Human, All Too Human: "Animal Studies" and the Humanities

Author(s): Cary Wolfe

Source: PMLA , Mar., 2009, Vol. 124, No. 2 (Mar., 2009), pp. 564-575
Published by: Modern Language Association

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 [ PMLA

the changing profession

Human, All Too

Human: "Animal
Studies" and the
Humanities TRYING TO GIVE AN OVERVIEW OF THE BURGEONING AREA KNOWN AS

ANIMAL STUDIES IS, IF YOU'LL PERMIT ME THE EXPRESSION, A BIT LIKE

herding cats.1 My recourse to that analogy is meant to suggest that

CARY WOLFE
"the animal," when you think about it, is everywhere (including in
the metaphors, similes, proverbs, and narratives we have relied on
for centuries?millennia, even). Teach a course or write an article
on the subject, and well-intentioned suggestions about interesting
material pour in from all quarters. In my field alone, there's not just,
say, the starring role of bear, deer, and dog at the heart of William
Faulkner's Go Down, Moses and the futility of trying to imagine Er
nest Hemingway without his fraternity of bulls, lions, and fish or
Marianne Moore without her menagerie of pangolins and jellyfish.
There's also King Kong, Babe, Charlotte's Web, Seabiscuit, The Silence
of the Lambs, The Horse Whisperer, and The Fly. There's the art of
Damien Hirst, Joseph Beuys, Sue Coe, William Wegman, Bill Viola,
Carolee Schneeman, Lynn Randolph, and Patricia Piccinini. And
all those bird poems, from Percy Shelley's skylark and John Keats's
nightingale to Edgar Allan Poe's raven and Wallace Stevens's black
bird. As any medievalist or early modern scholar will tell you, the
question of the animal assumes, if anything, even more centrality in
earlier periods; indeed, recent and emerging scholarship suggests a
picture in which the idea of the animal that we have inherited from
CARY WOLFE is Bruce and Elizabeth the Enlightenment and thinkers such as Descartes and Kant is better
Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice seen as marking a brief period (if the formative one for our prevail
University. His books include Animal ing intellectual, political, and juridical institutions) bookended by a
Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of pre- and posthumanism that think the human/animal distinction
Species, and Posthumanist Theory (U of quite otherwise. So there's also William Hogarth and Hieronymus
Chicago P, 2003), the edited collection
Bosch, The Faerie Queene and Beowulf. And, of course, there is the
Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal
central place of the animal in non-Western literature and culture,
(U of Minnesota P, 2003), and the forth
written and oral, which would require another essay altogether.2
coming volume What Is Posthumanism?
(U of Minnesota P, 2009). He is founding Beyond literature, art, and culture, the Western philosophical
editor of the series Posthumanities at canon and its thinking of the animal/human difference are being
the University of Minnesota Press. reconfigured and reinterpreted not just on the strength of Conti

564 l ? 2009 BY THE MODERN LANGUAGE ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA j

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 12 4-2 ] Cary Wolfe 565

nental philosophy but also in certain wings the PBS series Nature. Similarly, it owes its T
ft
of the analytic tradition. And there's plenty existence in no small part to the emergence of
r
of crossover (mainly from the analytic side) the animal rights movement in the 1970s and
between philosophy and the legal sphere in to that movement s foundational philosophi W
the burgeoning area of animal rights law, led cal works, Peter Singers Animal Liberation 3*
HQ
by scholars such as Gary Francione and Ste and, later, Tom Regans The Case for Animal "0
t
ven M. Wise. (According to the Animal Legal Rights (works that animal studies, signaling 0
-h
Defense Fund, more than eighty law schools its recent critical turn, has sought to revisit ft
V?
in the United States offer courses in animal and question). VI

