Cary Wolfe, Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Rice University
The Biopolitics of Animal Bodies


Cary Wolfe's recent work brings two distinct genealogies into conversation-animal studies and biopolitics. Whereas animal studies has often worked in the register of ethics, biopolitics has tended to operate in the register of political theory. What kind of intellectual resources can biopolitical theory provide for thinking about issues of deep interest to animal studies?

To answer this question, Wolfe brings thinkers such as Foucault, Agamben, Butler, Derrida, Esposito, Lazzarato, and others to bear on institutions from the nineteenth century slaughterhouse, to the Fordist assembly line and Nazi death camp, to the modern factory farm. Wolf's work is notable for the way that it brings many concrete institutions and practices (from pet health insurance to antibiotic management and other public health strategies) into conversations with posthumanist and biopolitical philosophy.

Cary Wolfe is Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor of English and Chair of the English Department at Rice University. His books and edited collections include Critical Environments: Postmodern Theory and the Pragmatics of the "Outside" (Minnesota, 1998), Zoontologies: The Question of the Animal (Minnesota, 2003), Animal Rites: American Culture, The Discourse of Species, and Posthumanist Theory (Chicago, 2003), and What Is Posthumanism? (Minnesota, 2010). He is co-author and co-editor of several works, and the founding editor of the series Posthumanities at the University of Minnesota Press.