The Insectile and the Deconstruction of the Non/Human defines, conceptualizes, and evaluates the insectile—pertaining to an entomological fascination—in relation to subject formation. The book is driven by a central dynamic between form and formlessness, further staging an investigation of the phenomenon of fascination using Lacanian psychoanalysis, suggesting that the psychodrama of subject formation plays itself out entomologically. The book’s engagement with the insectile—its enactments, cultural dreamwork, fantasy transformations—‘in-forming’ the so-called human subject undertakes a broader deconstruction of said subject and demonstrates the foundational but occluded role of the insectile in subject formation. It tracks the insectile across the archives of psychoanalysis, seventeenth century still life painting, novels from the nineteenth century to the present day, and post-1970s film. The Insectile and the Deconstruction of the Non/Human will be of interest for scholars, graduate students, and upper-level undergraduates in film studies, visual culture, popular culture, cultural and literary studies, comparative literature, and critical theory, offering the insectile as new category for theoretical thought.

The subject of the posthuman, of what it means to be or to cease to be human, is emerging as a shared point of debate at large in the natural and social sciences and the humanities. This volume asks what classical learning can bring to the table of posthuman studies, assembling chapters that explore how exactly the human self of Greek and Latin literature understands its own relation to animals, monsters, objects, cyborgs and robotic devices. With its widely diverse habitat of heterogeneous bodies, minds, and selves, classical literature again and again blurs the boundaries between the human and the non-human; not to equate and confound the human with its other, but playfully to highlight difference and hybridity, as an invitation to appraise the animal, monstrous or mechanical/machinic parts lodged within humans. This comprehensive collection unites contributors from across the globe, each delving into a different classical text or narrative and its configuration of human subjectivity-how human selves relate to other entities around them. For students and scholars of classical literature and the posthuman, this book is a first point of reference.

This collection of essays reveals that across Jacques Derrida's work as a whole, as well as that of Helene Cixous and Nicholas Royle, deconstruction has always addressed questions about animality.

During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, natural and social scientists began comparing certain insects to human social organization. Entomologists theorized that social insects -- such as ants, bees, wasps, and termites -- organize themselves into highly specialized, hierarchical divisions of labor. Using a distinctly human vocabulary that reflected the dominant social structure of the time, they described insects as queens, workers, and soldiers and categorized their behaviors with words like marriage, slavery, farming, and factories. At the same time, sociologists working to develop a model for human organization compared people to insects, relying on the same premise that humans arrange themselves hierarchically. In Debugging the Link between Social Theory and Social Insects, Diane M. Rodgers explains how these co-constructed theories reinforced one another, thereby naturalizing Western conceptions of race, class, and gender as they gained prominence in popular culture and the scientific world. Using a critical science studies perspective not previously applied to research on social insect symbolism, Rodgers attempts to "debug" this theoretical co-construction. She provides sufficient background information to accommodate readers unfamiliar with entomology -- including in-depth explanations of the terms used in the research and discussion of social insects, particularly the insect sociality scale. The entire premise of sociality for insects depends on a dominant understanding of high/low civilization standards -- particularly the tenets of a specialized division of labor and hierarchy -- comparisons that appear to be informed by nineteenth-century colonial thought. Placing these theories in a historical and cross-cultural context, Rodgers explains why hierarchical ideas gained prominence, despite the existence of opposing theories in the literature, and how they resulted in an inhibiting vocabulary that relies more heavily on metaphors than on description. Such analysis is necessary, Rodgers argues, because it sheds light both on newly proposed scientific models and on future changes in human social structures. Contemporary scientists have begun to challenge the traditional understanding of insect social organization and to propose new interdisciplinary models that combine ideas about social insect and human organizational structure with computer technologies. Without a thorough understanding of how the old models came about, residual language and embedded assumptions may remain and continue to reinforce hierarchical social constructions. This intriguing interdisciplinary book makes an important contribution to the history -- and future -- of science and sociology.

From caged orangutans to roasted pig, from dog training to horse phobias, from communicating bees to ruminating cows, over the course of an introduction and four thematically organised chapters Derek Ryan explores how animals are encountered in theoretica

Metals such as copper, iron, manganese, and zinc are clearly required for proper metabolism and development, while imbalances can lead to systemic dysfunction and disease. As a result, organisms have evolved complex genetic systems for the regulation of metal levels, including import, export, and sequestration of metals within cells and sub-cellular compartments. The study of metal biology in insects has the potential to greatly expand our understanding of metal biology. The results of such studies might point to new possible therapeutic interventions for neurological and other human diseases, as well as new strategies for insect disease vector control. The articles collected in this Research Topic comprise review and original research on metal biology in insects.

What do we see when we see, how do we perceive vision itself, and how do we speak and write about seeing and perception? The articles collected in this volume attempt to observe the constitution of perception, be it of a visual field or visible objects, but also of images which emerge in the mind, e.g. that of the reader in the act of reading. The act of vision is profoundly impure, and ‘seeing’ very much entails other modes of sense-based perception such as listening, touching, feeling, tasting or smelling. Various modes of seeing can moreover be observed within literary texts or in music, dreams, memory or all kinds of bodily experiences like dance, pain, sexuality etc., so that there cannot be any such thing as a clearly defined realm called ‘visuality.’ Moreover, ‘seer’ and ‘seen’ are mutually permeable in any visual practice, reflecting on the reciprocal relationship between the visuality of objects and the very act of looking, which could be understood not only as a sensual experience but also as an interaction, an intellectual performance and interpretation. But if there exists this inseparable bond between object and spectator, how can we distance ourselves from the act of looking and ‘show seeing,’ how is it possible to talk and write about ‘seeing perception’? The impurity of the visual, and the contextuality of all acts of looking, constitutes a common thread running through the articles collected in this volume. The ways in which images are perceived in Western culture are inextricably linked with verbal and textual structures and ways of thinking. However, the contributions in this volume are less concerned with the practical, political implications of a visual culture which formed the backbone of visual studies research a few years ago, and more with an adequate understanding of the various concepts and operations at work in theories of visual perception, of seeing, the gaze, and of focalisation.