To be sure, scattered work on the animal 0

law.) There's animal television, and lots of it, 3
including the flood of animal-related factoids, was being carried out in various fields in the
portraits, field studies, vignettes, and exposes humanities and social sciences as far back as
that is the Animal Planet channel. And, last the 1980s; one thinks of the historian Harriet
but certainly not least, there's food, with all Ritvo's important book The Animal Estate
its ritualistic, sacrificial, psychological, ethi and its investigation of "breeding" in Victo
cal, and ecological dimensions, made plain rian culture across lines of class and species,
in immensely popular texts such as Michael James SerpeH's In the Company of Animals,
Pollan's The Omnivores Dilemma.3, Marc Shells analysis of the psychic and sym
My litany is meant to suggest some of the bolic economy of the pet, the diverse and
challenges involved in writing about animal important work done in and around ecofemi
studies, not the least of which is a daunting nism by Carol Adams, Andree Collard, and
interdisciplinarity that is inseparable from its others, and, in literary studies in the United
very genesis (one that makes the interdiscipli States, texts such as Margot Norris's Beasts of
narity that obtains between, say, literary stud the Modern Imagination. And the landmark
ies and history look like a fairly tidy affair by publication of Donna Haraway s Primate Vi
comparison). One might think that much of sions opened the 1990s with a remarkable
the material I have mentioned so far could be interdisciplinary synthesis that in effect de
safely set aside by scholars focused on literary fined a new, resolutely cultural studies era in
and even, more broadly, cultural interpreta what would come to be called animal studies.
tion, but specialization is no more justifiable Scattered but similarly important discussions
for animal studies at the moment than it was were taking place in the theoretical litera
for feminist scholarship or queer theory in the ture?Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari's
heady days of their emergence. Animal studies, musings on "becoming-animal" in A Thou
as a branch of cultural studies (I will eventu sand Plateaus (and also, in a different regis
ally want to question their association), would ter, in their book on Kafka), Jacques Derridas
probably not exist, at least not in its current discussion of Heidegger's thesis on the animal
form, without the work done in field ecology as "poor in world" in Of Spirit: Heidegger and
and cognitive ethology over the past twenty to the Question, Georges Batailles Theory of Re
thirty years (Allen and Bekoff; Bekoff; Grif ligion, and Julia Kristeva s work on abjection.
fin; Pepperberg; Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker, But what appears different about the
and Taylor)?work brought vividly before emergence of animal studies in our moment
the popular imagination by films such as the is the gradual opening up of a theoretical
story of Dian Fossey, Gorillas in the Mist, and and critical space of its own. A sure sign of
Jane Goodall's documentary The People of the the emergence and consolidation of animal
Forest: The Chimps ofGombe and by television studies is the growing number of conferences,
documentaries such as The Animal Mind, in symposia, publication venues, and special

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566 Human, All Too Human: "Animal Studies" and the Humanities [ PMLA
?
0 journal issues devoted to published
the topic important
in North titles b
(A
America and abroad. There lor,
has Gary
been aFrancione
spate of (Anim
<U
*. conferences on the topic,Stanley Cavell
beginning and cocontrib
roughly
0
im
a with Millennial Animals, at the
thew University
Calarco, among others.
of Sheffield in 2000, andisextending
the number to what
of special jou
E promises to be the largest academic
the past few gather
years, includin
c ing on the topic ever, Minding
a specialAnimals,
issue of to
Parallax ed
A3
X be held in Australia in 2009. In between have
ler; DerridAnimals, for the
u
a* been events at York University;
Review, Vanderbilt
edited by Neil Badm
x
H University; the Universitypublished special
of Wisconsin, Milissues of
waukee; Harvard University; the Thinking
titled University of
with Anima
Texas, Austin; and many other institutions; an
Richard Nash and Ron Bro
ongoing panel stream at but two few
the last special issues of M
confer
ences (both national and international)
the topic (Theof the
Animal). And
onlineand
Society for Literature, Science, journal Humanimal
the Arts;
and growing interest at the.edu/humanimalia),
Association for the the ro
corner of the
Study of Literature and Environment. H-Net
Two of huma
the earliest book series were
rum Harriet Ritvo's
(www.h-net.org/~anim
Animals, History, Culture, foratCritical
Johns Hopkins
Animal Studies,
Institute
University Press, and Animal, editedfor
by Critical
Jona Anim
than Burt and handsomely .criticalanimalstudies.org/
published by Reak
tion Books, which takes theetyunique
and Animals,
approach published
and Society Institute,
of devoting each volume to a single animal (so which
the rubric of "human-anima
far, entrants include dog, oyster, ant, rat, and
whose
more than a score of others). stakespresses
Other I will revisit in
have an ongoing if not dedicated relation
if this reading listto
isn't long e
work in animal studies, sucha massive bibliography on a
as the University
available
of Illinois Press (Animal Studies online
Group; (Kalof et al.
Baker,
Across
Picturing; Fudge, Renaissance the
Beasts; board, it is cer
Linzey),
the University of ChicagoErica
PressFudge (a leading
(Wolfe, Ani British
imal studies) has
mal Rites; Kuzniar; Grenier), Routledge (Har noted of he
new work
away, Primate Visions; Tester; Fuss),ontheanimals
State such as
moves(Steeves;
University of New York Press "away fromScappan earlier
which focused
and Seitz; Mitchell, Thompson, on human ide
and Miles),
and MIT Press (Thompson; titudes towardsDia
Burghardt; animals in
were mere blank
mond, Realistic Spirit; Kac, Signs of Life). pages ont
Of particular note is the series
wrote Posthu
meaning" and instead
manities, at the University of which
ways in Minnesota
humans const
Press (which has published structed
Donna by animals
Haraway s in the p
But the Michel
When Species Meet and reprinted larger Ser
question?a
res's The Parasite and plansmarked by the
forthcoming use of the cu
titles
plate, associated
devoted to the topic by younger with ethical
scholars such
as Nicole Shukin and Tom attuned
Tyler).scholarship,
Columbia to as
University Press, under studies?is how theof
the leadership internal
Wendy Lochner (senior executive editor
history or for
literary studies or
settled when the animal
religion, philosophy, and animal studies), has is tak

