Militz-Frielink Animacies

Animacies “interrogates how the fragile division between animate and inanimate—that is, beyond human and animal—is restlessly produced and policed and maps important political consequences of that distinction."  Chen asserts that the book is “the first to bring the concept of animacy together with queer of color scholarship, critical animal studies and disability theory.”  In Animacies, Chen successfully shows how “animacy tends to hide its own contradictions, the transsubstantiations, and the transmattering that go underneath, through, and across it.”

Overall, I found Animacies very engaging as the author weaved complex animacy theories into intersecting performances of race, gender, and disability.  I liked how the author incorporated contemporary examples of how intricate aspects of animacy manifest materially in art, pop culture, family structures, medical tests, and the American press. 

This book is very useful for my study of research methodologies as I hope to successfully draw upon critical pedagogy, philosophy of education, African American History, and transnational feminist theory in my research.  I want to be the first scholar to bring the concept of African American Spiritual Feminist Epistemology to the forefront of philosophy of education. Philosophy of education is a major part of the field social foundations of education. While the nature of social foundations is very interdisciplinary (as a field it specializes in sociology of education, history of education, philosophy of education, and educational policy) most foundations scholars choose to focus on one or two of those disciplines within the social foundations field for their research. However, some of the brightest foundations scholars combine philosophy of education with American History, African American History, Native American History, and educational policy.  Joel Spring has successful merged all the histories of indigenous peoples with educational philosophy and policy.  (See his book Deculturalization and the Struggle for Equality, which was published in 2006 by McGraw-Hill and categorized as Humanities/Social Sciences/Languages.) 

The pedagogical implications for studying African American Spiritual Feminist Epistemology under a philosophical lens are astounding.  My students will develop a rich, nuanced understanding of African American studies, Black feminism, critical pedagogy, and spirituality as a part of the humanities.  They also get a glimpse into an emerging field in academia—contemplative studies.  Students will also cultivate higher order thinking skills (like they would from studying a book like Animacies) because it models how different fields in academia can merge to create new theories.  These new theories have profound implications for praxis and social change. For example, Hanhardt’s Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence presented new research about racialized violence in gay neighborhoods under the lens of Gay and Lesbian studies, American Studies and Urban Studies. Thus, the research Hanhardt collected via historiography will have a profound impact on social policies in gay neighborhoods.