Animacies

Biopolitics, Racial Mattering, and Queer Affect

Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Social Science, Gender Studies, Gay Studies, Feminism & Feminist Theory
Cover of the book Animacies by Mel Y. Chen, Duke University Press
View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart
Author: Mel Y. Chen ISBN: 9780822395447
Publisher: Duke University Press Publication: July 10, 2012
Imprint: Duke University Press Books Language: English
Author: Mel Y. Chen
ISBN: 9780822395447
Publisher: Duke University Press
Publication: July 10, 2012
Imprint: Duke University Press Books
Language: English

In Animacies, Mel Y. Chen draws on recent debates about sexuality, race, and affect to examine how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, or deathly animates cultural lives. Toward that end, Chen investigates the blurry division between the living and the dead, or that which is beyond the human or animal. Within the field of linguistics, animacy has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, sentience, or liveness. Chen turns to cognitive linguistics to stress how language habitually differentiates the animate and the inanimate. Expanding this construct, Chen argues that animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal rights debates to biosecurity concerns.

Chen's book is the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory. Through analyses of dehumanizing insults, the meanings of queerness, animal protagonists in recent Asian/American art and film, the lead in toys panic in 2007, and the social lives of environmental illness, Animacies illuminates a hierarchical politics infused by race, sexuality, and ability. In this groundbreaking book, Chen rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness—and demonstrates how attention to the affective charge of matter challenges commonsense orderings of the world.

View on Amazon View on AbeBooks View on Kobo View on B.Depository View on eBay View on Walmart

In Animacies, Mel Y. Chen draws on recent debates about sexuality, race, and affect to examine how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, or deathly animates cultural lives. Toward that end, Chen investigates the blurry division between the living and the dead, or that which is beyond the human or animal. Within the field of linguistics, animacy has been described variously as a quality of agency, awareness, mobility, sentience, or liveness. Chen turns to cognitive linguistics to stress how language habitually differentiates the animate and the inanimate. Expanding this construct, Chen argues that animacy undergirds much that is pressing and indeed volatile in contemporary culture, from animal rights debates to biosecurity concerns.

Chen's book is the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies, and disability theory. Through analyses of dehumanizing insults, the meanings of queerness, animal protagonists in recent Asian/American art and film, the lead in toys panic in 2007, and the social lives of environmental illness, Animacies illuminates a hierarchical politics infused by race, sexuality, and ability. In this groundbreaking book, Chen rethinks the criteria governing agency and receptivity, health and toxicity, productivity and stillness—and demonstrates how attention to the affective charge of matter challenges commonsense orderings of the world.

More books from Duke University Press

Cover of the book Signal and Noise by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book A Nation Rising by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book Strange Enemies by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book Queen for a Day by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book White Men Aren't by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book Embodying the Sacred by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book The Fixer by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book Germany and the Politics of Europe's Money by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book In Case of Fire in a Foreign Land by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book The Indian Militia and Description of the Indies by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book The Extractive Zone by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book Humanism and Secularization by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book The Search for the Codex Cardona by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book The Expectation of Justice by Mel Y. Chen
Cover of the book Marxism, Colonialism, and Cricket by Mel Y. Chen
We use our own "cookies" and third party cookies to improve services and to see statistical information. By using this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy