This study addresses the relationship between Japanese aesthetics and anime. There are three premises: (1) the abstract concepts promoted by Japanese aesthetics; (2) the abstract and the concrete coalesce in the visual domain; and (3) anime can help us appreciate many aspects of Japan's aesthetic legacy"--Provided by publisher.

Essays explore philosophical themes in The Planet of the Apes films including human-animal relationships, science and ethics.

To make sense of the material afterlives of animals, this book draws together multispecies perspectives from literary criticism and theory, cultural studies, anthropology and ethnography, photographic and film history, and contemporary art practice to offer the first synoptic account of animal remains.

Demonstrates that slapstick film comedies display a canny and sometimes profound understanding of their medium. Slapstick film comedy may be grounded in idiocy and failure, but the genre is far more sophisticated than it initially appears. In this book, Burke Hilsabeck suggests that slapstick is often animated by a philosophical impulse to understand the cinema. He looks closely at movies and gags that represent the conditions and conventions of cinema production and demonstrates that film comedians display a canny and (...) sometimes profound understanding of their medium—from Buster Keaton’s encounter with the film screen in Sherlock Jr. (1924) to Harpo Marx’s lip-sync turn with a phonograph in Monkey Business (1931) to Jerry Lewis’s film-on-film performance in The Errand Boy (1961). The Slapstick Camera follows the observation of philosopher Stanley Cavell that self-reference is one way in which “film exists in a state of philosophy.” By moving historically across the studio era, the book looks at a series of comedies that play with the changing technologies and economic practices behind film production and describes how comedians offered their own understanding of the nature of film and filmmaking. Hilsabeck locates the hidden intricacies of Hollywood cinema in a place where one might least expect them—the clowns, idiots, and scoundrels of slapstick comedy. “From its analysis of the vaudevillian Victorian origins to early Hollywood expressions, and from defining classical performances by the likes of Keaton to recent postmodern recapitulations, Hilsabeck’s theoretically rigorous and wide-ranging study masterfully weaves a path through the historical, technical, and philosophical art of slapstick comedy. A must for scholars working in this field.” — Daniel Varndell, author ofHollywood Remakes, Deleuze and the Grandfather Paradox. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Diacritics 31.2 (2001) 35-48 [Access article in PDF] Film, Freud, and ParanoiaDalí and the Representation of Male Desire in An Andalusian Dog Ignacio Javier López An Andalusian Dog, one of the most universally acclaimed films in cinema history, is frequently mentioned by critics as a privileged point of reference for the Surrealist rebellion. The film remains enigmatic to this day. Criticism has concentrated on the validity (...) and effectiveness of its images to exemplify the avant-garde attack against social conventions and against the exclusive dominance of rationality in epistemology and social discourse. But this contextual approach does not take account of the script's fragmented narrative, which finds support in Freud's psychoanalytical theories and articulates a radical proposal for identity and culture. Largely neglected by critics, this narrative has been highly influential in the history of cinema. An Andalusian Dog is central to a long list of films that explore different aspects of the irrational, among them Jean Cocteau's Le sang du poète, Hunt Stromberg's The Strange Woman, Guy Debord's script Howling in Favor of the Marquis de Sade, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, David Lynch's Blue Velvet, Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs, and Philip Kaufman's Quills. This impressive list underscores the need for an interpretative critical effort that accounts for the authors' proposal in the context of the Surrealist reaction to convention and tradition.Conventionally An Andalusian Dog has been viewed as a film about sexuality; I suggest that sexuality appears in the film as the pretext for a discussion of the threat sexual desire poses for male identity. In this respect, the film develops ideas that begin to appear in paintings completed by Dalí after his initial contact with Freud's works in the mid-1920s. These paintings display male identity as a fragile form of subsistence unfolding between two alternate forces, desire and fear: the desire for sexual realization and the opposed fear that sexual intercourse will conclude in disease and ultimately in death. Given the scarcity of Buñuel's production prior to 1929, I suggest that Dalí's monumental production of paintings during these years served as a preliminary visual point of reference for the design of some of the images in An Andalusian Dog.By concentrating on Dalí's work, I do not mean to suggest that he deserves exclusive credit for the film; a careful examination of Buñuel's writings clearly indicates that the movie included most of his interests as well. Nonetheless, I would like to correct what has become a common trend in the study of An Andalusian Dog. In the early 1940s, Buñuel and Dalí's friendship came to an abrupt end, and in the following years each claimed sole authorship for the ideas in the film. The conflict between the two artists contaminated critical attitudes, which were guided exclusively by Buñuel's pre-1929 writings on cinema. The recurrence of images in the filmmaker's subsequent work was employed to confirm critics' initial intuitions that the film was exclusively Buñuel's. As a result, Dalí's name became increasingly dissociated from the movie, as is illustrated by the absence of the painter's name on the cover of the English edition of the script. However, the antagonism that separated the artists more than ten years after An [End Page 35] [Begin Page 37] Andalusian Dog premiered in Paris on June 6, 1929, should not be a consideration in our critical understanding of this work. Although Buñuel directed the movie and deserves to be recognized for his undeniable input, we should not forget that he eagerly sought the painter's cooperation in writing the script. Moreover, contrary to Buñuel's later practice of frequently altering the initial script during the course of the film's production, An Andalusian Dog closely follows the original plan. This furthers the idea of the importance of Dalí's contribution, and, despite the opposing claims made by both artists in later years, it certainly appears... (shrink)

