Matthew Calarco
Biographic Data
| ID | 3634918 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Matthew Calarco |
| GIVEN NAMES | Matthew |
| FAMILY NAME | Calarco |
| SIGNATURE | CALARCO M |
| AFFILIATIONS | Sweet Briar College |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
How Not to Be Human
Current debates in the environmental humanities, animal studies, and related fields increasingly revolve around this question: What to do with 'the human'? Is the human a category worth preserving? Should it be replaced with the post-human? Should marginalized and minoritarian groups advocate for a universal humanism? What is the relationship between humanism and anthropocentrism? Is a genuinely non-anthropocentric mode of thinking and living pos…
Boundaries of Human Nature
The Boundaries of Human Nature
Matthew Calarco explores key issues in the philosophy of animals and their significance for our contemporary world. The Boundaries of Human Nature shows readers why philosophy can help transform not just the way we think about animals but also how we interact with them.
All Our Relations
The aim of this essay is to examine the status and promise of Emmanuel Levinas's humanism for a posthuman and more-than-human age. I suggest that, even though Levinas's approach partially reproduces classical forms of anthropocentrism, a careful reading of his writings on humanism uncovers surprising resources for thinking about ethics and relationality beyond human beings. I close by suggesting that one of Levinas's early writings on ritual anti…
Exploring Animal Encounters
Exploring Animal Encounters
Animal Studies
This review examines material published in the field of animal studies in 2016. The year saw a significant amount of outstanding work in ethology and evolutionary studies of animal behaviour and cognition. Such research not only continues to challenge traditional conceptions of human/animal differences, but also raises serious ethical and political questions about the future of animal research. Another leading trend in the field this year concern…
Life and Relation beyond Animalization (Richard Iveson, Zoogenesis)

Animal Studies
This review examines material published in the field of animal studies in 2015. An immense amount of work on animal issues appeared during this period in the form of monographs, journal issues, and edited collections. Rather than trying to canvass all this material here, I have chosen to review monographs that develop novel arguments and make important contributions to existing debates in the field. As with last year’s review, I have included wri…
Derrida and The Sexual Politics of Meat
Animal Studies
This chapter examines key writings in animal studies from 2013 to 2014 that reflect the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of the field. Although questions concerning animals are often thought to revolve primarily around ethical matters, the work currently being carried out in animal studies shows just how broad and rich the conversations in the field have become in recent years. The books reviewed here range across a wide number of themes, inc…
David Nibert. Animal Oppression and Human Violence
Being toward meat
Identity, Difference, Indistinction
Research Article| July 01 2011 Identity, Difference, Indistinction Matthew Calarco Matthew Calarco Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google CR: The New Centennial Review (2011) 11 (2): 41–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/41949742 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Matthew Calarco; Identity, Difference, Indistinction. CR: The New Centennial Review 1 July 2011; 11 (2): 41–6…
Tracking the Animal in Derrida

Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben has come to be recognized in recent years as one of the most provocative and imaginative thinkers in contemporary philosophy and political theory. The essays gathered together in this volume shed light on his extensive body of writings and assess the significance of his work for debates across a wide range of fields, including philosophy, political theory, Jewish studies, and animal studies. The authors discuss material extending …
Thinking through Animals
Thinking through Animals
Another Insistence of Man”
Deconstruction is not vegetarianism
Reading Derrida’s Own Conscience
This paper explores two different methods of reading ‘Derrida’s own conscience’ – that is, of raising the question of ethics and obligation in deconstruction. The two readings under discussion here are staged by Jean-Luc Nancy in his seminal essay ‘The Free Voice of Man’. In the first half of the paper, I engage in a reading of Nancy’s essay in which I seek not only to highlight Nancy’s double formulation of the place of ethics in deconstruction,…
On Levinas
On the Borders of Language and Death
Derrida on Identity and Difference
What is the significance of and logic behind Jacques Derrida's recent "political" writings? While Derrida's work refuses to obey any singular movement or register, he does, nonetheless, make recurrent attempts to negotiate between a politics of identity and difference. A similar undertaking can be found in the radical democratic writings of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. An encounter between these thinkers is here carried out in order to eluc…
Identity, Difference, Indistinction
Research Article| July 01 2011 Identity, Difference, Indistinction Matthew Calarco Matthew Calarco Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google CR: The New Centennial Review (2011) 11 (2): 41–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/41949742 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Matthew Calarco; Identity, Difference, Indistinction. CR: The New Centennial Review 1 July 2011; 11 (2): 41–6…
All Our Relations
The aim of this essay is to examine the status and promise of Emmanuel Levinas's humanism for a posthuman and more-than-human age. I suggest that, even though Levinas's approach partially reproduces classical forms of anthropocentrism, a careful reading of his writings on humanism uncovers surprising resources for thinking about ethics and relationality beyond human beings. I close by suggesting that one of Levinas's early writings on ritual anti…
On the Borders of Language and Death
Tracking the Animal in Derrida

