Creaturely Poetics

"Even more than Anat Pick's preparation and energetic writing, the quality of thought conveyed in this book may be its most significant feature. Here is an original thesis, built from, around, with, and against existing work in related (and unrelated) areas, timely and singular, which contributes to several fields and disciplines at once. The 'creaturely poetics' invoked by the author work through problems in philosophy, critical theory, film criticism, and literary studies; they address historical questions such as the Holocaust, theoretical/ethical concerns including 'speciesism,' and formal and aesthetic concerns related to a variety of modes and genres in film and literature. Very few scholars can do what Pick has achieved: blending credible film analysis and criticism with animal studies and critical thought." -- Akira Mizuta Lippit, USC School of Cinematic Arts

Simone Weil once wrote that "the vulnerability of precious things is beautiful because vulnerability is a mark of existence," establishing a relationship between vulnerability, beauty, and existence transcending the separation of species. Her conception of a radical ethics and aesthetics could be characterized as a new poetics of species, forcing a rethinking of the body's significance, both human and animal. Exploring the "logic of flesh" and the use of the body to mark species identity, Anat Pick reimagines a poetics that begins with the vulnerability of bodies, not the omnipotence of thought. Pick proposes a "creaturely" approach based on the shared embodiedness of humans and animals and a postsecular perspective on human-animal relations. She turns to literature, film, and other cultural texts, challenging the familiar inventory of the human: consciousness, language, morality, and dignity. Reintroducing Weil's elaboration of such themes as witnessing, commemoration, and collective memory, Pick identifies the animal within all humans, emphasizing the corporeal and its issues of power and freedom. In her poetics of the creaturely, powerlessness is the point at which aesthetic and ethical thinking must begin.