Alex Weheliye

Spring 2006

ENGLISH 481-0

Th 2-5PM

Man & Animal

In recent years cultural studies of animals’ relation to the human have gained a critical momentum in the critique and reformulation of various humanist paradigms. This course will introduce students to the burgeoning field of animal theory as a forceful pathway to worlds beyond Man. We will begin with surveying some major statements on the place of animals in continental philosophy (Nietzsche, Heidegger, Levinas, Deleuze and Guattari, Irigaray) and then discuss some critical genealogies of humanism (Michel Foucault and Sylvia Wynter). Finally, we will read recent considerations of animality by such authors as Steve Baker, Erica Fudge, and Akira Lippit. Since the question of racialization is not a central concern in these writings, we will supplement them with literary and autobiographical texts in order to better understand the volatile parameters of the animal/human divide so central to western modernity.

Quarter Schedule

Th 3/30 Introduction & Atterton and Calarco, Animal Philosophy

Th 4/6 Foucault, The Order of Things (Part II)

Sylvia Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality” & Wynter Small Axe interview (Recommended)

Th 4/13 Lippit, The Electric Animal

Th 4/20 Fudge, Animal & Rothfels, Representing Animals (selections)

Th 4/27 Agamben, The Open: Man and Animal

Haraway, Companion Species Manifesto

Screening: Animal Love

Th 5/4 Baker, Picturing the Beast & Rothfels, Representing Animals (selections)

Th 5/11 Kafka, “Report to an Academy;” “Josefine;” “Metamorphosis;” “Investigations of a Dog.” Secondary readings (Margot Norris, Walter Benjamin, Beatrice Hanssen, Deleuze and Guattari, Marian Scholtmeijer)

Th 5/18 Butler, Wildseed

Prince, The History of Mary Prince

Spiegel, The Dreaded Comparison (Selections)

Th 5/25 Farah, Secrets

Course Synthesis