Speculative Taxidermy

CRITICAL LIFE STUDIES

Jami Weinstein, Claire Colebrook, and Myra J. Hird, series editors

The core concept of critical life studies strikes at the heart of the dilemma that
contemporary critical theory has been circling around: namely, the negotiation of
the human, its residues, a priori configurations, the persistence of humanism in
structures of thought, and the figure of life as a constitutive focus for ethical, politi-
cal, ontological, and epistemological questions. Despite attempts to move quickly
through humanism (and organicism) to more adequate theoretical concepts, such
haste has impeded the analysis of how the humanist concept of life is preconfigured
or immanent to the supposedly new conceptual leap. The Critical Life Studies series
thus aims to destabilize critical theory’s central figure, life—no longer should we
rely upon it as the horizon of all constitutive meaning but instead begin with life as
the problematic of critical theory and its reconceptualization as the condition of
possibility for thought. By reframing the notion of life critically—outside the orbit
and primacy of the human and subversive to its organic forms—the series aims to
foster a more expansive, less parochial engagement with critical theory.

Luce Irigaray and Michael Marder, Through Vegetal Being:

Two Philosophical Perspectives (2016)

Jami Weinstein and Claire Colebrook, eds., Posthumous Life:

Theorizing Beyond the Posthuman (2017)

Penelope Deutscher, Foucault’s Futures:

A Critique of Reproductive Reason (2017)