Review of Sam Weber, Benjamin\u27s -abilities.

Sam Weber, Benjamin\u27s -abilities. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 363 pp. ISBN 0674028371

The Notion of Life in the Work of Agamben

In his article The Notion of Life in the Work of Agamben Carlo Salzani analyzes the notion of nudity Giorgio Agamben\u27s understanding of Western culture. Beginning with a reading of the essay Nudity, in which Agamben proposes an archaeological investigation of the theological apparatus of the concept, Salzani analyzes the pivotal trope in Agamben\u27s Homo Sacer project, bare or naked life, that is, the nudity of life in the grip of sovereign power. Nudity and the nudity of life are construed as a limit-concept in a double movement of simultaneous positing and negation or in a positing that grants at the same time the inappropriability of its object. Salzani highlights how much this liminality owes to a tradition that borders the aesthetics and ranges from Kant\u27s sublime to Heidegger\u27s Ereignis via Benjamin\u27s expressionless-ness. In Agamben\u27s thought this risks to resemble a mystical intuition, as he argues in his first book, The Man Without Content, about Kant\u27s aesthetic judgment

Review of Sam Weber, Benjamin\u27s -abilities.

Sam Weber, Benjamin\u27s -abilities. Cambridge, MA, and London: Harvard University Press, 2008. 363 pp. ISBN 0674028371

Review of Anat Pick, Creaturely Poetics; Mark Payne, The Animal Part; Susan McHugh, Animal Stories

Anat Pick, Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 249 pp. ISBN 9780231147873; Mark Payne, The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. 164 pp. ISBN 9780226650845; Susan McHugh, Animal Stories: Narrating across Species Lines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. 336 pp. ISBN 9780816670338 (paper)

Review of Anat Pick, Creaturely Poetics; Mark Payne, The Animal Part; Susan McHugh, Animal Stories

Anat Pick, Creaturely Poetics: Animality and Vulnerability in Literature and Film. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011. 249 pp. ISBN 9780231147873; Mark Payne, The Animal Part: Human and Other Animals in the Poetic Imagination. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. 164 pp. ISBN 9780226650845; Susan McHugh, Animal Stories: Narrating across Species Lines. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011. 336 pp. ISBN 9780816670338 (paper)

Review of Joseph Carroll, Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice and Virginia Richter, Literature After Darwin: Human Beasts in Western Fiction, 1859-1939.

Joseph Carroll, Reading Human Nature: Literary Darwinism in Theory and Practice. New York: SUNY Press, 2011. 368 pp. ISBN 9781438435220; Virginia Richter, Literature After Darwin: Human Beasts in Western Fiction, 1859-1939. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011. 272 pp. ISBN 9780230273405

Steven M. Wise. Sacudiendo la jaula: Hacia los Derechos de los animales - Tirant Lo Blanch (Valencia 2018) 394 p.

In Rattling the Cage Steven Wise argues for the recognition of the fundamental rights and the status of juridical personality for chimpanzees and bonobos. Not only, he writes, the human-animal divide has been shown to be arbitrary, untenable and unjust, but new scientific findings demonstrate that many nonhuman animals, and most notably our primate “cousins”, possess cognitive, emotional and social capacities so similar to ours as to entitle them to the protection of the law. This book purports to be a practical guide for concrete interventions in favor of the basic rights of nonhuman hominids.En Sacudiendo la jaula Steven Wise aboga por el reconocimiento de los derechos fundamentales y el estatuto de personalidad jurídica para chimpancés y bonobos. No solamente, escribe Wise, la división entre seres humanos y animales no humanos se ha demostrado que es arbitraria, indefendible e injusta, sino que nuevos descubrimientos científicos demuestran que muchos animales no humanos, y en particular nuestros “primos” los primates, poseen capacidades cognitivas, emocionales y sociales tan similares a las nuestras como para darles derecho a la protección de la ley. Este libro quiere ser una guía practica para intervenciones concretas en favor de los derechos básicos de los homínidos no humanos

Steven M. Wise. Sacudiendo la jaula: Hacia los Derechos de los animales. Tirant Lo Blanch (Valencia 2018) 394 p. ISBN 978-84-9190-404-5

