Dominic Pettman is professor of culture and media at Eugene Lang College and the New School for Social Research. His books include Infinite Distraction, Human Error: Species-Being and Media Machines (Minnesota, 2011), Look at the Bunny, Love and Other Technologies, and Sonic Intimacy.
Contents
Preface
Introduction: On the Stupidity of Oysters
1. Divining Creaturely Love
2. Horsing Around: The Marriage Blanc of Nietzsche, Andreas-Salomé, and Rée
3. Groping for an Opening: Rilke between Animal and Angel
4. Electric Caresses: Rilke, Balthus, and Mitsou
5. Between Perfection and Temptation: Musil, Claudine, and Veronica
6. The Biological Travesty
7. “The Creature Whom We Love”: Proust and Jealousy
8. The Love Tone: Capture and Captivation
9. “The Soft Word That Comes Deceiving”: Fournival’s Bestiary of Love
10. The Cuckold and the Cockatrice: Fourier and Hazlitt
11. The Animal Bride and Horny Toads
12. Unsettled Being: Ovid’s Metamorphoses
13. Fickle Metaphysics
14. Nymphomania and Faunication
15. Senseless Arabesques: Wendy and Lucy
16. The Goat in the Machine (A Reprise)
Conclusion: On Cetaceous Maidens
Epilogue: Animal Magnetism and Alternative Currents (or Tesla and the White
Dove)
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