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 12 4-2 ] Cary Wolfe 567
1+
just as another topic or object of study among on a massive scale and the Holocaust of World 3"
ft
many but as one with unique demands. Rather War II. (In reality, the scale is not remotely n
3"
than treat the animal as primarily a theme, comparable, since ten billion land animals are ta
3
trope, metaphor, analogy, representation, or killed each year in the United States alone for W
sociological datum (in which, say, relations food, the vast majority of them?about eighty 3
<W
of class, or race, or gender get played out and percent?under the deplorable conditions of "O
i
negotiated through the symbolic currency of factory farming [Center for Food Safety].) 0
?h
animality and species difference), scholars in We might have thought that we, as students ft
V*
animal studies, whatever their home disci of literature and culture, could safely leave to
the side the massive amount we have learned o
plines, now appear to be challenged not only 3
by the discourses and conceptual schemata from fields such as cognitive ethology over
that have shaped our understanding of and the past twenty or thirty years about animals
relations to animals but also by the specific and their remarkable capacities, but doesn't
ity of nonhuman animals, their nongeneric our assessment of the meaning and stakes of
nature (which is why, as Derrida puts it, it a novel or a film change, animal studies asks,
is "asinine" to talk about "the Animal" in after (at least some of) the animals treated in
the singular [Animal 31]). And that irreduc it undergo an ontological shift from things
ibility of the question of the animal is linked to, in some sense, persons?a shift recently
complexly to the problem of animals' ethical registered with seismic force in the decision
standing as direct or indirect subjects of jus by the Spanish parliament in June 2008 to ex
tice4?a problem that invites a critical and not tend fundamental human rights to great apes,
just descriptive practice of disciplinarity to protecting them from painful experimenta
assess how this newly robust entity called the tion and other forms of exploitation. Indeed,
animal is plumbed, repressed, or braided with as Etienne Balibar, Giorgio Agamben, Marjo
other forms of identity, other discourses (race, rie Spiegel, and others have pointed out, vio
gender, class, sexual difference), in works of lence against human others (and particularly
literature and culture. racially marked others) has often operated by
In other words, as the philosopher Cora means of a double movement that animalizes
Diamond puts it, the difference between hu them for the purposes of domination, oppres
man and nonhuman animals "may indeed sion, or even genocide?a maneuver that is ef
start out as a biological difference, but it be fective because we take for granted the prior
comes something for human thought through assumption that violence against the animal
being taken up and made something of?by is ethically permissible.
generations of human beings, in their prac As I have argued elsewhere, this suggests
tices, their art, their literature, their religion" two important things about animal studies:
(Realistic Spirit 351). The problem for students first, that it studies both a material entity
of literature and culture is how to avoid the (nonhuman beings) and a discourse of spe
thoroughgoing ethnocentrism that such a re cies difference that need not be limited to its
alization invites, how to articulate what a criti application to nonhumans alone and, second,
cal view of such "makings" might look like?a that taking animal studies seriously thus has
question that becomes all the more pressing nothing to do, strictly speaking, with whether
in the light of the persistent comparison (by or not you like animals. Given what we have
Diamond, by Derrida, by J. M. Coetzee in The learned in recent decades about many non
Lives of Animals, and by Charles Patterson in human animals?the richness of their mental
an entire book called Eternal Treblinka) of and emotional lives, the complexity of their
our systematic abuse and killing of animals forms of communication and interaction?

