Philosophy, animality and the life sciences / Wahida Khandker.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Khandker, Wahida, author.

Series:

Crosscurrents (Edinburgh University Press)

Crosscurrents

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Animals (Philosophy).

Physical Description:

viii, 159 pages ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2014]

Summary:

A study of pathological concepts of animal life in Continental philosophy from Bergson to Haraway, Amongst contemporary debates about our relation to non-human animals, our use of them for scientific research remains a hugely contentious issue, and one that many Continental philosophical engagements with 'the animal question' have (rightly) Seen accused of shying away from. But can Continental approaches to the categories of animality and organic life help us to reconsider our treatment of non-human animals? Wahida Khandker looks at the philosophical assumptions underpinning these debates by following the historical and philosophical development of the concept of 'pathological life' as a means of understanding organic life as a whole. She explores the significance of this across philosophy and the life sciences through the work of a number of key thinkers of life and process, from Henri Bergson to Donna Haraway, and argues that the concept of pathological life plays a pivotal role in contemporary reconfigurations of the human-animal distinction. Book jacket.

Contents:

1 Forces of Nature: Evolution, Divergence, Decimation 12

2 Pathological Life and the Limits of Medical Perception 35

3 Violence, Pathos and Animal Life in European Philosophy and Critical Animal Studies 57

4 From Animal-Machines to Cybernetic Organisms... 77

5 Organicism and Complexity: Whitehead and Kauffman 98

6 Aped, Mongrelised and Scapegoated: Adventures in Biopolitics and Transgenics in Haraway's Animal Worlds 120.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 149-156) and index.

ISBN:

9780748676774

0748676775

OCLC:

890006344