Creaturely Love: How Desire Makes Us More and Less Than Human (Volume 42)

by Dominic Pettman

To our modern ears the word “creature” has wild, musky, even monstrous, connotations. And yet the terms “creaturely” and “love,” taken together, have traditionally been associated with theological debates around the enigmatic affection between God and His key creation, Man. In Creaturely Love , Dominic Pettman explores the ways in which desire makes us both more, and less, human.  In an eminently approachable work of wide cultural reach and meticulous scholarship, Pettman undertakes an unprecedented examination of how animals shape the understanding and expression of love between people. Focusing on key figures in modern philosophy, art, and literature (Nietzsche, Salomé, Rilke, Balthus, Musil, Proust), premodern texts and fairy tales (Fourier, Fournival, Ovid), and contemporary films and online phenomena (Wendy and Lucy, Her, memes), Pettman demonstrates that from pet names to spirit animals, and allegories to analogies, animals have constantly appeared in our writings and thoughts about passionate desire. By following certain charismatic animals during their passage through the love letters of philosophers, the romances of novelists, the conceits of fables, the epiphanies of poets, the paradoxes of contemporary films, and the digital menageries of the Internet, Creaturely Love ultimately argues that in our utilization of the animal in our amorous expression, we are acknowledging that what we adore in our beloveds is not (only) their humanity, but their creatureliness.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Philosophy, Cultural Studies

200 pages, Paperback

Published April 18, 2017

About the author

Dominic Pettman currently lives, works, learns and teaches in New York City. He is particularly interested in the ways in which "technology" influences our self-perceptions and cultural conversations.

Reviews

[Michael A. · Rating 4 out of 5]

A poetico-theoretic meditation about humanity's relation to the "creature" and how it can be used as a prism to decode desire/Eros, which in turn can shed light on the relationship between the very unstable dichotomy of "human/animal" (one could say disingenuously constructed or delusory/illusory).

Very interesting stuff, Pettman's writing style is unique - balancing a fine line between serious academicism and quasi-Deleuzian bloviating that is all too common within contemporary (post)humanities scholarship. Generally gesturing toward answers rather than rigorous argumentation, sometimes the work felt unfocused or meandering, but it was never boring. Written in a more impressionistic way rather than an analytic way, in other words.

Would recommend to anyone interested in the topic! It's a short read, and every chapter contains something interesting. You don't need to know the figures he's examining at all to get something out of it (and he has quite a scope - examining Musil, Balthus, Nietzsche, Ovid, Paracelsus, among others - it is clear Pettman has done a lot of research, and it shows!)

[Alice · Rating 4 out of 5]

Weirdo, kinky book, and a nice reminder that the animal brain is undeniable and sometimes kind of lovely. Made me smile on the subway.

[J.W. Clark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fun, provocative, quick read...Second half was immensely better than the first