Description
Horse Crazy looks at the relationships between girls and horses through the frameworks of Michel Foucault's concepts of normalization and biopower, drawing conclusions about the way girls' agency is both normalized and resistant to normalization. Segments of Halley's own experiences with horses as a young girl, as well as experiences from the perspective of other girls, are sources for examination. "Horsey girls," as she calls them, are girls who find a way to defy the expectations given to them by society?thinness, obsession with makeup and beauty, frailty?and gain the possibility of freedom in the process.
Drawing on Nicole Shukin's uses of animal capital theories, Halley also explores the varied treatment of horses themselves as an example of the biopolitical use of nonhuman animals and the manipulation and exploitation of horse life. In so doing she engages with common ways we think and feel about animals and with the technologies of speciesism.
About the Author
Jean O'Malley Halley is a professor of sociology at the College of Staten Island in the City University of New York. She is the author of Boundaries of Touch: Parenting and Adult-Child Intimacy, The Parallel Lives of Women and Cows: Meat Markets, and co-author of Seeing White: An Introduction to White Privilege and Race with Amy Eshleman and Ramya Vijaya.
Book Information
ISBN 9780820355276
Author Jean O'Malley Halley
Format Paperback
Page Count 240
Imprint University of Georgia Press
Publisher University of Georgia Press
Weight(grams) 430g