The major essays of the distinguished and prolific Australian-born film critic Adrian Martin have long been difficult to access, so this anthology, which collects highlights of his work in one volume, will be welcomed throughout film studies. Martin offers in-depth analysis of many genres of films while providing a broad understanding of the history of cinema and the history of film criticism and culture. These vibrant, highly personal essays, written between 1982 and 2016, balance breadth across (...) cinema theory with almost encyclopedic detail, ranging between aesthetics, cinephilia, film genre, criticism, philosophy, and cultural politics. Mysteries of Cinema circumscribes a special cultural period that began with the dream of critique as a form of poetic writing, and today arrives at collaborative experiments in audiovisual essays. Throughout these essays, Martin pursues a particular vision of what cinema has been, what it is, and what it still could be. (shrink)

This article, drawing on selected feminist magazines of the 1980s, particularly Feminist Arts News (FAN) and GEN, offers a textual ‘braiding’ of narratives to re-present a history of Black British feminism. I attempt to chart a history of Black British feminist inheritance while proposing the politics of (other)mothering as a politics of potential, pluralistic and democratic community building, where Black thought and everyday living carry a primary and participant role. The personal—mothering our children—is the political, affording a nurturing (...) of alterity through a politics of care that is fundamentally antiracist and antisexist. I attempt to show how Black feminist thought can significantly contribute to democracy in the present and how Black British history and thought, as fundamentally antiracist and anticolonial, can generate a reinvention much needed in the present of a shared British history. I argue for feminist intervention premised upon a politics of care, addressing through activist mothering the urgency of Black absence from prestigious institutions. Such debilitating absence in Britain inhibits the development of scholarship, distorts feminist history and seriously concerns potential Black feminists. From diverse texts, I develop a genealogical narrative supplemented through memory work. This ‘gathering and re-using’ privileges Black women's theorising as a crucial component of the methodological metissage, which includes auto-theorising to develop ideas of resemblance in relation to Black British feminism and feminist kinship. The resultant ‘braiding’, I suggest after Lionnet, questions the absence of intersubjective spaces for reflection on Black British feminist praxis, indicating a direction for British feminists of all complexions. Attentive to the 1980s as historical context while invoking the maternal, I consider what is required to engage generationally, counterwrite the academy and pursue a dynamic process of transformation within a transnational feminism that challenges Black British absence from academic knowledge production, while nurturing its presence. (shrink)

This fascinating study explores the difficulties faced by modern Westerners in their search for a meaningful life. It sheds light on this enduring cultural dilemma through a close reading of four popular film and television narratives: Pixar's animated feature film, Toy Story; Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins and The Dark Knight; the television romantic comedy, Sex and the City; and, finally, the mobster drama, The Sopranos. The readings are guided by a number of inter-related questions. First, in what ways do (...) these popular stories speak to the modern West's meaning dilemma? What do they have to say about contemporary culture, and its capacity to illuminate the fundamental human? What are the core problems faced by the central characters and how are they resolved? Finally, and perhaps most importantly, do the four stories that come into focus suggest hope or despair in the modern West's search for meaning? (shrink)

