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In The Postmodern Animal, Steve Baker explores how animal imagery has been used in modern and contemporary art and performance, and in postmodern philosophy and literature, to suggest and shape ideas about identity and creativity. Baker cogently analyses the work of such European and American artists as Olly and Suzi, Mark Dion, Paula Rego and Sue Coe, at the same time looking critically at the constructions, performances and installations of Robert Rauschenberg, Louise Bourgeois, Joseph Beuys and other significant late twentieth-century artists. Baker's book draws parallels between the animal's place in postmodern art and poststructuralist theory, drawing on works as diverse as Jacques Derrida's recent analysis of the role of animals in philosophical thought and Julian Barnes's best-selling Flaubert's Parrot.
How do supporters of the environmental movement manipulate and promote images of "nature" to achieve support and sympathy? From the Sierra Club's use of Ansel Adams's stark and pristine portraits of the western United States to close-ups of plastic bottles and dead fish floating in Rust Belt waterways, visual depictions of landscapes and the degradation caused by humans have profoundly shaped popular notions of environmentalism and the environment. Despite the rhetorical power of images connected with the environmental movement over the past forty years, scholarship in environmental communication has focused almost exclusively on verbal rather than visual rhetoric. Ecosee offers a deeper and fuller understanding of the communicative strategies and power of the environmental movement by looking closely at the visual rhetorics involved in photographs, paintings, television and filmic images, video games, and other forms of image-based media.
Vibrant and lyrical, the works that have survived artists Olly & Suzi's 15 years of adventures fill the pages of this equally boundary-defying book. 400 full-color illustrations.
Representing Animals explores the complex and often surprising connections between our imagining of animals and our cultural environment. The contributors -- historians, literary critics, anthropologists, artists, art historians, and scholars of cultural studies -- examine the ways we talk, write, photograph, imagine, and otherwise represent animals. The book includes topics such as pet cloning, fox hunting, animatronic characters, and how we displace our fear of aging onto our dogs. Representing Animals demonstrates the deep connections between the way we think about animals and the way we have thought about ourselves and our cultures in different times and places. Its publication marks a formative moment in the emerging field of animal studies. Contributors: Steve Baker, Marcus Bullock, Jane Desmond, Erica Fudge, Andrew Isenberg, Kathleen Kete, Akira Mizuta Lippit, Teresa Mangum, Garry Marvin, Susan McHugh, and Nigel Rothfels.
Human beings have long imagined their subjectivity, ethics, and ancestry with and through animals, yet not until the mid-twentieth century did contemporary thought reflect critically on animals' significance in human self-conception. Thinkers such as French philosopher Jacques Derrida, South African novelist J. M. Coetzee, and American theorist Donna Haraway have initiated rigorous inquiries into the question of the animal, now blossoming in a number of directions. It is no longer strange to say that if animals did not exist, we would have to invent them. This interdisciplinary and cross-cultural collection reflects the growth of animal studies as an independent field and the rise of "animal...
This book looks at specific instances in the Renaissance, Enlightenment and our own time when architectural ideas and ideas of biological life come into close proximity with each other. These convergences are fascinating and complex, offering new insights into architecture and its role. Establishing architecture as a product of the ascendancy of the position of human life, the author shows here that while architecture is dependent on life forces for its existence, at the same time it must be, at some level, indifferent to the life within it. Life, for its part, privileges itself above all else, and seeks to continuously expand its field of expression. This, then, is the asymmetrical condition, and to understand it is to gain important new theoretical perspectives into the nature of architecture.
Ecocriticism is one of the most vibrant fields of cultural study today, and environmental issues are controversial and topical. This volume captures the excitement of green reading, reflects on its relationship to the modern academy, and provides practical guidance for dealing with global scale, interdisciplinarity, apathy and scepticism.
From the pet that we live with and care for, to news items such as animal cloning, and the use of various creatures in film, television and advertising, animals are a constant presence in our lives. Animal is a timely overview of the many ways in which we live with animals, and assesses many of the paradoxes of our relationships with them: for example, why is the pet that sits by the dinner table never for eating? Examining novels such as Charlotte’s Web, films such as Old Yeller and Babe, science and advertising, fashion and philosophy, Animal also evaluates the ways in which we think about animals and challenges a number of the assumptions we hold. Why is it, for example, that animals are such a constant presence in children’s literature? And what does it mean to wear fake fur? Is fake fur an ethical avoidance of animal suffering, or merely a sanitized version of the unacceptable use of animals as clothing? Neither evangelical nor proselytizing, Animal invites the reader to think beyond the boundaries of a subject that has a direct effect on our day-to-day lives.
This pioneering collection of essays unpacks the complex discursive and embodied relationships between humans and animals, contributing to a more informed understanding of both human-animal relations and the role of language in social processes. Focusing on the example of shark-human interactions, the book draws on forms of analysis from multimodality and critical discourse studies to examine the representations of this relationship across visual arts, popular media, and the natural sciences, each viewed through a critical feminist lens. The combined effect highlights the significance of the emergent turn to post-humanism in applied linguistics and its role in fostering more engaged discussions around broader contemporary social issues, including environmental degradation and climate change on the one hand, and resurgent feminism and challenges to normative heterosexuality on the other. Paving the way for new forms of writing and language for a post-anthropocentric age, this volume is essential reading for students and scholars in applied linguistics, gender studies, sociolinguistics, human-animal studies, and environmental humanities.