Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast : A Multispecies Impression Paperback / softback

by Julian Yates

Part of the Posthumanities series

Paperback / softback

Out of stock

Description

In what senses do animals, plants, and minerals â€œwriteâ€?

How does their â€œwritingâ€ mark our livesour past, present, and future?

Addressing such questions with an exhilarating blend of creative flair and theoretical depth, Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast traces how the lives of, yes, sheep, oranges, gold, and yeast mark the stories of those animals we call â€œhuman.â€Bringing together often separate conversations in animal studies, plant studies, ecotheory, and biopolitics, Of Sheep, Oranges, and Yeast crafts scripts for literary and historical study that embrace the fact that we come into being through our relations to other animal, plant, fungal, microbial, viral, mineral, and chemical actors.

The book opens and closes in the company of a Shakespearean character talking through his painful encounter with the skin of a lamb (in the form of parchment).

This encounter stages a visceral awareness of what Julian Yates names a â€œmultispecies impression,â€ the way all acts of writing are saturated with the â€œwritingâ€ of other beings.

Yates then develops a multimodal reading strategy that traces a series of anthropo-zoo-genetic figures that derive from our comaking with sheep (keyed to the story of biopolitics), oranges (keyed to economy), and yeast (keyed to the notion of foundation or infrastructure).Â Working with an array of materials (published and archival), across disciplines and historical periods (Classical to postmodern), the book allows sheep, oranges, and yeast to dictate their own chronologies and plot their own stories.

What emerges is a methodology that fundamentally alters what it means to read in the twenty-first century.Â