In this collection of critical essays, Dominick LaCapra, with characteristic verve, takes on a variety of authors who have addressed issues relating to intellectual history, history generally, violence, trauma, and the relation between the human and the animal. LaCapra offers two types of criticism—of historians for ignoring or misappropriating theory, and of theorists for engaging in “theoreticism,” a theorizing that rides roughshod over historical specificity and context. The present essay focuses on LaCapra’s discussion of the theoreticism of (...) the critical theorists Giorgio Agamben, Eric L. Santner, and Slavoj Žižek, and in particular on their and LaCapra’s attempts to engage with the “issue of the postsecular.” Although Agamben, Santner, and Žižek highlight some important and provocative issues, this brand of critical theory provides too limited a base for coming to an understanding of current debates over the relation between religion and secular perspectives. Instead, one must approach “postsecularity” with attentiveness to the larger “secularization debate,” and to the way the term postsecular is used by such writers as Jürgen Habermas and John Milbank. LaCapra rightly draws attention to the recent emergence of a discourse of “the postsecular.” Both the term and the concept now cry out for a deeper, more critical, and more historical examination than has so far been attempted. (shrink)

Projecting Illusion offers a systematic analysis of the impression of reality in the cinema and the pleasure it gives to the film spectator. Film provides a compelling experience that can be considered as a form of illusion akin to the experience of day-dream and dream. Examining the concept of illusion and its relationship to fantasy in the experience of visual representation, Richard Allen situates his explanation within the context of an analytical criticism of contemporary film and critical theory. He (...) argues that many contemporary film theorists correctly identify the significance of the impression of reality, although their explanation of it is incorrect because of an invalid philosophical understanding of the relationship between the mind, representation and reality. Offering a clear presentation and critique of the central arguments of contemporary film and critical theory, Allen also touches on fundamental issues in current discourses of philosophy, art history and feminist theory. (shrink)

Going beyond the creolisation theories of Brathwaite and Glissant, I attempt to develop ideas concerning the gendering of creolisation, and a historicising of affects within it. Addressing affects as ‘physiological things’ contextualised in the history of the Caribbean slave plantation, I seek, importantly, to delineate a trajectory and development of a specific Creole history in relation to affects. Brathwaite's proposition that ‘the most significant (and lasting) inter-cultural creolisation took place’ within the ‘intimate’ space of ‘sexual relations’ is key (...) to my argument. In the light of this, I consider how Creole cultural knowledge about affect—as the primary motivational system inclusive of fear, anger, outrage and so on — might be identified, and what constitutes such Creole knowledge within which affect might be embedded. How might Glissant's relationality and Creole literary texts add to this knowledge? I focus primarily on three texts: Clarke's The Polished Hoe, Collins’ The Colour of Forgetting and Morejón's ‘Amo a mi amo’/‘l Love My Master’. Each text on which I draw is selected for its intersectional representation of gender relations, ‘knowledge about sexual difference’ and its representation of Creole subjectivities within the context problematised here as the ‘demonic ground’. Moreover, as auto-theorising texts, they represent both narrative and meta-narrative of a creolising of affects in and against the economy of the slave plantation. Each represents also a stage or aspect of the development of subjectivities and an affective community that inform this intervention concerned with theorising against consolidated, universalising and Eurocentric conceptualisations of affect. In the process, I attempt to offer a differentiated cartography and literary archaeology of affect. (shrink)

