Zoologies : on animals and the human spirit / Alison Hawthorne Deming.
Edition:
First edition.
Publisher:
Milkweed Editions,
Copyright Date:
2014
Description:
256 pages ; 22 cm
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references.
Contents:
Introduction -- Murray Springs Mammoth -- Spotted Hyena --The Sacred Pig -- Crow -- Dog Tags -- Patativa (Sporophila leucoptera) -- Ant Art -- Field Notes on Hands -- Elephant Watching -- The Cheetah Run -- The Finback -- The Feasting -- A Dog with His Pets -- City of Storks -- The Pony, the Pig, and the Horse -- Dragon -- Black Vulture -- Liberating the Lobster -- Trumpeter Swan -- T. Rex -- Bobcat -- My Cat Jeffrey -- Feral Children -- Vervet -- Chimera -- Letter from Mars -- Wolf Spider -- Owl Watching in the Experimental Forest -- Hood River Oyster -- The Rabbit on Mars -- Field Notes on Culture, Biology, and Emergence -- Epilogue: The Gannet -- Notes -- For Further Reading -- Acknowledgments -- Publications
Summary:
"Humans were surrounded by other animals from the beginning of time: they were food, clothes, adversaries, companions, jokes, and gods. And yet, our companions in evolution are leaving the world - both as physical beings and spiritual symbols - and not returning. In this collection of linked essays, Alison Hawthorne Deming asks, and seeks to answer: what does the disappearance of animals mean for human imagination and existence? Moving from mammoth hunts to dying house cats, she explores profound questions about what it means to be animal. What is inherent in animals that leads us to destroy, and what that leads us toward peace? As human animals, how does art both define us as a species and how does it emerge primarily from our relationship with other species? The reader emerges with a transformed sense of how the living world around us has defined and continues to define us in a powerful way"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.