This work develops meta-political account of our relationships to animals that is informed by the thought of Emmanuel Levinas. While previous scholarship on Levinas and animals has underscored his ethics, I give closer attention to his political theory in this context. Chapter I shows that Levinas's discussion of our responsibilities to animals in "The Paradox of Morality" trades on a political vocabulary in a paradoxical way. I explore this paradox in logical and temporal terms in Chapter 2. In Chapter 3 I explore a third, historical permutation of this paradox, and show how it can be implemented in a radical interpretation of our own history. This reinterpretation is explored through Levinas's "The Name of a Dog, or Natural Rights," and shows that our narrations of ourselves, and our human identities, necessarily conceal more primordial political and historical relationships with animals.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:CHENGCHI/U000MR71415 |
| Creators | Halls, Doug. |
| Publisher | University of Guelph (Canada). |
| Source Sets | National Chengchi University Libraries |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Rights | Copyright © nccu library on behalf of the copyright holders |
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