What do horror films reveal about social difference in the everyday world? Criticism of the genre often relies on a dichotomy between monstrosity and normality, in which unearthly creatures and deranged killers are metaphors for society's fear of the "others" that threaten the "normal." The monstrous other might represent women, Jews, or Blacks, as well as Indigenous, queer, poor, elderly, or disabled people. The horror film's depiction of such minorities can be sympathetic to their exclusion or complicit in (...) their oppression, but ultimately, these images are understood to stand in for the others that the majority dreads and marginalizes. Adam Lowenstein offers a new account of horror and why it matters for understanding social otherness. He argues that horror films reveal how the category of the other is not fixed. Instead, the genre captures ongoing metamorphoses across "normal" self and "monstrous" other. This "transformative otherness" confronts viewers with the other's experience-and challenges us to recognize that we are all vulnerable to becoming or being seen as the other. Instead of settling into comforting certainties regarding monstrosity and normality, horror exposes the ongoing struggle to acknowledge self and other as fundamentally intertwined. Horror Film and Otherness features new interpretations of landmark films by directors including Tobe Hooper, George A. Romero, John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Stephanie Rothman, Jennifer Kent, Marina de Van, and Jordan Peele. Through close analysis of their engagement with different forms of otherness, this book provides new perspectives on horror's significance for culture, politics, and art. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, many philosophers have been increasingly inclined to consider science fiction films as philosophical exercises that center on the nature of human consciousness and existence. Albert Camus' philosophy of the absurd, however, has almost never been employed as a constructive perspective that can illumine unexplored aspects of these films. This is surprising, since science fiction films seem to be packed with visions and dialogues that echo the Sisyphean universe. Cosmos and Camus endeavors to (...) set foot on this uncharted terrain. Its first part aims to introduce the main components of Camus' absurdity in such a way that it can be easily applied to the analysis of the films later. Equipped with these Camusean essentials, it delves into an in-depth analysis of two first-encounter films (Contact and Arrival) and two AI films (A.I. and Her). These analyses yield more than an insightful reflection of the absurd contents in science-fiction film. Indeed, imaginative collisions with nonhumans seem to tell us a lot about the nature of the absurd in the human condition, as well as raising the question of whether absurdity is exclusively a human matter. Ultimately, the interpretation of the films illuminates the films themselves just as much as it illuminates, challenges, and expands Camus' concept of absurdity, thus contributing to our current understanding of what the absurd reality is and how we can either live with it or transcend it. (shrink)

Introduction -- Time and matter: temporality, embodied subjectivity and film phenomenology -- Knowing and nothing: Chris Marker, subjective temporalities and vocalic bodies in the future tense -- Agnès Varda's Trinket box: subjective relationality, affect and temporalised space -- Burlesque gestures and bodily attention: phenomenologies of the ephemeral in Chantal Akerman -- Threatened corporealities: thinking with the films of Philippe Grandrieux -- Conclusion: rethinking cinematic subjectivity and beyond.

This book rethinks the discussion of sport as a cinematic subject. Arguing for the vitality of the sports film as distinctively 'modern' genre, the book looks at its innovative potential to capture twentieth- and twenty-first-century sport in all its complexity. Written in an accessible style and illustrated throughout, the book integrates work and ideas from film studies with thinking from sports psychology, philosophy, data theory and ecocriticism. In its detailed analyses of a wide-ranging group of films, the book shows (...) how film, from fictional works to biopics to experimental documentaries, can illuminate individual sporting experience, as well as sport's wider place in modern life. (shrink)

Painting, seeing, concepts -- Gone, missing -- Arshile's heel, Gorky's line -- You are here and not here: the concept of conceptual art -- Moving pictures & memory -- The doubling of death in the films of Michael Haneke -- Yep, Gaston's gay: Disney and the beauty of a beastly love -- And say the zombie responded -- Other animal others -- The man who mistook his meal for a hot dog -- Rachel Rosenthal was an animal -- Laughing (...) beyond modernity -- It's just a bunch of stuff that happened -- Quantum Andy. (shrink)

Gilles Deleuze published two radical books on film: Cinema 1: The Movement-Image and Cinema 2: The Time-Image. Engaging with a wide range of film styles, histories and theories, Deleuze's writings treat film as a new form of philosophy. This ciné-philosophy offers a startling new way of understanding the complexities of the moving image, its technical concerns and constraints as well as its psychological and political outcomes. Deleuze and Cinema presents a step-by-step guide to the key concepts behind Deleuze's revolutionary theory (...) of the cinema. Exploring ideas through key directors and genres, Deleuze's method is illustrated with examples drawn from American, British, continental European, Russian and Asian cinema. Deleuze and Cinema provides the first introductory guide to Deleuze's radical methodology for screen analysis. It will be invaluable for students and teachers of film theory, film history and film forms. (shrink)

ArgumentI argue through an analysis of spectacle that the relationship between wildlife documentary films’ entertainment and educational mandates is complex and co-constitutive. Accuracy-based criticism of wildlife films reveals assumptions of a deficit model of science communication and positions spectacle as an external commercial pressure influencing the genre. Using thePlanet Earth series as a case study, I describe spectacle's prominence within the recent blue-chip renaissance in wildlife film, resulting from technological innovations and twenty-first-century consumer and broadcast market contexts. (...) I connect spectacle in contemporary wildlife films to its relevant precursors within natural history, situating spectacle as a central feature of natural history display designed to inspire awe and wonder in audiences. I show that contemporary documentary spectacle is best understood as an opportunity for affective knowing rather than a constraint on accuracy; as a result, spectacle contributes to the virtuous inter-reinforcement of entertainment and education at work in blue-chip wildlife films. (shrink)

This article seeks to explore the early stages of American film theory, wherecinephiliabecame a site of aesthetic interest and criticism thanks to the theorization of cinema as a conversational medium. Following Stanley Cavell’s analysis of a distinct form of moviegoing in America, based on the casual conversation about movies, I argue that a reinterpretation of Emerson’s ordinary aesthetics has been at the core of early film theory, especially in Vachel Lindsay’s writings. In order to illustrate the relation between the (...) defence of a new medium and the attempt to define a quintessentially American art form, this article focuses on the concept of “conversation” that Lindsay uses to describe film spectatorship and to provide a new critical apparatus to grasp the specificity of film aesthetics. (shrink)

How do issues of form and content shape the documentary film? What role does visual evidence play in relation to a documentary’s arguments about the world we live in? In what ways do documentaries abide by or subvert ethical expectations? Are mockumentaries a form of subversion? Can the documentary be an aesthetic experience and at the same time have political or social impact? And how can such impacts be empirically measured? Pioneering film scholar Bill Nichols investigates the ways documentaries strive (...) for accuracy and truthfulness and simultaneously fabricate a form that shapes reality. Such films may rely on reenactment to re-create the past, storytelling to provide satisfying narratives, and rhetorical figures such as metaphor or devices such as irony to make a point. Documentaries are truly a fiction unlike any other. With clarity and passion, Nichols offers incisive commentaries on the basic questions of documentary’s distinct relationship to the reality it represents, as well as close readings of provocative documentaries from this form's earliest days to its most recent incarnations. These essays offer a definitive account of what makes documentary film such a vital part of our cultural landscape. (shrink)

Perhaps nowhere in the broad expanse of types of film is the old “quarrel between philosophy and poetry” more evident—and also more vitally relevant—than in the genre or mode of film known as documentary. Documentary film is just another form of poetic imitation, in its variety of instances and complexity of fabrication, it is just as much caught up with the limitations—and effects—of mimetic art, including fiction film. This book affords a prismatic perspective on documentary cinema, inviting the dynamism and (...) diversity of the arts, humanities, social sciences, and even natural sciences together into a shared conversation. (shrink)

In the past decade, philosopher Bernard Rollin points out, we have "witnessed a major revolution in social concern with animal welfare and the moral status of animals." Adopting the stance of a moderate, Harold Guither attempts to provide an unbiased examination of the paths and goals of the members of the animal rights movement and of its detractors. Given the level of confusion, suspicion, misunderstanding, and mistrust between the two sides, Guither admits the difficulty in locating, much less staying in, (...) the middle of the road. The philosophical conflict, however, is fairly clear: those who resist reform, fearing that radical change in the treatment of animals will infringe on their business and property rights, versus the new activists who espouse a different set of moral and ethical obligations toward animals. From his position as a moderate, Guither presents a brief history of animal protection and the emergence of animal rights, describes the scope of the movement, and identifies major players such as Paul and Linda McCartney and organizations such as People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals that are actively involved in the movement. He concentrates on what is actually happening in the 1990s, discussing in detail the possible consequences of the current debate for those who own, use, or enjoy animals in entertainment and leisure pursuits. A reference work for students in animal sciences and veterinary medicine, the book also poses questions for philosophers, sociologists, and public policymakers as well as animal owners, animal and biomedical researchers, and manufacturers and distributors of animal equipment and supplies. (shrink)

Wars have played a momentous role in shaping the course of human history. The ever-present specter of conflict has made it an enduring topic of interest in popular culture, and many movies, from Hollywood blockbusters to independent films, have sought to show the complexities and horrors of war on-screen. In The Philosophy of War Films, David LaRocca compiles a series of essays by prominent scholars that examine the impact of representing war in film and the influence that (...) cinematic images of battle have on human consciousness, belief, and action. The contributors explore a variety of topics, including the aesthetics of war as portrayed on-screen, the effect war has on personal identity, and the ethical problems presented by war. Drawing upon analyses of iconic and critically acclaimed war films such as Saving Private Ryan (1998), The Thin Red Line (1998), Rescue Dawn (2006), Restrepo (2010), and Zero Dark Thirty (2012), this volume's examination of the genre creates new ways of thinking about the philosophy of war. A fascinating look at the manner in which combat and its aftermath are depicted cinematically, The Philosophy of War Films is a timely and engaging read for any philosopher, filmmaker, reader, or viewer who desires a deeper understanding of war and its representation in popular culture. (shrink)

Introduction -- The dialectic's narrow margin: film noir between Adorno and Hegel -- On critical theory's dialectical dilemma -- a configuration pregnant with tension: Fritz Lang for critical theory -- Coda: the enjoyment of film in theory.

