With Dogs at the Edge of Life

Colin Dayan is Robert Penn Warren Professor of the Humanities and professor of law at Vanderbilt University. She is the author of The Law Is a White Dog: How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons, The Story of Cruel and Unusual, and Haiti, History, and the Gods. She has also written for the New York Times, London Review of Books, and Boston Review.

• Preface By Way of Beginning I. Like a Dog 1. Dogs and Light 2. Back Talking Like I Did 3. They Killed My Dog II. When Law Comes to Visit 4. Dead Dogs 5. Speaking About Extinction 6. Fable for the End of a Breed III. Pariah Dogs 7. Through the Eyes of Dogs 8. If I Sense the Beauty Coda Notes Acknowledgments Index

In three lively and beautifully written movements, Colin Dayan offers a memorable tour de force that threads together memoir and an analysis of the deprivations of life, human and nonhuman and human with nonhuman, that so pervasively characterize our neoliberal world-historical moment. Intelligent and moving, With Dogs at the Edge of Life is an extraordinary book, a courageous and compelling intermingling of arresting cultural critique and autobiographical reflections of a life lived in the company of canines. -- David L. Clark, McMaster University Colin Dayan has again produced a probing and brilliant examination of that long 'history of extermination masked by the veneer of enlightenment.' Always writing with justice in mind, Dayan's consideration of our relationship with dogs yields a complex meditation on humanity and life's uncertain possibilities. Beautiful, 'more than just another dog story,' as only Dayan could write it. -- Avery F. Gordon, University of California, Santa Barbara Whether openly acknowledged or not, we are all in relationships with dogs-as companions, as lovers, as protector and protected. Some relationships are marked by fear, perhaps hatred. Most are contradictory, many escape description. In her poetic, political, autobiographical homage to life and death with dogs, Dayan helps us stay with them as we traverse treacherous edges. We are fortunate to have so gifted an interpreter and loving a guide. -- Lori Gruen, author of Entangled Empathy and Ethics and Animals In an inimitable mode of testimony and confession, Colin Dayan argues that relations with dogs, from the southern United States to Turkey, structure violence, vulnerability, and antagonism. Extending her work on the physical exploration of unnameable states, Dayan shows how bonds with dogs uniquely condition the creation of social value. And I say that as a cat person. -- Rei Terada, University of California, Irvine Stimulating and lyrical... intellectually fierce reading for philosophically minded readers, especially dog lovers. Kirkus Reviews Erudite and imaginative as the book asks why only members of our species get to be persons... Boston Review Emotionally and intellectually challenging, the volume boasts a rich, resonant message: Not everyone sees the dog the same. American Kennel Club