Derrida and Textual Animality: For a Zoogrammatology of Literature (Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature)

__Derrida and Textual Animality: For a Zoogrammatology of Literature__ analyses what has come to be known, in the Humanities, as ‘the question of the animal’, in relation to literary texts. Rodolfo Piskorski intervenes in the current debate regarding the non-human and its representation in literature, resisting popular materialist methodological approaches in the field by revisiting and revitalising the post-structuralist thought of Derrida and the ‘linguistic turn’. The book focuses on Derrida’s early work in order to frame deconstructive approaches to literature as necessary for a theory and practice of literary criticism that addresses the question of the animal, arguing that texts are like animals, and animals are like texts. While Derrida’s late writings have been embraced by animal studies scholars due to its overt focus on animality, ethics, and the non-human, Piskorski demonstrates the additional value of these early Derridean texts for the field of literary animal studies by proposing detailed zoogrammatological readings of texts by Freud, Clarice Lispector, Ted Hughes, and Darren Aronofsky, while in dialogue with thinkers such as Butler, Kristeva, Genette, Deleuze and Guattari, and Attridge. Front Matter ....Pages i-xiii Introduction (Rodolfo Piskorski)....Pages 1-27 Animal as Text, Text as Animal: On the Matter of Textuality (Rodolfo Piskorski)....Pages 29-64 The Arche-Animal: Totemic Deconstruction and Psychoanalysis (Rodolfo Piskorski)....Pages 65-117 The Thought-Fox: The Poetics of Animal Form (Rodolfo Piskorski)....Pages 119-165 Transcending Signs: Becoming-Animal in Black Swan (Rodolfo Piskorski)....Pages 167-207 Animal Supplementarity in Lispector’s The Apple in the Dark (Rodolfo Piskorski)....Pages 209-257 Conclusion (Rodolfo Piskorski)....Pages 259-261 Back Matter ....Pages 263-272