Book Review: Carlo Salzani, Agamben and the Animal pp

might Bey’s conceptions of Blackness or transness help lead to or signal solidarity with nonhumans? Might that be an important component or form of praxis of these terms? Similarly, Bey’s writings are short on activism and they admit this. However, their writings are theory for activism and this seems abundantly clear. The reader should be able to use (or one might say steal!) lessons from Them Goon Rules and Cistem Failure to transform themselves and social and geographical spaces to be radically inclusive— borderless and boundaryless. A mode of thought that is not bound by what already exists or seems possible is ripe for seeing all oppression as connected, which is a fundamental tenant of CAS that informs activism. Bey focuses very closely on Blackness and gender but casts a net so wide within this intermingling that this becomes exceedingly fertile territory. There are many ways CAS could pick up or pick out strands of Bey’s thoughts on Blackness, Black feminism, anarchism, cisness, transgender, and feminism and make them do “a different kind of work,” or find Bey a sympathetic collaborator/co-conspirator. CAS proponents could also stand to learn much from reading Bey and those they frequently cite (for example, Hortense Spillers, Fred Moten and Stefano Harney, C. Riley Snorton, Kai M. Green, among others)—and likewise for Bey. To show how similar Bey and CAS already are, I’ll end with another quote from Them Good Rules: “Instead of French writers, I want to move arm in arm with the misfits, the deviants, the lowlifes and imbeciles, the poor and the uneducated, because rebellious knowledge happens underground” (p. 14).” Sounds like critical animal studies to me.

References

Bey, M. (2020a.) The problem of the negro as a problem for gender. University of Minnesota Press. Bey, M. (2020b). Anarcho-blackness: Notes towards a black anarchism. AK Press. Bey, M. (2022). Black trans feminism. Duke University Press. Malakou, M. S. (2021). Surviving the ends of man: On the animal and/as black gaze in Jordan Peele’s Get Out and Us. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 18(2), 70-99. Michie, N. (2021). Sharing your pronouns—what it means and why you should consider it. Chatelaine. https://www.chatelaine.com/living/sharing-your-personalpronouns/#:~:text=By%20displaying%20your%20pronouns%2C%2 0it,re%20in%20a%20safe%20space. Simonsen, R. R. (2012). A queer vegan manifesto. Journal for Critical Animal Studies, 10(3), 51-81.

Book Review: Salzani, Carlo. 2022. Agamben and the Animal. Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

£62.99, hardback. 145 pages. ISBN13: 978-1-5275-8203-3

Ermanno Castanò 1 ermanno.castano@gmail.com 1 Rome, Italy

Abstract

Is Agamben anthropocentric? In Agamben and the Animal, Salzani aims to separate the “non-anthropocentric” aspects of Agamben's thought from the residual anthropocentrism that still limits it, pointing beyond the threshold of human dominion over nonhumans.

Keywords: Agamben, Salzani, anthropocentrism, Critical Animal Studies