Obra ressenyada: Steven M. WISE, Sacudiendo la jaula : Hacia los Derechos de los animales. Valencia: Tirant Lo Blanch, 2018.En Sacudiendo la jaula Steven Wise aboga por el reconocimiento de los derechos fundamentales y el estatuto de personalidad jurídica para chimpancés y bonobos. No solamente, escribe Wise, la división entre seres humanos y animales no humanos se ha demostrado que es arbitraria, indefendible e injusta, sino que nuevos descubrimientos científicos demuestran que muchos animales no humanos, y en particular nuestros "primos" los primates, poseen capacidades cognitivas, emocionales y sociales tan similares a las nuestras como para darles derecho a la protección de la ley. Este libro quiere ser una guía practica para intervenciones concretas en favor de los derechos básicos de los homínidos no humanos.In Rattling the Cage Steven Wise argues for the recognition of the fundamental rights and the status of juridical personality for chimpanzees and bonobos. Not only, he writes, the human-animal divide has been shown to be arbitrary, untenable and unjust, but new scientific findings demonstrate that many nonhuman animals, and most notably our primate "cousins", possess cognitive, emotional and social capacities so similar to ours as to entitle them to the protection of the law. This book purports to be a practical guide for concrete interventions in favor of the basic rights of nonhuman hominids

Giulia Guazzaloca. Primo: non maltrattare. Storia della protezione degli animali in Italia - Laterza (Bari-Roma 2018)

Obra ressenyada: Giulia GUAZZALOCA, Primo: non maltrattare. Storia della protezione degli animali in Italia. Bari-Roma : Laterza, 2018.En Primo: non maltrattare la historiadora Giulia Guazzaloca relata la historia de los movimientos italianos de protección de lo animales desde la unificación de Italia (1861) hasta nuestros días. Con abundancia de datos, fechas y detalles, Guazzaloca muestra como, desde una position de relativo atraso y de dependencia de las ayudas culturales y económicas extranjeras, los movimientos proteccionistas italianos se pusieron rápidamente al nivel y se desarrollaron como sus homólogos de Europa del Norte y de Estados Unidos. Esta obra histórica, relativamente nueva en los Animal Studies italianos, será sin duda de inspiración para nuevas investigaciones en el panorama animalista italiano.In Primo: non maltrattare, historian Giulia Guazzaloca tells the story of Italian animal protection movements from Italy's unification (1861) to these days. With abundance of data, dates and details, Guazzaloca shows how, from a position of relative backwardness and dependence from foreign cultural and economic supports, Italian protection movements quickly caught up and developed to the same level of their homologous in Northern Europe and the United States. A relative new enterprise in Italian Animal Studies, this historical work will undoubtedly inspire new research in the Italian animal advocacy panorama

Looking at bats

Thomas Nagel’s 1974 essay “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”[1] is one of the most cited texts on the problem of consciousness, and its theses have been discussed and debated in many different fields, from philosophy of mind to animal cognition and animal ethics. Nagel’s argument, that it is ultimately impossible for us to know what it is like to be a bat for a bat given the extreme differences in sensory experience between humans and bats, has come under fire from very different and even opposed perspectives: if, on the one hand, science-oriented philosophers and scholars accused him of underestimating and ultimately curtailing the power of scientific inquiry, on the other researchers in the humanities and animal ethics indicted him of defeatism for dismissing the power of imagination in bridging the species gap. In what follows, I will present and contrast two such positions, the critique of Nagel by neurophilosopher[2] Kathleen Akins and a very different approach to bat lives through poetry, exemplified by two poems by Ted Hughes (1930-1998) and Les Murray (1938-2019). The goal of counterposing these two different ways of looking at bats is not only or not much that of suggesting a preferable approach to bats’ otherness (though this is also what I will do), but also of emphasizing the aesthetic dimension of our relationship with the animal other and the role it plays in our ethical decision-making.   [1] T. Nagel, “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, in The Philosophical Review, vol. 83, n. 4, 1974, pp. 435-450. [2] Neurophilosophy is an interdisciplinary field at the intersection of philosophy and the neurosciences in which traditional philosophical problems about the nature of the mind are approached through current findings within the neurosciences