Creaturely Cosmologies: Why Metaphysics Matters for Animal and Planetary Liberation (Contemporary Whitehead Studies)

Donaldson, Brianne

ISBN 10: 1498501796 / ISBN 13: 9781498501798

Published by Lexington Books, 2015

About this Item

Seller Inventory # I-9781498501798

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Creaturely Cosmologies: Why Metaphysics Matters for Animal and Planetary Liberation (Contemporary Whitehead Studies)
• Publisher: Lexington Books
• Publication Date: 2015
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1498501796
• ISBN 13: 9781498501798
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

Metaphysics―or the grand narratives about reality that shape a community―has historically been identified as one of the primary oppressive factors in violence against animals, the environment, and other subordinated populations. Yet, this rejection of metaphysics has allowed inadequate worldviews to be smuggled back into secular rights-based systems, and into politics, language, arts, economics, media, and science under the guise of value-free and narrowly human-centric facts that relegate many populations to the margins and exclude them from consideration as active members of the planetary community. Those concerned with systemic violence against creatures and other oppressed populations must overcome this allergy to metaphysics in order to illuminate latent assumptions at work in their own worldviews, and to seek out dynamic, many-sided, and relational narratives about reality that are more adequate to a universe of responsive and creative world-shaping creatures. This text examines two such worldviews―Whitehead’s process-relational thought in the west and the nonviolent Indian tradition of Jainism―alongside theorists such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, that offer a new perspective on metaphysics as well as the creaturely kin and planetary fellows with whom we co-shape our future.

About the Author

Brianne Donaldson is visiting assistant professor of philosophy and religious studies at Monmouth College.