Are non-human animals our friends or enemies? In this provocative book, Dinesh Wadiwel argues that our mainstay relationships with billions of animals are essentially hostile. The War against Animals asks us to interrogate this sustained violence across its intersubjective, institutional and epistemic dimensions.
Drawing from Foucault, Spivak and Derrida, The War against Animals argues that our sovereign claim of superiority over other animals is founded on nothing else but violence. Through innovative readings of Locke and Marx, Dinesh Wadiwel argues that property in animals represents a bio-political conquest that aims to secure animals as the “spoils of war.” The goal for pro-animal advocacy must be to challenge this violent sovereignty and recognize animal resistance through forms of counter-conduct and truce.
Table of contents
Acknowledgements
Foreword: Matthew Calarco
Introduction: The Live Hang
Part One: Biopolitics
Chapter 1: Bare Life
Chapter 2: Governmentality
Part Two: Conquest
Chapter 3: Immunity
Chapter 4: Property and Commodity
Part Three: Private Dominion
Chapter 5: Privatisation and Containment
Chapter 6: Companionship
Part Four: Sovereignty
Chapter 7: Capability
Chapter 8: The Violence of Stupidity
Conclusion: Truce
Index
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And remember, the Critical Animal Studies book series are looking for manuscript submissions.
Critical Animal Studies investigates and challenges the complex dynamics of structural,
institutional and discursive power formations that affect animals, humans, and the
environment. By “critical” we mean that animal studies must not become a safe and
sanitized discourse; it must use its unique and powerful perspective to advance a radical
and oppositional dissent that engages and politicizes the many profound ethical,
environmental, and social issues embedded in animal studies. With a critical orientation
to the study of human-animal relationships the series seeks to contribute to current
debates and be a resource for social justice, animal advocacy and environmental
movements and research as well as for humanities and social science scholars more
generally. The series bridges boundaries between academic and activist knowledge
development, between scholarship and citizenship, between theory and praxis, as well
as between existing disciplines. We particularly invite texts that explore under
researched areas such as animals and climate change, globalization, capital, colonialism,
queer theory, education theory, childhood studies, labor issues, and disability studies.
We welcome contributions from any discipline.
Possible book proposals may:
• Intervene in the animal economy of the production, science, service, experience, and
culture industries;
• Critically analyze ideologies, practices and effects of the current animal welfare
movements;
• Explore diverse forms and sites of human and animal resistance;
• Reappraise preexisting texts (such as Elaine Scarry’s The Body in Pain) by exploring
new connects to the field of critical animal studies;
• Contribute to bold, innovative, and boundary shifting knowledge development in
critical animal studies.