Invoking key concepts from the philosophical writings of Gilles Deleuze and Giorgio Agamben, The Dark Interval examines an iconography of radical passivity and temporal rupture that recurs in film noir, while examining the emergence of a specific cinematic figure - the 'intervallic' noir protagonist exposed to the redemptive force of his or her own passion.

Figuring Animals is a collection of fifteen essays concerning the representation of animals in literature, the visual arts, philosophy, and cultural practice. At the turn of the new century, it is helpful to reconsider our inherited understandings of the species, some of which are still useful to us. It is also important to look ahead to new understandings and new dialogue, which may contribute to the survival of us all. The contributors to this volume participate in this dialogue in a (...) variety of ways--through personal experience, natural history, cultural studies, philosophical inquiry, art history, literary analysis, film studies, and theoretical imagining, and through a combination of these trains of thought. The essays expose weaknesses in western epistemological frames of reference that for centuries have limited our views and, thus, our experiences of animal being, including our own. (shrink)

Animation has employed film stars throughout its long history; however, there have been few studies that have examined the relationship between film stardom and animation. This article explores the...

The horror and psychological denial of our mortality, along with the corruptibility of our flesh, are persistent themes in drama. Body horror films have intensified these themes in increasingly graphic terms. The aesthetic of body horror has its origins in the ideas of the Marquis de Sade and the existential philosophies of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche, all of whom demonstrated that we have just cause to be anxious about our physical reality and its existence in the world. This (...) book examines the relationship between these writers and the various manifestations of body horror in film. The most characteristic examples of this genre are those directed by David Cronenberg, but body horror as a whole includes many variations on the theme by other figures, whose work is charted here through seven categories: copulation, generation, digestion, mutilation, infection, mutation, disintegration and extinction. (shrink)

Vidal intertwines fond recollections of films savored in the movie palaces of his Washington, D.C., boyhood with strands of autobiography and trenchant observations about American politics. Never before has the renowned author revealed so much about his own life or written with such immediacy about the forces shaping America. 26 halftones.

Written as the introduction to a special issue of Body & Society on the topic of animation and automation, this article considers the interrelation of those two terms through readings of relevant work in film studies and science and technology studies (STS), inflected through recent scholarship on the body. Drawing upon historical and contemporary examples, we trace how movement is taken as a sign of life, while living bodies are translated through the mechanisms of artifice. Whereas film studies has drawn (...) upon work ranging from production history to semiotics and psychoanalysis to conceptualize the ways in which the appearance of life on the cinema screen materializes subjectivities beyond it, STS has developed a corpus of theoretical and empirical scholarship that works to refigure material-semiotic entanglements of subjects and objects. In approaching animation and automation through insights developed within these two fields we hope to bring them into closer dialogue with each other and with studies of the body, given the convergence of their shared concerns with affective materializations of life. More specifically, an interest in the moving capacities of animation, and in what gets rendered invisible in discourses of automation, is central to debates regarding the interdependencies of bodies and machines. Animation is always in the end a relational effect, it seems, while automation implies the continuing presence of hidden labour and care. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Opera and film. Though these two cultural forms are not often thought of together, they have actually existed in an interesting symbiosis, ...

