Being and Swine
The End of Nature (As We Knew It)
by Fahim Amir
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Pub Date Dec 01 2020 | Archive Date Dec 04 2020
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Description
Forget everything you think you know about nature. Fahim Amir’s award-winning book takes pure delight in posing unexpected questions: Are animals victims of human domination, or heroes of resistance? Is nature pristine and defenceless, or sentient and devious? Is being human really a prerequisite for being political?
In a world where birds on Viagra punch above their weight and termites hijack the heating systems of major cities, animals can be recast as vigilantes, agitators, and public enemies in their own right. Under Amir’s magic spell, pigs transform from slaughterhouse innocents into rioting revolutionaries, pigeons from urban pests into unruly militants, honeybees from virtuous fuzzballs into shameless centrefold models for eco-capitalism. As paws, claws, talons, and hooves seize the means of production, Being and Swine spirals higher and higher into a heady thesis that becomes more convincing by the minute.
At the heart of Amir’s writing is a deep optimism and bracingly fresh reading of Marxist, post-colonial, and feminist theory, building upon the radical scholarship of Donna J. Haraway and others. Contrarian, whip-smart, and wildly innovative, no other book will laugh at your convictions quite like this one.
Advance Praise
“Amir reveals a world where animals are seen with different eyes—not the consumer gaze, laced with pity, indifference, and violence, but as equal resisting agents in the struggle. A promise of a future where pigs, and those of fur, fin, feather, and feelers, resist the machine of capitalist oppression. Fanciful? No. This beautiful book is a sorely needed reminder that human speciesism has cancelled other animals from the resistance, when they resisted all along.”
– Sue Coe, artist and author of Dead Meat
“Free from typical boundaries of discipline or species, the freewheeling Being and Swine takes a novel jaunt through the history of thought and political philosophy: from Burke’s scaremongering against the ‘swinish multitude’ unleashed by democracy, to Engels’ famous struggle with the platypus, to the place of local pig-herding traditions in the development of the Frankfurt School. Being and Swine is filled with fertile polemics, witty detours, and swerves into burrows and sewers, pursuing unlikely bio-political insights that are sure to delight thinkers of any species.”
– Jules Gleeson, co-editor of Transgender Marxism
Available Editions
| EDITION | Paperback |
| ISBN | 9781771134811 |
| PRICE | CA$24.95 (CAD) |