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568 Human, All Too Human: "Animal Studies" and the Humanities [ PMLA
?
0 many scholars now think that we are(politically)
liberalism forced are ext
to make the same kind of shift in the in
extended ethics of
a rather classic sort
reading and interpretation that
In attended tak
piggybacking on the cult
0
a ing sexual difference seriously in the
template (if1990s
you'll allow the p
wo (in the form of queer theory) or race
context), and
animal studies too re
?
gender seriously in the 1970s
itselfand
some 1980s. In problems t
of the
? such a genealogy, animal studies
culturalis studies
only the a matter of d
X latest permutation of a socially
turns and
for ethically
many scholars. Elle
u
4> responsive cultural studies example,
working has
to stay
observed that cul
X
abreast of new social movements (in this
"perhaps case,
even more intractab
the social movement often calledcriticism
literary "animal in the dilem
rights"), which is itself anits own proper
academic expresform"; it is "a
sion of a larger democratic impulse
peting (andtoward
even incompatible
a gender,
greater inclusiveness of every (quasi-)disciplinary
or race, form inc
or sexual orientation, or?now?species.
ficult to defend, intellectually
Such a genealogy, appealing(21). Even
as it more pointedly, T
is, ought
to give us pause, however, has
for at argued
least a that
cou this "derefe
and
ple of reasons that have to do "inclusive
with vagueness" has
the overly
of
rapid adoption of the cultural cultural
studies studies to be appro
template
for animal studies. The rubrics animal studies
ideological work of the neolib
and human-animal studies which
are both problem
capitalist globalization g
asthe
atic, I think, in the light of pluralism
fundamentaland attention to d
challenge that animal studies poses tofor,
As "a soft-sell theand a persona
social and
disciplinarity of the humanities sciences" (74), she writes
cultural
not the aim of
studies. In my view, the questions that occupycultural studies
animal studies can be addressed
ities "isadequately
to simulate the preser
only if we confront them on society after the
two levels: notpermutation
just the level of content, thematics, and the
public sphere" into an essentia
consumerist
object of knowledge (the animal studied logic
by of "represen
animal studies) but also theFor
level
my ofpurposes
theoreti here, the pro
words,
cal and methodological approach is not
{how just the disciplina
animal
studies studies the animal). or vagueness
To put of current mod
it bluntly,
just because we study nonhuman animals
studies; the problem is that th
does not mean that we are notor vagueness
continuing serves
to to maintai
be humanist?and therefore,torically, ideologically,
by definition, an and int
thropocentric. Indeed, one ofcific form of subjectivity
the hallmarks of whil
pluralism?including
humanism?and more specifically of the kind (in this
extended
of humanism called liberalism?is to nonhuman
precisely its animals
animal studies,
penchant for the sort of "pluralism" if taken seriou
that ex
so much
tends the sphere of consideration extend or refine a ce
(intellectual
cultural studies
or ethical) to previously marginalized as bring it to an
groups
Thisor
without in the least destabilizing is throwing
so because animal stu
into question the schema of tothe
be something
human who other than a
undertakes such pluralization. And in that
ics, fundamentally challenges
the knowing subject
event pluralism becomes incorporation, and and its an
underpinnings
the projects of humanism (intellectually) sustained and
and

