Writing humanimals: Critical animal studies and Jewish studies

Abstract

Recently, there has been a proliferation of scholarship intersecting the fields of critical animal studies and Jewish studies. These publications span many time periods and areas of study, including the Hebrew Bible, the Babylonian Talmud, and modernist literature, and all demonstrate the significance of literary analysis to studying animals and religion.Scholars have persuasively argued that the study of animals in literature should include reflection on real animal others.Research on animals and animality in Jewish studies takes this concern as a point of focus, using literary approaches to show how human and non-human animals are co-implicated in systems of ethical and political exclusion. The works I discuss illustrate how encounters with actual animals can animate concerns with figural animalities, and vice versa.Following Donna Haraway, I argue that such literary approaches can point to new and urgent methods of multispecies engagement, allowing us to imagine ourselves out of damaging anthropocentric narratives.