog Love. New York: Simon, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Hale, Nathan G. Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917. New York: Oxford UP, 1971. Print.Google Scholar
H-Animal Discussion Network. “Resources.” H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online. Michigan State U, 1995–2006. Web. 13 Aug. 2008.Google Scholar
Donna, Haraway. Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science. New York: Routledge, 1989. Print.Google Scholar
Donna, Haraway. “Teddy Bear Patriarchy: Taxidermy in the Garden of Eden, New York City, 1908–1936.” Cultures of United States Imperialism. Ed. Kaplan, Amy and Pease, Donald E. Durham: Duke UP, 1993. 237–91. Print.Google Scholar
Donna, Haraway. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Heise, Ursula K. “The Hitchhiker's Guide to Ecocriticism.” PMLA 121.2 (2006): 503–16. Print.Google Scholar
Lancaster, Roger N. The Trouble with Nature: Sex in Science and Popular Culture. Berkeley: U of California P, 2003. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion. New York: Basic, 1997. Print.Google Scholar
George, Levine. Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction. 2nd ed. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1991. Print.Google Scholar
Alphonso, Lingis. “Animal Body, Inhuman Face.” Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal. 1998. Ed. Wolfe, Cary. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2003. 165–82. Print.Google Scholar
Jack, London. Jack London: Novels and Stories. New York: Lib. of Amer., 1982. Print.Google Scholar
Michael, Lundblad. “Epistemology of the Jungle: Progressive-Era Sexuality and the Nature of the Beast.” American Literature, forthcoming. Print.Google Scholar
Lutts, Ralph H., ed. The Wild Animal Story. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Saul, Rosenzweig. The Historic Expedition to America (1909): Freud, Jung, and Hall the King-Maker, with G. Stanley Hall as Host and William James as Guest. 2nd, rev. ed. Saint Louis: Rana, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Andrew, Ross. The Chicago Gangster Theory of Life: Nature's Debt to Society. London: Verso, 1994. Print.Google Scholar
Joan, Roughgarden. Evolution's Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. Berkeley: U of California P, 2004. Print.Google Scholar
Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. Epistemology of the Closet. Berkeley: U of California P, 1990. Print.Google Scholar
Mark, Seltzer. Bodies and Machines. New York: Routledge, 1992. Print.Google Scholar
Jennifer, Terry. “‘Unnatural Acts’ in Nature: The Scientific Fascination with Queer Animals.” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 6.2 (2000): 151–93. Print.Google Scholar
Cary, Wolfe. Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Marlene, Zuk. Sexual Selections: What We Can and Can't Learn about Sex from Animals. Berkeley: U of California P, 2002. Print.Google Scholar