Drawing on ancient writers, from Aesop to Ovid, classicist and working farmer, Mark Usher compiles in this book an anthology of Greco-Roman passages illustrating how they thought about animals and illuminating they might help us to rethink our relationships with them. Not many contemporary readers will know, for example, the compelling arguments the second century AD Greek philosopher Porphyry makes for vegetarianism, long before a plant-based diet began to garner headlines. Plutarch's serio-comic exposition of the rationality and inherent dignity of (...) non-human creatures-put on the lips of one of Circe's pigs-is so fresh that it sounds like it was formulated just yesterday. The knowledge the poet Theognis derived from Greek sponge divers about the behavior of octopods rivals our contemporary fascination with the octopus. Aristotle's introduction to the scientific study of animal morphology and behavior remains unparalleled for its elegance and insight, and it represents one of the first forays into natural history writing. Seneca, employing an ingenious etymological pun on the word animal, endeavors to show that we humans are morally inferior to our animal cousins, who instinctively know and are satisfied with their place in Nature. The Greeks and Romans, amidst all their magnificent cultural achievements and reckless, destructive behavior, lived closer than most of us to the perils and prospects of their environments. This afforded them a sensitivity to their environments and, in particular, to their fellow creatures that can perhaps help to disabuse us of our disconnectedness from animal life. This small volume demonstrates how astoundingly relevant the ancients still are in this regard. (shrink)

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in which extraordinary events (...) unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown. (shrink)

In the beginning was the night. All light, shapes, language, and subjective consciousness, as well as the world and art depicting them, emerged from this formless chaos. In fantasy, we seek to return to this original darkness. Particularly in literature, visual representations, and film, the night resiliently resurfaces from the margins of the knowable, acting as a stage and state of mind in which exceptional perceptions, discoveries, and decisions play out. Elisabeth Bronfen investigates the nocturnal spaces in which extraordinary events (...) unfold, and casts a critical eye into the darkness that enables the irrational exploration of desire, transformation, ecstasy, transgression, spiritual illumination, and moral choice. She begins with an analysis of classical myths depicting the creation of the world and then moves through night scenes in Shakespeare and Milton, Gothic novels and novellas, Hegel's romantic philosophy, and Freud's psychoanalysis. Bronfen also demonstrates how modern works of literature and film, particularly film noir, can convey that piece of night the modern subject carries within. From Mozart's "Queen of the Night" to Virginia Woolf 's oscillation between day and night, life and death, and chaos and aesthetic form, Bronfen renders something visible, conceivable, and comprehensible from the dark realms of the unknown. (shrink)

In The Othering of Women in Silent Film: Cultural, Historical, and Literary Contexts, Barbara Tepa Lupack explores the rampant racial and gender stereotyping in early cinema and demonstrates how that imagery helped shape American attitudes and practices.

