Description: In Animal Rites, Cary Wolfe examines contemporary notions of humanism and ethics by reconstructing a little known but crucial underground tradition of theorizing the animal from Wittgenstein, Cavell, and Lyotard to Lévinas, Derrida, Zizek, Maturana, and Varela. Through detailed readings of how discourses of race, sexuality, colonialism, and animality interact in twentieth-century American culture, Wolfe explores what it means, in theory and critical practice, to take seriously "the question of the animal."
Brief description: Cary Wolfe is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English and founding director of 3CT: Center for Critical and Cultural Theory at Rice University. He is the author of five books, most recently, Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame.