Description: Extinction Studies focuses on the entangled ecological and social dimensions of extinction, exploring the ways in which extinction catastrophically interrupts life-giving processes of time, death, and generations. The volume opens up important philosophical questions about our place in, and obligations to, a more-than-human world.
Brief description: Cary Wolfe (PhD, English, Duke) is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English and Founding Director of 3CT: the Center for Critical and Cultural Theory at Rice University. He is the author of a number of books, including Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago, 2003), What Is Posthumanism? (Minnesota, 2010), and Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame (Chicago, 2012); he is also a coauthor of Philosophy and Animal Life (Columbia, 2008) and The Death of the Animal (Columbia, 2009). He is also founding editor of the Minnesota series Posthumanities.
Review Quotes: The studies contained in this volume cross species and kingdom boundaries, and are full of hope just as much as grief and mourning. In bearing witness to the lives of species that are functionally and/or already extinct, the authors present multiple modes of response and responsibility for those of us who remain.--Brett Buchanan, associate professor of philosophy and director of the School of the Environment at Laurentian University