Animality in Contemporary Italian Philosophy

Felice Cimatti is Full Professor in Philosophy of Language and Mind at the University of Calabria, Italy.Carlo Salzani is Guest Scholar at the Messerli Research Institute of the University of Vienna, Austria.

“A number of superb essays that articulate a distinctively Italian philosophical approach to animal issues and animal studies. For those readers who come to animal philosophy primarily through Anglo-American analytic philosophy … or through Continental-style animal studies … this volume should be of serious interest – for not only does the Italian tradition explored here anticipate and intersect with major themes in both traditions, it also introduces novel themes and concepts that are important for considering the future of animal studies.” (Matthew Calarco, Animal Studies Journal, Vol. 10 (2), 2021)“Animality in Contemporary Italian Philosophy is in fact an important contribution as it introduces a large international audience to authors, ideas, and practices that have characterised (and still characterise) Italian thought, both challenging and enriching the current hegemonic discourses on animal ethics.” (Damiano Benvegnù, Italian Studies, Vol. 76 (3), 2021)

• 1. Introduction – The Italian Animal—A Heterodox Tradition.- Part I: Animality in the Italian Tradition.- 2. Animality and Immanence in Italian Thought.- 3. Aldo Capitini, Animal Ethics, and Nonviolence: The Expanding Circle.- 4. What is Italian Antispeciesism? An Overview of Recent Tendencies in Animal Advocacy.- Part II: Animality in Perspective.- 5. Beyond Human and Animal: Giorgio Agamben and Life as Potential.- 6. Deconstructing the Dispositif of the Person: Animality and the Politics of Life in the Philosophy of Roberto Esposito.- 7. Animality Between Italian Theory and Posthumanism.- 8. For the Critique of Political Anthropocentrism: Italian Marxism and the Animal Question.- 9. Experiencing Oneself in One’s Constitutive Relation: Unfolding Italian Sexual Difference.- 10. Paolo De Benedetti: For an Animal Theology.- Part III: Fragments of a Contemporary Debate.- 11. “Il faut bien tuer,” or the Calculation of the Abattoir.- 12. Philosophical Ethology and Animal Subjectivity.- 13.From Renaissance Ferinity to the Biopolitics of the Animal-Man: Animality as Political Battlefield in the Anthropocene.- 14. The Animal Is Present: Non-Human Animal Bodies in Recent Italian Art.- 15. Animality Now.