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 12 4-2 J Cary Wolfe 569
r*
the current disciplinary protocols of cultural coalesces around questions of agency and the a
<*
studies (not to mention literary studies). (In social." McHugh is no doubt right to agree
T
deed, as Susan McHugh notes in her overview with Fudge that the distinction between "sub to
3
of literary scholarship on animals, "a system jectivity" and "agency" is a useful one in this
2.
atic approach to reading animals in literature connection, enabling us to understand (on the 3*
W
necessarily involves coming to terms with a model of actor network theory, for example) TB
discipline that in many ways appears orga how animals and our interactions with them -t
0
?h
nized by the studied avoidance of just such have historically shaped our world quite apart f&
yi
questioning") For Rooney andRajan?many from questions of the intentionality or under
0*
others could be added to the list?the problem standing of the animals concerned (one might 3
with cultural studies, at least in its hegemonic say the same about humans, of course). But
modes of practice in North America, is that such an explanation has little to tell us about
despite its apparent oppositional, materialist, the ethical differences that attend our inter
and multicultural commitments, it ends up actions with inanimate and sentient agents.
reproducing an ideologically familiar mode The literary and philosophical end of animal
of subjectivity based, philosophically and po studies has been interested in precisely those
litically, on the canons of liberal humanism differences, for a range of obvious reasons,
(whose most familiar expression would be the including the mobilization in literary texts of
extension of the juridical subject of "rights" identification and sympathetic imagination
from the human to the animal sphere).6 The regarding animals and how they experience
full force of animal studies, then, resides in its the world, the intensity of our emotional at
power to remind us that it is not enough to re tachments to them, and, in philosophy, the
read and reinterpret?from a safe ontological critical assessment of just those sorts of phe
distance, as it were?the relation of metaphor nomenological, ethical, and ontological ques
and species difference, the cross-pollination tions and why they matter.
of speciesist, sexist, and racist discursive But my point here is also different from
structures in literature, and so on. That un the essentially Gramscian notion of criti
dertaking is no doubt praiseworthy and long cal consciousness that underpins even very
overdue, but as long as it leaves unquestioned diverse approaches in cultural studies, a no
the humanist schema of the knowing subject tion voiced, for example, in the assertion that
who undertakes such a reading, then it sus disciplinary practice "becomes a productive
tains the very humanism and anthropocen rather than a reproductive environment"
trism that animal studies sets out to question. when, "in the spirit of critical reflection . . .
And this is why, if taken seriously, animal the intersubjectivity of meaning can be ex
studies ought not to be viewed as simply posed, and educational institutions, the class
the latest flavor of the month of what James room, the discipline, and the university can be
Chandler calls the "subdisciplinary field," seen to construct and condition knowledge,"
one of "a whole array of academic fields and so that "literary study, as the study of textu
practices" that since the 1970s "have come to ality . . . reveals the epistemological struc
be called studies: gender studies, race studies, tures that organize how we know, how our
and cultural studies, of course, but also film knowledge gets transmitted and accepted"
studies, media studies, jazz studies .. ."?the (Peck 51)?with the animal studies rider just
list is virtually endless (358)7 noted: that animals, on the cultural studies
My point here is rather different from model, are now recognized to be partners (as
McHugh's observation that animal studies agents) in that enterprise. Such a picture of
is "an interdisciplinary field of inquiry that critical consciousness?commonsensical and

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570 Human, All Too Human: "Animal Studies" and the Human | PMLA
c
0 attractive as it may be?actually
question closes
of theoff the in
animal
w>
human from the animal
ity of animal
for studies
thought or langu
<U
and thus reinstates themany
human/animal divide
others concerning p
0
s.
a in a less visible but more fundamental way,
[pouvoirs], and attributes
while ostensibly gesturing beyond
having it. And
the power to it
give,
e
is the tacitly assumed dead,
schema of subjectiv
to dress, to work, to i
c (27). What makes
ity underwriting such a disciplinary prac Bentham
u problem
tice (the picture of the human so powerful is th
as constituted,
for example, by critical
tionintrospection
is disturbed byand
a certai
x
witness,
self-reflection that is, after all, a manifesting
hallmark of alrea
humanism) and not just response thatof
the range testifies
its in to su
a not-being-able."
terests (however putatively "What o
progressive, mul
felt on the basis of
ticultural, or antianthropocentric) that must this in
ues; "what is this non-pow
be fully examined. It is a question, as Derrida
power?...
has put it, of the nature What right
of the "auto-" of theshou
To what extent does it c
human as the "autobiographical animal," of
cerns
"what calls itself man," the us very
concept of directly,
the hu in f
man that "man" "recountsresides there, as
to himself" to the most
then
enable his recognition of the nonhuman other that
thinking the finitude
mals, the mortality that b
in a gesture of "benevolence" wholly charac
finitude
teristic of liberal humanism of life,
(Animal to the ex
29-30).
sion" (28). Instead of reco
I invoke Derrida here in part because his
standing of animals becau
late essay "The Animal That Therefore I Am
capabilities they share with
(More to Follow)" (and the recently published
the dominant strategy, m
book that shares its title) is arguably the sin
animal rights philosophy o
gle most important event in the brief history
Derrida fundamentally q
of animal studies. In that essay, the force of
ture of the "auto-" (as aut
Jeremy Bentham s famous question about the
as authority over ones au
standing of animals?the question is not, can
manist subjectivity by riv
they talk? or can theyon reason? but can finitude
the embodied they
suffer??is that
nonhuman animals, a finit
the business of humanism
the word can [pouvoir] changes sense and sign
(And in this Derrida has b
here once one asks "can they suffer?" The word
important
wavers henceforth. As soon as such aphilosophers,
question s
is posed what counts is Cavell,
not onlyand
the Diamond,
idea of a to n
But able
transitivity or activity (being equally important
to speak, to f
hand (and
reason, and so on); the important thingthis point
is rather is o
Derrida s later work
what impels it towards self-contradiction, some on "t
animal") is that there
thing we will later relate back to autobiography. are
tude here
(Animal 27-28; emphasis mine)under which th
manities" labors; and the f
For Derrida, putting the question in this
vulnerability, way
embodime
"changes everything"mortality)
because "from Aris
is paradoxically
totle to Descartes, fromto
Descartes, especially,
us, inappropriable by us,
that
to Heidegger, Levinas and makes
Lacan," it available
posing the a

