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Roberto Marchesini is an Italian philosopher and ethologist whose work is significant for the rethinking of animality and human-animal relations. Throughout such important books as Il dio Pan (1988), Il concetto di soglia (1996), Post-human (2002), Intelligenze plurime (2008), Epifania animale (2014), and Etologia filosofica (2016), he offers a scathing critique of reductive, mechanistic models of animal behaviour, as well as a positive contribution to zooanthropological and phenomenological methods for understanding animal life.
Centred on the dynamic and performative field of interactions and relations in the world, his critical and speculative approach to the cognitive life sciences offers a vision of animals as acting subjects and bearers of culture, whose action and agency is also indispensable to human culture. In tracing the ways in which we share our lives and histories with animals in different contexts of interaction, Marchesini's cutting-edge philosophical ethology also contributes to an overarching philosophical anthropology of the human as the animal that most requires the present and input of other animals. This book was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities.
List of contents
General Introduction: Philosophical Ethology Introduction: Roberto Marchesini
Preface: Zootropia, Kinship, and Alterity in the Work of Roberto Marchesini
1. The Philosophical Ethology of Roberto Marchesini
2. The God Pan
3. Rediscovering the Threshold
4. Animals of the City
5. Postmodern Chimeras
6. The Theriosphere
7. Plural Intelligences
8. Nonhuman Alterities
9. Zoomimesis: Animal Inspiration
10. The Therioanthropic Being as Our Neighbour
11. Posthuman Antispeciesism
12. Philosophical Ethology and Animal Subjectivity
13. Entering Theriomorphic Worlds: An Interview with Roberto Marchesini
About the author
Jeffrey Bussolini is Associate Professor of Sociology-Anthropology at City University of New York, USA.
Brett Buchanan is Director of the School of the Environment, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Canada.
Matthew Chrulew is ARC DECRA Research Fellow in the Centre for Culture and Technology, Curtin University, Australia.
Summary
This book provides a comprehensive introduction to the writings of Italian philosopher Roberto Marchesini. It features translated excerpts from most of Marchesini’s books, an interview with Marchesini, as well as a preface by Boria Sax and an essay by Jeffrey Bussolini. It was originally published as a special issue of Angelaki.
