Authors
David Herman
Publication date
2023/5/16
Journal
TRACE: Journal for Human-Animal Studies
Volume
9
Pages
180-184
Description
HERMAN 181 interrelations among rubrics more or less coextensive with animal studies (eg, human-animal studies, critical animal studies, anthrozoology, and cognitive ethology), rounds out the apparatus of this brilliant, carefully designed book, which is likely to be as engaging and horizonexpanding for instructors as it is for the students to whom they assign the text. Indeed, virtually every entry in Calarco’s book is packed with insights, and each seems to reflect long-standing pedagogical practices of the author: the volume comes across as having been written by an outstanding teacher who has developed, through techniques honed over the course of many interactions with students, special expertise in defining, explaining, and demonstrating the concrete implications of key concepts for animal studies—in ways that make the concepts legible and usable but without in any sense “dumbing them down.” The entry on “becoming-animal”(25–28) is a case in point. This entry provides the best definition and contextualization of Deleuze and Guattari’s concept that I have yet encountered, situating the term in the authors’ broader philosophical project, relating it to their distinctions among Oedipal, State, and demonic animals, exemplifying the term’s relevance via artwork by Francis Bacon, noting criticisms that have been leveled against the concept, and comparing becominganimal in its Deleuzian-Guattarian usage is best suited for advanced seminars or workshops for MA and PhD students, a better strategy for undergraduate courses would be to make Calarco’s book the main text while supplementing it with select chapters from Gruen. Single …