Another Insistence of Man”
Derrida on Identity and Difference
What is the significance of and logic behind Jacques Derrida's recent "political" writings? While Derrida's work refuses to obey any singular movement or register, he does, nonetheless, make recurrent attempts to negotiate between a politics of identity and difference. A similar undertaking can be found in the radical democratic writings of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. An encounter between these thinkers is here carried out in order to eluc…
Derrida on Identity and Difference
What is the significance of and logic behind Jacques Derrida's recent "political" writings? While Derrida's work refuses to obey any singular movement or register, he does, nonetheless, make recurrent attempts to negotiate between a politics of identity and difference. A similar undertaking can be found in the radical democratic writings of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe. An encounter between these thinkers is here carried out in order to eluc…
On the Borders of Language and Death
Deconstruction is not vegetarianism
Reading Derrida’s Own Conscience
This paper explores two different methods of reading ‘Derrida’s own conscience’ – that is, of raising the question of ethics and obligation in deconstruction. The two readings under discussion here are staged by Jean-Luc Nancy in his seminal essay ‘The Free Voice of Man’. In the first half of the paper, I engage in a reading of Nancy’s essay in which I seek not only to highlight Nancy’s double formulation of the place of ethics in deconstruction,…
On Levinas
Another Insistence of Man”
Giorgio Agamben
Giorgio Agamben has come to be recognized in recent years as one of the most provocative and imaginative thinkers in contemporary philosophy and political theory. The essays gathered together in this volume shed light on his extensive body of writings and assess the significance of his work for debates across a wide range of fields, including philosophy, political theory, Jewish studies, and animal studies. The authors discuss material extending …
Thinking through Animals
Thinking through Animals
Tracking the Animal in Derrida

Identity, Difference, Indistinction
Research Article| July 01 2011 Identity, Difference, Indistinction Matthew Calarco Matthew Calarco Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google CR: The New Centennial Review (2011) 11 (2): 41–60. https://doi.org/10.2307/41949742 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Matthew Calarco; Identity, Difference, Indistinction. CR: The New Centennial Review 1 July 2011; 11 (2): 41–6…
Being toward meat
Animal Studies
This chapter examines key writings in animal studies from 2013 to 2014 that reflect the diverse and interdisciplinary nature of the field. Although questions concerning animals are often thought to revolve primarily around ethical matters, the work currently being carried out in animal studies shows just how broad and rich the conversations in the field have become in recent years. The books reviewed here range across a wide number of themes, inc…
David Nibert. Animal Oppression and Human Violence
Animal Studies
This review examines material published in the field of animal studies in 2015. An immense amount of work on animal issues appeared during this period in the form of monographs, journal issues, and edited collections. Rather than trying to canvass all this material here, I have chosen to review monographs that develop novel arguments and make important contributions to existing debates in the field. As with last year’s review, I have included wri…
Derrida and The Sexual Politics of Meat
Animal Studies
This review examines material published in the field of animal studies in 2016. The year saw a significant amount of outstanding work in ethology and evolutionary studies of animal behaviour and cognition. Such research not only continues to challenge traditional conceptions of human/animal differences, but also raises serious ethical and political questions about the future of animal research. Another leading trend in the field this year concern…
Life and Relation beyond Animalization (Richard Iveson, Zoogenesis)

Exploring Animal Encounters
Exploring Animal Encounters
All Our Relations
The aim of this essay is to examine the status and promise of Emmanuel Levinas's humanism for a posthuman and more-than-human age. I suggest that, even though Levinas's approach partially reproduces classical forms of anthropocentrism, a careful reading of his writings on humanism uncovers surprising resources for thinking about ethics and relationality beyond human beings. I close by suggesting that one of Levinas's early writings on ritual anti…
The Boundaries of Human Nature
Matthew Calarco explores key issues in the philosophy of animals and their significance for our contemporary world. The Boundaries of Human Nature shows readers why philosophy can help transform not just the way we think about animals but also how we interact with them.
Boundaries of Human Nature
How Not to Be Human
Current debates in the environmental humanities, animal studies, and related fields increasingly revolve around this question: What to do with 'the human'? Is the human a category worth preserving? Should it be replaced with the post-human? Should marginalized and minoritarian groups advocate for a universal humanism? What is the relationship between humanism and anthropocentrism? Is a genuinely non-anthropocentric mode of thinking and living pos…
Philosophy (16 works) · Epistemology (15 works) · Sociology (12 works) · Environmental ethics (11 works) · Philosophy (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy, Ethics, and Existentialism (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Politics (8 works) · Aesthetics (7 works)