Full Description
In an other, Sharon Patricia Holland offers a new theorization of the human animal/divide by shifting focus from distinction toward relation in ways that acknowledge that humans are also animals. Holland centers ethical commitments over ontological concerns to spotlight those moments when Black people ethically relate with animals. Drawing on writers and thinkers ranging from Hortense Spillers, Sara Ahmed, Toni Morrison, and C. E. Morgan to Jane Bennett, Jacques Derrida, and Donna Haraway, Holland decenters the human in Black feminist thought to interrogate blackness, insurgence, flesh, and femaleness. She examines MOVE's incarnation as an animal liberation group; uses sovereignty in Morrison's A Mercy to understand blackness, indigeneity, and the animal; analyzes Charles Burnett's films as commentaries on the place of animals in Black life; and shows how equestrian novels address Black and animal life in ways that rehearse the practices of the slavocracy. By focusing on doing rather than being, Holland demonstrates that Black life is not solely likened to animal life; it is relational and world-forming with animal lives.
Contents
How to Read This Book xi
Primer: What the Animal Said xv
1. Vocabularies : Possibility 1
2. Companionate : Species 51
3. Diversity : A Scarcity 90
4. Love : Livestock 139
5. Horse : Flesh 165
6. Sovereignty : A Mercy 222
The Open : . . . 254
Acknowledgments 257
Abbreviations 261
Notes 263
Bibliography 303
Index 317
