Enter the Animal: Cross-species Perspectives on Grief and Spirituality

Description

Historically, grief and spirituality have been jealously guarded as uniquely human attributes. Although nonhuman animal grief has been acknowledged in recent times, the potency of the feeling has not been recognised as equal to human grief. Both academic and popular discussions continue to be tainted by anthropocentric philosophical questions. In Enter the Animal, Teya Brooks Pribac examines what we do and don't know about grief and spirituality. She explores the growing body of knowledge about attachment and loss and how they shape human and non-human animals' experiences. A valuable addition to the vibrant interdisciplinary conversation about animal subjectivity, Enter the Animal identifies conceptual and methodological approaches that have contributed to the prejudice against nonhuman animals. It offers a compelling theoretical base for the consideration of grief and spirituality across species and highlights important ethical implications for how humans treat other animals.

Teya Brooks Pribac is an independent scholar and multidisciplinary artist. She holds a PhD from the University of Sydney and works in animal advocacy and care between Australia and Europe.

"[The book is] not only a well-crafted study of animals, humans, and their many channels of emotional attachment, it's a powerful intervention within the humanities more broadly - the dramatic unveiling, promised by the title, of the urgent necessity of taking the animal perspective seriously for understanding both nonhuman and human lifeways." -- Donovan Schaefer * Animal Studies Journal *