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 124-2 ] CaryWolfe 571

second type of "not being able," which is the This is not to say that most of the work done 3"
ft
finitude we experience in our subjection to thus far in animal studies is not in the cultural
fs
3"
the radically ahuman technicity and mecha studies mode (it is); nor is it to say that there ft)
is not valuable work to be done in the cultural 3
nicity of language (understood in the broad W
est sense as a semiotic system through which studies vein in animal studies. It is simply to 5*
creatures "respond" to each other). This fact point out that one would think animal studies
has profound consequences for what we too would be more invested than any other kind 0
hastily think of as "our" concepts, "our" read of "studies" in fundamentally rethinking the ft
ings, "our" histories, which are in an impor question of what knowledge is, how it is lim (/>

tant sense not ours at all. Derridas work on 0*

ited by the overdeterminations and partialities 3
the animal enables us to address the problem of our "species-being" (to use Marx's famous
of ethnocentrism raised earlier in Diamond's phrase [77]); in excavating and examining our
observation about what we have made of our assumptions about who the knowing subject
relations to animals, but without leaving us can be; and in embodying that confrontation
impaled on the other horn of the dilemma? in its own disciplinary practices and protocols
either Gramscian critical consciousness or (so that, for example, the place of literature is
the search for ethical universals, endemic to radically reframed in a larger universe of com
rights philosophy, that is calculated to meet munication, response, and exchange, which
such ethnocentrism. now includes manifold other species).
Derridas point is that, yes, it is true that Equally important for animal studies is
what we think of as personhood, knowledge, that this second type of finitude, Derrida ar
and so on are inseparable from who "we" are, gues, is shared by humans and nonhumans
from our discourses and disciplines, but at the moment they begin to interact and com
the same time "we" are not "we"; we are not municate?to "respond," as he puts it?by
the "auto-" of the "auto-biography" that hu means of any semiotic system, even the most
manism gives to itself. Rather, "we" are always rudimentary. As Derrida puts it in a famous
radically other, already in- or ahuman in our passage from the interview "Eating Well":
very being?not just in the evolutionary, bio
[I]f one defines language in such a way that it
logical, and zoological fact of our physical is reserved for what we call man, what is there
vulnerability and mortality, which we share,
to say? But if one reinscribes language in a net
as animals, with animals, but also in our sub
work of possibilities that do not merely encom
jection to and constitution in the materiality pass it but mark it irreducibly from the inside,
and technicity of a language that is always on everything changes. I am thinking in particular
the scene before we are, as a radically ahuman of the mark in general, of the trace, of iterability,
precondition for our subjectivity, for what of differance. These possibilities or necessities,
makes us human. And this means, as Derrida without which there would be no language, are
puts it, that "what calls itself man," what "we" themselves not only human_And what I am
proposing here should allow us to take into ac
call "we," always covers over a more radical
count scientific knowledge about the complex
not being able that makes our conceptual life
ity of "animal languages," genetic coding, all
possible (Animal 30). It is precisely here, in
forms of marking within which so-called hu
this second aspect of radical finitude, that we
man language, as original as it might be, does
can locate the difference between the schema not allow us to "cut" once and for all where we
of the knowing subject relied on by human would in general like to cut. (116-17)
ism (or Gramscian cultural studies) and the
rethinking of that schema forced on us, I am Here, as I have argued in detail elsewhere,
arguing, by an animal studies taken seriously. animal studies intersects with the larger

