Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde. A Paradigm for Animal Liberation. Socha, Kim Amsterdam/New York, NY, 2012, XIV, 258 pp. Pb: 978-90-420-3423-5 € 54 / US$ 73

Series: Critical Animal Studies 1 This interdisciplinary study fuses analysis of feminist literature and manifestos, radical political theory, critical vanguard studies, women’s performance art, and popular culture to argue for the animal liberation movement as successor to the liberationist visions of the early twentieth-century avant-gardes, most especially the Surrealists. These vanguard groups are judiciously critiqued for their refusal to confront their own misogyny, a quandary that continues to plague animal activists, thereby disallowing for cohesion and full recognition of women’s value within a culturally marginalized cause. This volume is of interest to anyone who is concerned about the continued—indeed, escalating—violence against nonhumans. More broadly, it will interest those seeking new pathways to challenge the dominant power constructions through which oppression of humans, nonhumans, and the environment thrives. Women, Destruction, and the Avant-Garde ultimately poses the animal liberation movement as having serious political and cultural implications for radical social change, destruction of hierarchy and for a world without shackles and cages, much as the Surrealists envisioned. Contents Helena Pedersen and Vasile Stanescu: Series Editor’s Introduction: What is “Critical” about Animal Studies? From the Animal “Question” to the Animal “Condition” Acknowledgments Introduction: Rooting for the Avant-Garde Avant-Garde Women Writers and Destruction in the Flesh Staring Back in the Flesh: Avant-Garde Performance as an ALM Paradigm Convulsive Beauty, Infinite Spheres and Irrational Reasons: Reverie on a New Consciousness Love and Laughter Now: Plucking at Stems or Uprooting Oppression? Works Cited Index Kim Socha is an animal activist and sits on the board of the Animal Rights Coalition in Minneapolis, MN. Holding a Ph.D. in English Literature and Criticism, she works as a composition and literature instructor with publications in the areas of surrealism, Latino literature and pedagogy.