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redbecca's review
3.0
I was pretty skeptical about animal studies as part of cultural studies, in the same way that I am critical of animal rights activism that takes little account of problems faced by humans, particularly, poverty and racism. This collection, with its themes of race and sex directly addresses these criticisms of animal rights and animal welfare politics, and succeeds at getting beyond the simplistic use of metaphors drawn from human histories of racism to talk about animals as victims of "slavery" or "a holocaust." It also serves as a good introduction to the field for someone unfamiliar with it, especially as it has a lot of articles for a journal of this sort.
Like most edited collections, this one has some very strong pieces and some that are less so. Perhaps the ideas across the articles were similar, because on the whole, the collection seemed stronger to me in the beginning than at the end. For me, the best pieces were Karen Joy Fowler's short story "Us" (also very teachable), the first three essays in the section, "History and Empire" and the first two in "Intersections." Harlan Weaver's "Becoming in Kind," the first piece in the section "Becoming" was also very good, and would be effective for teaching some of the central concepts of post-humanism to be found in works by Derrida, Butler, Haraway and Deleuze and Guattari.
The pieces that were weaker were the ones at the tail end of each section. The essay on anti-vaccine activists in Philadelphia just didn't come together. The essay about True Blood seemed quite reductive to me, and the essay about poetry related to two girls, Amala and Kamala, legendary "feral children" didn't address the 2007 book that demonstrated that their story was a hoax.
Like most edited collections, this one has some very strong pieces and some that are less so. Perhaps the ideas across the articles were similar, because on the whole, the collection seemed stronger to me in the beginning than at the end. For me, the best pieces were Karen Joy Fowler's short story "Us" (also very teachable), the first three essays in the section, "History and Empire" and the first two in "Intersections." Harlan Weaver's "Becoming in Kind," the first piece in the section "Becoming" was also very good, and would be effective for teaching some of the central concepts of post-humanism to be found in works by Derrida, Butler, Haraway and Deleuze and Guattari.
The pieces that were weaker were the ones at the tail end of each section. The essay on anti-vaccine activists in Philadelphia just didn't come together. The essay about True Blood seemed quite reductive to me, and the essay about poetry related to two girls, Amala and Kamala, legendary "feral children" didn't address the 2007 book that demonstrated that their story was a hoax.
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