Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-94fs2 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-02T22:59:18.828Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Posthuman Compassions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 October 2020

Elisabeth Arnould-Bloomfield
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

What happens when i watch a creature suffer or when i share in my dog's joy? what is the power of these emotions, what do they teach me about living with animals and engaging ethically with their differences? While these questions may still seem sentimental to some, they have become increasingly relevant to those who study animals. Emotions have made a remarkable comeback in recent animal literature and philosophy. Rehabilitated by a new wave of theorists, they have found their way into some of the most provocative contemporary reflections on animal ethics. Josephine Donovan, Jacques Derrida, Ralph Acampora, Donna Haraway, and others have all granted compassion theoretical pride of place. They share a critique of the rationalist bias of the justice-and-rights tradition and suggest that compassionate attention to animals is the “ground upon which theory about human treatment of animals should be constructed” (Donovan, “Attention” 174). For many such contemporary thinkers, then, compassion—a deeply affective way of sharing another's emotion—is the fundamental means of forging the ethical bond we have with nonhuman animals. Replacing the “calculable process” of current animal-rights theories with the emotional encounter of the other's living—and dying—reality, compassion offers a new understanding of responsibility and relationships (Wolfe, “Exposures” 19).

Type
Theories and Methodologies
Information
PMLA , Volume 130 , Issue 5: Special Topic: Emotions , October 2015 , pp. 1467 - 1475
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 2015

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

Acampora, Ralph. Corporal Compassion: Animal Ethics and Philosophy of Body. Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 2006. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Attridge, Derek. J. M. Coetzee and the Ethics of Reading. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2004. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Braidotti, Rosi. “Posthuman, All Too Human: Towards a New Process Ontology.” Theory, Culture, and Society 23.7–8 (2006): 197–208. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calarco, Matthew. Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Caruth, Cathy. Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1996. Print.Google Scholar
Coetzee, J. M. Disgrace. London: Secker, 1999. Print.Google Scholar
De Fontenay, Elisabeth. Le silence des bêtes: La philosophie à l'épreuve de l'animalité. Paris: Fayard, 1998. Print.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Ed. Mallet, Marie-Louise. Trans. Wills, David. New York: Fordham UP, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Donovan, Josephine. “Attention to Suffering: Sympathy as a Basis for Ethical Treatment of Animals.” The Feminist Care Tradition in Animal Ethics. Ed. Donovan, and Adams, Carol. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. 174–97. Print.Google Scholar
Donovan, Josephine “Feminism and the Treatment of Animals: From Care to Dialogue.” Signs 31 (2006): 118–35. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Durrant, Sam. “J. M. Coetzee, Elizabeth Costello, and the Limits of the Sympathetic Imagination.” J. M. Coetzee and the Idea of the Public Intellectual. Ed. Poyner, Jane. Athens: Ohio UP, 2006. 118–35. Print.Google Scholar
Fraiman, Susan. “Pussy Panic versus Liking Animals: Tracking Gender in Animal Studies.” Critical Inquiry 39.1 (2012): 89–115. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haraway, Donna J. The Companion Species Manifesto: Dogs, People, and Significant Otherness. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, 2003. Print.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna J. “Species Matter, Humane Advocacy: In the Promising Grip of Earthly Oxymorons.” Species Matters: Humane Advocacy and Cultural Theory. Ed. DeKoven, Marianne and Lundblad, Michael. New York: Columbia UP, 2012. 17–26. Print.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna J. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2008. Print.Google Scholar
Hofmannsthal, Hugo von. The Lord Chandos Letters. Trans. Stockman, Russell. Marlboro: Marlboro, 1986. Print.Google Scholar
Kuzniar, Alice. Melancholia's Dog: Reflections on Our Animal Kinship. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2006. Print.Google Scholar
Lawlor, Leonard. This Is Not Sufficient: An Essay on Animality and Human Nature in Derrida. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. Print.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Midgley, Mary. Animals and Why They Matter. Athens: U of Georgia P, 1984. Print.Google Scholar
Oliver, Kelly. Animal Lessons: How They Teach Us to Be Human. New York: Columbia UP, 2009. Print.Google Scholar
Pick, Anat. Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Films. New York: Columbia UP, 2011. Print.Google Scholar
Rudy, Cathy. Loving Animals: Towards a New Animal Advocacy. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 2011. Print.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, Joseph. Donna Haraway: Live Theory. New York: Continuum, 2005. Print.Google Scholar
Warkentin, Traci. “Interspecies Etiquette: An Ethics of Paying Attention to Animals.” Ethics and the Environment 15.1 (2010): 102–21. Print.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Cary. “Exposures.” Philosophy and Animal Life. New York: Columbia UP, 2008. 1–41. Print.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Cary “Human, All Too Human: ‘Animal Studies’ and the Humanities.” PMLA 124.2 (2009): 564–75. Print.Google Scholar