Zoographies challenges the anthropocentrism of the Continental philosophical tradition and advances the position that, while some distinctions are valid, humans and animals are best viewed as part of an ontological whole. Matthew Calarco draws on ethological and evolutionary evidence and the work of Heidegger, who called for a radicalized responsibility toward all forms of life. He also turns to Levinas, who raised questions about the nature and scope of ethics; Agamben, who held the "anthropological machine" responsible for the horrors of the twentieth century; and Derrida, who initiated a nonanthropocentric ethics. Calarco concludes with a call for the abolition of classical versions of the human-animal distinction and asks that we devise new ways of thinking about and living with animals.

This work traces the etymologies of the entries to their earliest sources, shows their kinship to both Spanish and English, and organizes them into families of words in an Appendix of Indo-European roots. Entries are based on those of the Diccionario de la lengua española de la Real Academia Española.

The intriguing question in the title comes from an inscription on the collar of a dog Alexander Pope gave to the Prince of Wales. When Pope wrote the famous couplet “I am his Highness’ Dog at Kew, / Pray tell me Sir, whose Dog are You?” the question was received as an expression of loyalty. That was an era before there were dog breeds and, not coincidentally, before people were generally believed to develop affectionate bonds with dogs. This interdisciplinary study focuses on the development of dog breeds in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Beginning with the Foxhound—the first modern breed—it examines the aesthetic, political, and technological forces that generate modern human-canine relations. These forces have colluded over the past two hundred years to impose narrow descriptions of human-canine relations and to shape the dogs physically into acceptable and recognizable breeds. The largest question in animal studies today—how alterity affects human-animal relations—cannot fully be considered until the two approaches to this question are understood as complements of one another: one beginning from aesthetics, the other from technology. Most of all, the book asks if we can engage with dogs in ways that allow them to remain dogs.

Humans are animals who fictionalize other animals to asse their "humanness." We are philosophical animals who philosophize about our humanity by projecting images onto a mirror about other animals. Spanning literature, philosophy, and ethics, the thread uniting The Philosophical Animal is the bestiary and how it continues to inform our imaginings. Beginning with an exploration of animals and women in the literary work of Coetzee, famous for his book on the Lives of Animals, Eduardo Mendieta then dives into the genre of bestiaries in order to investigate the relation between humanity and animality. From there he approaches the works of Derrida and Habermas from the standpoint of genetic engineering and animal studies. While we have intensely modified many species genetically, we have not done this to ourselves. Why? Finally, Mendieta deals with the political and ethical implications suggested by this question before ending on an autobiographical note about growing up around so-called animals, and in particular horses.