Synopses & Reviews
How much of what we understand of ourselves as “human” depends on our physical and mental abilities—how we move (or cannot move) in and interact with the world? And how much of our definition of “human” depends on its difference from “animal”?
Drawing on her own experiences as a disabled person, a disability activist, and an animal advocate, author Sunaura Taylor persuades us to think deeply, and sometimes uncomfortably, about what divides the human from the animal, the disabled from the nondisabled—and what it might mean to break down those divisions, to claim the animal and the vulnerable in ourselves, in a process she calls “cripping animal ethics.”
Beasts of Burden suggests that issues of disability and animal justice—which have heretofore primarily been presented in opposition—are in fact deeply entangled. Fusing philosophy, memoir, science, and the radical truths these disciplines can bring—whether about factory farming, disability oppression, or our assumptions of human superiority over animals—Taylor draws attention to new worlds of experience and empathy that can open up important avenues of solidarity across species and ability.
An ethical inquiry into the deepest questions of being in the world, Beasts of Burden is a wonderfully engaging and elegantly written work, both philosophical and personal, by a brilliant debut author.
Review
Praise for Beasts of Burden:Sunaura Taylor will shake up your categories, turn your world inside-out, and tell you a lot of fascinating and important things you didnt know yet, about your own body and the bodies of others, human and nonhuman, under an inhumane regime. A startling, readable, sometimes hilarious inquiry into the human condition from a whole new direction, this book might be very, very important, a book to stand alongside The Body in Pain and The Human Condition.”
Rebecca Solnit
Sunaura Taylor has written an amazing book that acts both as an intervention into widely held beliefs about disability and animals and an invitation to reimagine ourselves. Her thoroughly original, brilliant narrative transformed my imagination.”
Carol J. Adams, author of The Sexual Politics of Meat
Synopsis
A beautifully written, deeply provocative inquiry into the intersection of animal and disability liberationand the debut of an important new social critic
How much of what we understand of ourselves as "human" depends on our physical and mental abilitieshow we move (or cannot move) in and interact with the world? And how much does our definition of "human" depend on its difference from "animal"?
Drawing on her own experiences as a disabled person, a disability activist, and an animal advocate, author Sunaura Taylor persuades us to think deeply, and sometimes uncomfortably, about what divides the human from the animal, the disabled from the nondisabledand what it might mean to break down those divisions, to claim the animal and the vulnerable in ourselves, in a process she calls "cripping animal ethics."
Beasts of Burden suggests that issues of disability and animal justice, which have heretofore primarily been presented in opposition, are in fact deeply entangled. Fusing philosophy, memoir, and scienceincluding factory farming, disability oppression, and our assumptions of human superiority over animalsTaylor draws attention to new worlds of experience and empathy that will open up important avenues of solidarity across species and ability. Beasts of Burden is a wonderfully engaging and elegantly written work, both philosophical and personal, by a brilliant debut author.
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About the Author
Sunaura Taylor is an artist and writer based in New York City. She has written for AlterNet, American Quarterly, BOMB, the Monthly Review, Qui Parle, and Yes! Magazine. She has contributed to the books Ecofeminism, Defiant Daughters, Occupy!, Stay Solid, and Infinite City. Taylor and Judith Butlers conversation is featured in the film Examined Life and the book of the same title, published by The New Press.