Calendar of Events
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April
Tuesday, April 24, 11:45am - 12:30pm
Location: Turlington 3312
Brown bag talk: Florida's Canid Curiosities: Exploring the Roles of Wolves through European Imaginings into American Wolfdog Breeding Practices by Sarah Lewis Mitchem
In The Beast and the Sovereign, Derrida traces the paradoxical position of wolves in literature and the popular imagination. Prompted by the phrase pas de loup, he illustrates how wolves embody the position of an absent referent while simultaneously being directly referred to: "the syntagm pas de loup, is precisely that the absence of the wolf is also expressed in it in the silent operation of pas, the word pas which implies, but without any noise, the savage intrusion of the adverb of negation." The phrase roughly translates to "the wolf is not here," yet actually implies that a subject is acting "stealthily." The animals are simultaneously erased (negated), referenced (named), and used to indicate intention (to act stealthily). By examining a selection of European stories featuring wolves, we will explore how these animals were perceived, often in contradictory ways, and then re-conceptualized in the United States through wolfdog breeding. With the US wolfdog population estimated to be between 300,000 Ð 500,000, our modern culture has escalated a species that must now fully inhabit the treacherous position of both absence and erasure: wolfdogs became polarizing icons whose numbers increase due to the public's demand, yet they are condemned by most state and county animal control regulations. While teaching English courses at the University of Florida allows me to discuss these animals in a scholastic framework, my personal affiliation with wolfdogs makes me acutely aware that the materials I provide to my students only offer pas de loup, the animal as it is not there. Lastly, my discussion moves into pedagogical questions concerning the intersections of literature, animal studies, and rescue activism.