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 572 Human, All Too Human: "Animal Studies" and the Humanities [ PMLA
c
0 problematic of posthumanism, not in
dard charge the against th
leveled
v?
VI sense of some fantasy of transcending human
philosophy of Singer and Reg
0>
**"
0
embodiment (as Katherine Hayles
itly rightly
extends a model of human
a
worries in How We Became Posthuman)
animals, but
who possess our kind
w> rather in the sense of returning us precisely
in diminished form).8 This i
c to the thickness and finitude of human butem merely to
*3&
ate humanism
c bodiment and to human evolution
many of asitsitself a
admirable ambiti
u
specific form of animality,(kindness
one that is
andunique
charity toward
and different from other forms but and
innocent, no more
the oppressed, f
a*
X
different, perhaps, than an orangutan is
undermined byfrom
the conceptu
a starfish. The implications of this
used tofact
make forgood
the on them.
first half of the term animal studies are brac
then, of locating the animal o
ing indeed, because if we andpay its
serious attento humanist
challenge
tion to the diversity of animal forms and of
ing, interpretation, and criti
ways of being in the world, then we are
just "out forced
there," among the b
to conclude, as Matthew Calarco
but "inputs it,
here" asthat
well, at the hea
we call is,
"the human/animal distinction human.
strictly
speaking, nonsensical. How could a simple
(or even highly refined) binary distinction
approach doing justice to the complex ethical
and ontological matters at stake here?" (143).
Notes
On the strength of that weakness, that break
down, we are returned to a 1.new sense
My title refers of
to Nietzsche, the
of course, and, more lo
cally, to the important collection Human, All Too Human,
materiality and particularity not just of the
in particular
animal and its multitude of forms its introduction
butandalso first section,
ofentitled
"Animal" (Fuss). For reasons that will become clear, the
that animal called the human.
term animal studies should be taken throughout as fully
As for the second half marked
of the by "scare"rubric
quotation marks;anisimilarly, animal
should be understood as shorthand for nonhuman animal,
mal studies, I want to emphasize that one can
again for reasons that will become clear in due course.
engage in a humanist or a posthumanist prac
2. Works on the animal have appeared in all the ar
tice of a discipline. That point is papered over
eas just listed: literary modernism (Norris; Rohman),
by the generic moniker American
studies, which
literature (Allen; ob
Mason), British Romanti
scures how the double finitude just
cism (Kenyon-Jones), discussed
metaphor and poetics (Malamud),
film and mass culture (Burt; Lippit; Wolfe, Animal Rites
uniquely determines animal studies. Just
and What; Shukin; Clarke), art and display (Lippit; Baker,
because a historian or literary critic devotes
Picturing and Postmodern Animal; Kac, Signs and Tele
attention to the topic or theme ofWolfe,
presence; Thompson; nonhuman
What; Rothfels), early mod
animals doesn't mean that erna and
familiar
medieval culture and form ofFudge,
theology (Salisbury;
Brutal Reasoning, Perceiving,through
humanism isn't being maintained and Renaissance Beasts; Tes
ter; Daston and Mitman; Shannon; Boehrer; Agamben;
internal disciplinary practices that rely on a
Linzey). This list is representative but not exhaustive.
specific schema of the knowing subject and
3. In Continental philosophy, representative dis
of the kind of knowledge he
cussionsor she
include Lawlor;can have.
Calarco; Steeves; Acampora;
So even though your external
Wolfe, Animaldisciplinarity
Rites and "Thinking"; in analytic phi
is posthumanist in takinglosophy, Mack; DeGrazia; Rachels;
seriously the Regan;
exisSinger; Cava
lieri; Steiner; Cavell et al.; Nussbaum; in law, Francione,
tence and ethical stakes of nonhuman beings
Animals as Person and Animals, Property; Wise; on food,
(in that sense, it questions anthropocentrism),
Pollan; Marcus; Scapp and Seitz.
your internal disciplinarity4. Formaya range of remain hu
views on this question, see Cavell et
manist to the core. (Indeed, such
al.; Francione, is Property;
Animals, theWise. stan

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 12 4-2 ] Cary Wolfe 573

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