Synopses & Reviews
A turn to the animal is underway in the humanities, most obviously in such fields as philosophy, literary studies, cultural studies, and religious studies. One important catalyst for this development has been the remarkable body of animal theory issuing from such thinkers as Jacques Derrida and Donna Haraway. What might the resulting interdisciplinary field, commonly termed animality studies, mean for theology, biblical studies, and other cognate disciplines? Is it possible to move from animal theory to creaturely theology?
This volume is the first full-length attempt to grapple centrally with these questions. It attempts to triangulate philosophical and theoretical reflections on animality and humanity with theological reflections on divinity. If the animal human distinction is being rethought and retheorized as never before, then the animal human divine distinctions need to be rethought, retheorized, and retheologized along with it. This is the task that the multidisciplinary team of theologians, biblical scholars, philosophers, and historians assembled in this volume collectively undertakes. They do so frequently with recourse to Derrida's animal philosophy and also with recourse to an eclectic range of other relevant thinkers, such as Haraway, Giorgio Agamben, Emmanuel Levinas, Gloria Anzaldua, Helene Cixous, A. N. Whitehead, and Lynn White Jr.
The result is a volume that will be essential reading for religious studies audiences interested in ecological issues, animality studies, and posthumanism, as well as for animality studies audiences interested in how constructions of the divine have informed constructions of the nonhuman animal through history.
Review
"An outstanding and important piece of collective scholarship."--Mary-Jane Rubenstein, Wesleyan University
"This is an excellent volume, written with clarity, precision, and deep feeling for a better understanding of the sacred character of animal beings within the wider natural world."--Mark Wallace, Swarthmore College
About the Author
Stephen D. Moore is Professor of New Testament Studies at the Theological School, Drew University. He has written or co-written, edited or co-edited close to twenty volumes, most recently
The Invention of the Biblical Scholar: A Critical Manifesto, with Yvonne Sherwood. He is currently working on
The Bodybuilder, the Sex Worker, and the Sheep: Untold Tales from the Book of Revelation.
Laurel Kearns is Associate Professor of Sociology of Religion and Environmental Studies in the Theological School and Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University.
Table of Contents
Foreword by Laurel Kearns
Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Animal Theory to Creaturely Theology
Stephen D. Moore
Animals, before Me, with Whom I Live, by Whom I Am Addressed: Writing after Derrida
Glen A. Mazis
The Dogs of Exodus and the Question of the Animal
Ken Stone
Devouring the Human: Digestion of a Corporeal Soteriology
Erika Murphy
The Microbes and Pneuma That Therefore I Am
Denise Kimber Buell
The Apophatic Animal: Toward a Negative Zootheological Imago Dei
Jacob J. Erickson
The Divinanimality of Lord Sequoia
Terra S. Rowe
Animal Calls
Kate Rigby
Little Bird in My Praying Hands: Rainer Maria Rilke and God's Animal Body
Beatrice Marovich
The Logos of God and the End of Humanity: Giorgio Agamben and the Gospel of John on Animality as Light and Life
Eric Daryl Meyer
Anzaldúa's Animal Abyss: Mestizaje and the Late Ancient Imagination
An Yountae and Peter Anthony Mena
Daniel's Animal Apocalypse
Jennifer L. Koosed and Robert Paul Seesengood
Ecotherology
Stephen D. Moore
And Say the Animal Really Responded: Speaking Animals in the History of Christianity
Laura Hobgood-Oster
So Many Faces: God, Humans, and Animals
Jay McDaniel and J. Aaron Simmons
A Spiritual Democracy of All God's Creatures: Ecotheology and the Animals of Lynn White Jr.
Matthew T. Riley
Epilogue: Animals and Animality: Reflections on the Art of Jan Harrison
Jay McDaniel
Notes
List of Contributors
Index