Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780231147873)

Simone Weil once wrote that "the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence," establishing a relationship between vulnerability, beauty, and existence transcending the separation of species. Her conception of a radical ethics and aesthetics could be characterized as a new poetics of species, forcing a rethinking of the body's significance, both human and animal. Exploring the "logic of flesh" and the use of the body to mark species identity, Anat Pick reimagines a poetics that begins with the vulnerability of bodies, not the omnipotence of thought. Pick proposes a "creaturely" approach based on the shared embodiedness of humans and animals and a postsecular perspective on human-animal relations. She turns to literature, film, and other cultural texts, challenging the familiar inventory of the human: consciousness, language, morality, and dignity. Reintroducing Weil's elaboration of such themes as witnessing, commemoration, and collective memory, Pick identifies the animal within all humans, emphasizing the corporeal and its issues of power and freedom. In her poetics of the creaturely, powerlessness is the point at which aesthetic and ethical thinking must begin.

Author: Anat Pick
ISBN-10: 0231147872
ISBN-13: 9780231147873
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Language: English
Published: 04/07/2011
Pages: 264
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.57lbs
Size: 8.00h x 5.40w x 0.50d