Creaturely Poetics is a unique and special text. In it Pick explores an array of literary and cinematic sources, teasing out a deeper more intimate understanding of the nature of being (both human and non-human) in their brute vulnerability.
Drawing regularly on the philosophical thought of Simone Weil, Pick challenges the humanist and anthropocentric notions of human superiority, taking material vulnerability rather than cognitive particularities as the key aspect of importance and concern. Species identity and boundaries fade into insignificance as a shared creaturely essence, which is both temporal and fragile, is explored through a range of examples, including in the context of the holocaust.
For someone unfamiliar with film and literary criticism, like myself, the academic nature of the text does make sections of the book somewhat challenging and difficult to penetrate. However regardless of unfamiliarity with a number of theories and concepts which appear in the text, the essence of Pick’s writing still penetrate through any confusions, offering to my reading anyway, an original approach to ethics which bypasses the unavoidable power-play of rights approaches and the cold calculations of utilitarianism, taking attentiveness and primary obligations based on creaturely vulnerability as core.
I had been waiting for this book in eager anticipation for nearly a year after hearing Pick speak at a Critical Animal Studies conference last summer and being mesmerised by her profoundly deep and refreshing take on questions of animal ethics.
The book was no disappointment, brimming page to page with a vibrant, compassionate and masterful style which challenges the reader to go beyond their neat conceptual surface understanding towards a more intimate, personal and yet shared place where the universal fragility, temporality and beauty central to all beings becomes the ground from which meaningful life ensues.