On Fiction and Being a Good Animal - David Rando

On Fiction and Being a Good Animal

By: David Rando

Hardcover | 31 January 2024

At a Glance

Hardcover


$197.90

or 4 interest-free payments of $49.48 with

 or 

Aims to ship in 15 to 25 business days

When will this arrive by?
Enter delivery postcode to estimate

Instead of making readers into better people, what if fiction could help us to become better animals? On Fiction and Being a Good Animal argues that we should abandon the persistent humanist idea that fiction can produce better people. Instead, we should read and value fiction according to its ability to help us to envision being better animals. Inspired by Theodor W. Adorno, David Rando defines a good animal as one who does not live a life of domination. He argues that when readers approach fiction's wishful images with non-anthropocentric expectations, we are rewarded by anthropocosmic visions of the world - ones in which humans are in and with the world but no longer at the centre of it.

In compelling readings of Agustina Bazterrica, T. C. Boyle, Leonora Carrington, Marian Engel, Karen Joy Fowler, Franz Kafka, Doris Lessing, Clarice Lispector, Kenzaburo Oe, Olga Tokarczuk, and Jesmyn Ward, the book explores wishful images that pertain to the nonhuman and more-than-human worlds. Readers will discover in this fiction wishful images relating to irreconcilable minds and experiences, human-nonhuman family relationships, love and risk across race and species, and shared vulnerability, communion and pleasure.

Industry Reviews
Brimming with fresh insights about the transformative possibilities of literature, Rando's On Fiction and Being a Good Animal makes a compelling case that the future of critical animal studies lies in narratives that assist readers in learning to adopt less anthropocentric and less violent relations with more-than-human animals.--Matthew Calarco, California State University at Fullerton

More in Ethics & Moral Philosophy

Colonialism : A Moral Reckoning - Nigel Biggar

RRP $34.99

$31.75

Humankind : A Hopeful History - Rutger Bregman

RRP $24.99

$23.75

Letters From A Stoic : Collins Classics - Lucius Seneca
Letters from a Stoic : The Penguin Classics L210 - Lucius Annaeus Seneca

RRP $17.99

$16.00

11%
OFF
Beyond Good and Evil : Penguin Classics - Friedrich Nietzsche
Discourses and Selected Writings : Penguin Classics - Epictetus
The Prince : Penguin Pocket Hardbacks - Niccolo Machiavelli
Determined : Life Without Free Will - Robert M Sapolsky

RRP $36.99

$33.25

10%
OFF
The Bloomsbury Handbook of Spinoza : Bloomsbury Handbooks - Wiep van Bunge
Early Analytic Philosophy : Origins and Transformations - Gilad  Nir
Monsters : What Do We Do with Great Art by Bad People? - Claire Dederer
Beyond Good and Evil : The Philosophy Classic - Friedrich Nietzsche

RRP $24.95

$22.25

11%
OFF
The Will to Power : Penguin Classics - Friedrich Nietzsche

RRP $22.99

$21.90

Colonialism : A Moral Reckoning - Nigel Biggar
Playing Possum : How Animals Understand Death - Susana Mons

RRP $49.99

$40.50

19%
OFF
The Prince : The Design by Coralie Bickford-Smith - Niccolo Machiavelli
How to Argue With a Meat Eater (And Win Every Time) - Ed Winters
Meditations : Timeless Classics - Marcus Aurelius

RRP $35.00

$33.25