ISSUE 39 | APR 2014
ANIMALS
Illustration by Sahara Shrestha
Manuel Arturo Abreu
Is Theorizing Cannibalism Ethical?
a « dire case, » in which ethical axioms are temporarily « tossed aside » - Columbus' rendition of the Carib people's emic name - « cruel » and « ancient » in origin - this is not a language game at all - how similar is this instance of cannibalism to the Eucharist? - humans can be fucked but not eaten, while animals may be eaten but not fucked - non-European people-eating-practices
Sara Pheasant
Bit by a Dead Bee
they were actually wasps - the only thing to do is sip some weak coffee and turn on the radio - insomnia is a state of constant vigilance - progenitor of the eponymous Tesla coil - radio's native ability to electrify mass publics with a shared, affective experience - enigmatic allegories of deception, forgery, disaster - occasionally, they are musical and nearby
Ethan Linck
El Oso Plateado
despite the indignity of its bonds - where the neotropics meet the nearctic - ecologically, the tragedy gains weight - he'd bash in the skull of one cow a year and was never seen - « he did not know he had toppled the spire off an edifice a-building since the morning stars sang together » - empty spaces and big, dangerous bears fly in the face of this logic
Sasha Puchalski
Seeking the Animate, Imagining the Real
a grander apparatus, the body entire - we could fall into the lion's mouth, and find ourselves rejoicing at such an intimacy - we construe « silence » to be a circumstance of the outside, when it is in fact a performance of the self - what experiences does the use of « animal » preclude? - sad, mythic, imaginary, demonic - « creature » speaks of a contagion
Spring Greeney
Exterminating Animals: Ellen Henrietta Richards and the pestilent origins of coeducation
most prominent and outspoken of the citizen-exterminators - a matter of cinematic rather than historical concern - the so-called gentler sex - « I expected something new and worth knowing » - « to pierce the flesh by a sawlike movement » - the home economics banner of the newly politicized house - these movements make strange bedfellows
Ray Osborn
Excerpts from Tchotchke Party
most ready, Devil - I reap red in the eyes and might see - velveteen / antlers - not to see who wins - I find myself hideous and lackluster, vision - his gums likely pepper and pink as they are - parts, suck, stuck - I am pliable and I am my mate - and lord do I lay with none - my personal tchotchke collection, speaking literally here - because it is a libretto