Dec 22, 2012

New issue of ICAS journal

The latest issue of the Journal of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies is out. I'm proud to say that I have a small participation on it - a review of Tom Tyler's book CIFERAE: A Bestiary in Five Fingers which is just great, by the way.

I'm particularly curious about Iveson's article on Butler, and Taylor's about Foucault and "alimentary monsters". I plan to read and re-read a lot of Butler for my PhD, and I've been thinking whether the people who are writing about animals in Butler (like James at Critical Animal) have given any thought to the question of animal embodiment via Bodies That Matter. I don't know if they have, that's why I ask, but it should be interesting.

You can check out the issue (for free, as usual), right here.

May 26, 2012

Human exceptionalism in "Gattaca"


I say "more" thoughts because I have been thinking about and discussing Gattaca for years now, and it's certainly one of my favorite films. The persecuted underdog story, coupled with Michael Nyman's beautiful score, always gets to me. I have, of course, also detected in it the Romantic notion that being sick in a sick society is actually being healthy. As such, Gattaca is also a powerful defense of the Romantic idea of the visionary individual who, swimming against the tide - as it were -, is somehow above the law. That, together with the "no gene for the human spirit" BS seems to make for a deeply humanist film (and I use that adjective as an insult). But right now I'm interested in the cues the film presents to warrant a post-humanist reading.