Felice Cimatti and Carlo Salzani (Eds.). The Biopolitical Animal. Edinburgh UP (Edinburgh 2024) 320 p.

Abstract

Among the new scholarly publications currently concerned with thinking through both the limits and the promises of the ‘biopolitical turn in animal studies’ (215), The Biopolitical Animal – a collection edited by Felice Cimatti and Carlo Salzani and published in the ‘Animalities’ series by Edinburgh University Press – stands out for the richness of the topics addressed and the overall quality of its chapters. Ambitious in scope, timely in its demands and bold in its theoretical proposals, The Biopolitical Animal – a title reminiscent as well as explicitly critical of Aristotle’s foundational definition of the ‘human’ as zōon politikon or ‘political animal’ – is divided into three parts featuring fourteen chapters, with the addition of an agile afterword and an extensive editors’ introduction. What follows is a review of the aforementioned collection.