This text argues that animals appear not just as biological creatures, but as vehicles of meaning for human imagination, mind and culture. Animal life may form the basis for an animalizing imagination that can enhance our cultural, religious and aesthetic sensibilities. This imagination is rooted in the pre-modern affective relationship between shamans and their familiars, but can be tracked to our post-modern ecological crisis, where we can reclaim a totemic identification with animals as signifiers of a new ecological understanding.
| Acknowledgements |
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ix | |
| Introduction |
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xi | |
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1 | (25) |
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1 | (10) |
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Animal Slaughter or animal sacrifice? |
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11 | (1) |
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From sacrifice to slaughter |
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12 | (7) |
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19 | (7) |
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26 | (25) |
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A mythological history of animal exclusion |
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26 | (3) |
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The return of the repressed animal |
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29 | (3) |
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The return of the repressed human to an animal commonwealth |
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32 | (6) |
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Three kinds of animal presence (and many unaccounted absences) |
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38 | (3) |
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41 | (5) |
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46 | (5) |
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51 | (44) |
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Arks for the biological, cognitive and imaginary animals |
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51 | (4) |
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55 | (3) |
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58 | (2) |
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The shaman's initiation in the shadow of the totem tree |
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60 | (6) |
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The world is a suffering place |
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66 | (4) |
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Four refusals of a florid and pathologized animalizing |
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70 | (2) |
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Fear of animals: the origin of religiosity? |
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72 | (4) |
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Animals, anxiety and dreams |
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76 | (3) |
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A poetics of imaginary violence: the animalizing imagination at work in the writing of Ted Hughes |
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79 | (3) |
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82 | (1) |
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Freud's familiars: excluded from the shadow of the totem tree |
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83 | (12) |
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95 | (33) |
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95 | (6) |
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101 | (3) |
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The bruising bestiary of Lautreamont |
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104 | (5) |
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An imagination of violence |
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109 | (1) |
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Gendering the `animal(e)' |
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110 | (2) |
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Red dawn wolf: D. H. Lawrence's zoological imagination |
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112 | (16) |
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128 | (28) |
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Totemism and animalizing: animals as signs |
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128 | (7) |
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Levi-Strauss's critique of `totemism' |
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135 | (7) |
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The near future is already here |
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142 | (3) |
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Machine against animal: the Futurist manifesto |
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145 | (5) |
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Objections: information is sexy machines are erotic and the human--machine relation offers constructive metaphors |
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150 | (6) |
| Postscript |
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156 | (3) |
| Bibliography |
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159 | (6) |
| Index |
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165 | |
ALAN BLEAKLEY is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology and Post-Compulsory Education, and Head of Research, at the Cornwall Institute of Professional Studies, Cornwall College, where he develops and teaches undergraduates and postgraduate programmes for the Universities of Plymouth and Exeter. He has work in Education for 25 years, including tutoring for the Open University an teaching in an American University. He has been active in developing courses in Counselling, Psychotherapy, Psychology, Post-Compulsory Education and Cultural Studies, and has worked for many years as a psychotherapist and supervisor. He has been at the forefront of research, development and teaching in Britain in post-Jungian Archetypal Psychology, Shamanic Psychology, and , most recently, the introduction of ideas from Post-Structuralist and Post-Modern thinking into Education practices. His publications range from the field of psychology of imagination to poetry, and he is a regular contributors to conferences.