From a largely Western phenomenon, the “animal turn” has, in recent years, gone global. Animals and Human Society in Asia: Historical, Cultural and Ethical Perspectives is just such a timely product that testifies to this trend.But why Asia? The editors, in their very helpful overview essay, have from the outset justified the volume's focus on Asia and ensured that this is not simply a matter of lacuna filling. The reasons they set out include: the fact that Asia is the cradle (...) of early human settlement and animal domestication; Asia encompasses an extreme diversity of closely connected ecosystems and human cultures; Asia is the place where the world's major religions originated; and, as in other parts of the world, Asia's use of animals for food and other utilitarian purposes constitutes a prominent feature of its culture. All of these factors, they argue, made Asia a unique lab for the exploration of major developments in human civilization and the complexities of human-animal interactions.Based on these premises, the book is divided into four parts, each concentrating on areas that the editors consider to have paramount significance in world history: Part I, “Hunting and Domestication”; Part II “Animals as Food”; Part III “Animals at War”; and Part IV “Animals in Culture and Religion.” As many good works on animal studies do, the volume adopts a truly cross-disciplinary approach, uniting scholars from disciplines as diverse as archaeology, history, anthropology, art, religion, literature, and cultural studies. It too takes an interregional approach and covers a vast geographical area, stretching from the western edge of Asia in the Levant to Central Asia, where once roamed the horses of the nomadic pastoral tribes, to the other end of Asia, including India, China, and Japan. Temporally impressive as well, the work takes us from the deep history of the Paleolithic period up to the contemporary world, exploring the diverse roles that a wide range of animals—horses, donkeys, camels, elephants, tigers, and so forth—have played in Asia's rich and unique past and present.Strong in archaeology, Part I, “Hunting and Domestication,” responds to the much-called for “deep” or “coevolutionary” history of human-animal relations in recent years. The three chapters discuss, respectively, the roles that proboscideans have played in the diet and culture of early societies in Paleolithic China and beyond; the ways in which animals of all sizes have been increasingly integrated into the diet, daily uses, trade, and warfare in Holocene Negev; and the diversifying roles played by donkeys in the early Bronze Age in Southern Levant as a food source, a means of transport and in ritual sacrifices. Together, they demonstrate, with reference to telling archaeological evidence how the early societies in this region have been highly dependent upon the increasingly sophisticated interactions with and uses of mega-herbivores in the protracted and by no means clear-cut transition from hunting and herding towards the agricultural way of life, affirming the co-existing and co-constituting relations between humans and other animals in the deep past of Asia.The chapters in the section on “Animals at War” equally reveal the crucial roles that animals have played in the military sphere, as either a practical war technology or a show of military power. “Elephants in Mongol History” revisits the thesis of elephant-mounted troops in South and Southeast Asia as a barrier to Mongol expansion. Through its lively account of the pivotal battles in Mongolian history, especially that against India and China, it illustrates with great success the complex interactions between animals (especially elephants, horses, and humans), technology, and the geographical environment, which jointly exercised their influence on the outcome of warfare and degree of success of political rule. Turning away from the dynamic of warfare, the following two chapters explore the biopolitical question of the management of the horse as a bio-resource in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria (1250–1517) and early Ming Dynasty China, respectively. The first one places its focus on the breeding, procurement, and feeding of the horse subjects in question, while the latter concentrates on the human organization of various resources for the upkeep of government horses—a conventional area of study called “horse administration” in the institutional history of the government in China.The last section, “Animals in Culture and Religion,” examines the changing images of apex predators, such as lions and tigers, in Buddhist perceptions from South Asia to East Asia; the cult of the Horse King in late Imperial China; and the significance of animal signs in Mongolian historiography. They represent an established approach in animal studies that seeks to understand different aspects of human culture through symbolic or metaphorical animals. Instead of treating the animals discussed as mere abstractions, which has been a frequent criticism of works that adopt this approach, the relations between the symbolic animals and their prototype in the natural world were attentively explored. The essay on the cult of the Horse King, for example, closely links the wax and wane of the cult since late imperial China with the changing use and subsequent disuse of the actual horses in agriculture, transportation, commerce, and quotidian life. Yet, classic as these essays on symbolic animals are, one does feel slightly unsatiated when coming to the end of this section, which also marks the end of this volume. Having been reminded early in the introductory essay that Asia was “a major site for the emergence of moral teachings and ethical guidance on the treatment of animals” and how this legacy “still affects the lives of billions of humans to this very day,” one feels naturally rather let down that no article in this volume directly addresses this vital ethical dimension, especially since it belongs to a series on “animal ethics.”Indeed, regarding the task of placing either the nonhuman animals or the ethical relations between humans and other animals center stage, the essays in this volume achieve only varying levels of success. Some authors exhibit a more acute awareness of what “animal studies” or “animal ethics” might entail epistemically and methodically and experiment by paying closer attention to the species-specific characteristics, experience, and agency of nonhuman animals in order to cast off the deified anthropocentrism previously ruled in humanist scholarship. However, others have made no such attempt. For example, in Part II of “Animals as Food,” an essay on the production and consumption of milk in contemporary China, albeit alert to the issue of health hazards to consumers, omits any consideration of the subject from the dairy cows’ perspective under the modern intensive farming system. Moreover, otherwise superb research on the tuna-fishing industry in Japan, with its insightful discussion of the nexus between knowledge economies and imperial politics, too passes over any discussion of the fate of the tuna, whether collectively as a group of living organisms containing 15 species or individually as animals with an embodied experience. One does ponder whether these essays would fit better in a volume on the cultural history of food or on the entwining history of knowledge production, economics, and politics, which conventionally position human interests at the center of research.Taken as a whole, this is an impressive volume that directs our attention to the hitherto understudied world of Asia in animal studies. The long durée, with its interdisciplinary and interregional approach, also most powerfully presents a past in Asia that could not have been the same without the participation of animals at every level, from everyday life to the shaping of cultural values, the construction of belief systems, the building of a national identity, and even the rise and fall of regimes. Scholars and students interested in expanding the frontier of our understanding of the world with a more inclusive “we” should find a wealth of interesting subjects on which to build further research. Finally, the volume also presents a fitting occasion for all scholars committed to animal studies to consider the grave challenge confronting the field that arose alongside its growing respectability and rapid expansion: Should it be oriented toward the destabilization of our previously anthropocentric conception of the world? Or should no such perimeter be imposed, as in this volume? The overall breadth and limitations of this volume leave one pondering this issue. (shrink)