Animaladies

Lori Gruen is William Griffin Professor of Philosophy at Wesleyan University, USA, where she is also a professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and coordinates Wesleyan Animal Studies. She is co-editor, with Carol J. Adams, of Ecofeminsim: Feminist Intersections with Other Animals and the Earth (Bloomsbury, 2014).Fiona Probyn-Rapsey is Professor in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry at the University of Wollongong, Australia. She is author of Made to Matter: White Fathers, Stolen Generations (2013) as well as co-editor of Animal Death (2013) and Animals in the Anthropocene: Critical Perspectives on Non-human Futures (2015).

Animaladies is a provocative, interdisciplinary volume linking the ways gender and animal rights activism are associated with sentiment and, often, insanity as a way of undermining its political aims. Sections address the affective labor of feminist animal rights, the linkages between disability and animal rights via understanding of ‘madness,’ and finally the entwined politics of resistance to exploitation and violence based on gender and species hierarchy. The opening essay from the editors provides a concise argument for the ways concern for the treatment of animals is pathologized through its linkage with ‘mad women’ and feminine emotional excess. At its strongest, the volume includes engaging discussions of the debates within disability studies about problematic attempts to inject ‘reason’ into animal rights through stigmatizing disability, rather than exploring the ways in which disability activism, feminism, and animal rights activism have all challenged the disembodied, reasoning subject … The breadth and novelty of the scholarship is worth engaging for feminist, animality studies, and disability studies scholars. Summing Up: Recommended.

• List of IllustrationsNotes on ContributorsAcknowledgmentsDistillationsLori Gruen (Wesleyan University, USA) and Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (University of Wollongong, Australia)Part I: Dismember1. Just Say No to LobotomyLori Gruen (Wesleyan University, USA)2. Making and Unmaking Mammalian Bodies: Sculptural Practice as Traumatic Testimonylynn mowson (University of Melbourne, Australia)3. There’s Something About the Blood…: Tactics of Evasion within Narratives of ViolenceNekeisha Alayna Alexis (Independent Scholar, USA)4. Erupt the SilenceHayley Singer (University of Melbourne, Australia)5. The Loneliness and Madness of Witnessing: Reflections from a Vegan Feminist KilljoyKatie Gillespie (Wesleyan University, USA)Part II: Disability6. Ableism, Speciesism, Animals, and Autism: The Devaluation of Interspecies FriendshipsHannah Monroe (Brock University, Canada)7. Metaphors and Maladies: Against Psychologizing SpeciesismGuy Scotton (Independent Scholar, Australia)8. The Horrific History of Comparisons between Cognitive Disability and Animality (and How to Move Past It)Alice Crary (New School for Social Research, USA)9. The Personal Is Political: Orthorexia Nervosa, the Pathogenization of Veganism, and Grief as a Political ActVasile Stanescu (Mercer University, USA) and James Stanescu (American University, USA)10. Women, Anxiety and Companion Animals: Toward a Feminist Animal Studies of Interspecies Care and SolidarityHeather Fraser (Flinders University, Australia) and Nik Taylor (Flinders University, Australia)Part III: Dysfunction11. The 'Crazy Cat Lady'Fiona Probyn-Rapsey (University of Wollongong, Australia)12. The Role of Dammed and Damned Desire in Animal Exploitation and Liberationpattrice jones (VINE Sanctuary, USA) and Cheryl Wylie (VINE Sanctuary, USA)13. Duck Lake Project: Art Meets Activism in an Anti-hide, Anti-bloke, Antidote to Duck ShootingYvette Watt (University of Tasmania, Australia)14. On Outcast Women, Dog Love, and Abjection between SpeciesLiz Bowen (Columbia University, USA)Afterword: DiscussionCarol J. AdamsIndex