Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question

Boisseron, Bénédicte | from Multimedia Library Collection:
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Afro-Dog. Book cover.

Boisseron, Bénédicte. Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018.

In Afro-Dog, Bénédicte Boisseron investigates the relationship between race and the animal in the history and culture of the Americas and the black Atlantic, exposing a hegemonic system that compulsively links and opposes blackness and animality to measure the value of life. She analyzes the association between black civil disobedience and canine repression, a history that spans the era of slavery through the use of police dogs against protesters during the civil rights movement of the 1960s to today in places like Ferguson, Missouri. She also traces the lineage of blackness and the animal in Caribbean literature and struggles over minorities’ right to pet ownership alongside nuanced readings of Derrida and other French theorists. Drawing on recent debates on black lives and animal welfare, Afro-Dog reframes the fast-growing interest in human–animal relationships by positioning blackness as a focus of animal inquiry, opening new possibilities for animal studies and black studies to think side by side. (Source: Columbia University Press)

Bénédicte Boisseron is associate professor of Afroamerican and African studies at the University of Michigan.

The below document is excerpted from Afro-Dog: Blackness and the Animal Question by Benedicte Boisseron.  Copyright © 2018 Columbia University Press. Used by arrangement with the Publisher. All rights reserved.