Although I would have to write poetry, if only I could, to even begin to express my gratitude, I extend my heartfelt thanks to my family, especially Beni, Yuki, Hurrican, and Mayo; and to Rosario, who not only appreciates the importance of Kaos but also has shown how poetry can approach the depths of love.
I would like to thank Kalpana Seshadri-Crooks, who on an outing with her beautiful collies and me, suggested that I write a book on animals. Her feedback on a version of the first two chapters is also appreciated, especially because it led to the notion of animal pedagogy. I would also like to thank Fred Evans, Leonard Lawlor and Eduardo Mendieta for their extremely thoughtful and helpful comments on an early draft of the manuscript. I am grateful for Wendy Lochner’s encouragement throughout this project. Many others have helped me along the way, including Ellen Armour, Walter Brogan, Ed Casey, Tina Chanter, Beth Conklin, Colin Dayan, Lara Giordano, Lisa Guenther, Adrian Johnston, Elissa Marder, Elaine Miller, Mary Rawlinson, Alison Suen, Lisa Walsh, Cynthia Willett, David Wood, and Emily Zakin.
I would also like to acknowledge that parts of chapters 8 and 9 appeared as “Strange Kinship: Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty on Animals” in Epoché: a journal of the history of philosophy (fall 2009); parts of chapter 10 appeared as “Stopping the Anthropological Machine: Agamben with Heidegger and Merleau-Ponty” in Phaenex (an electronic journal (spring 2008); parts of chapter 4 appeared as “Tropho-Ethics: Derrida’s Homeopathic Purity,” Harvard Review (fall 2007); and parts of chapters 2 and 3 appeared as “Animal Pedagogy: The Origin of ‘Man’ in Rousseau and Herder,” Culture, Theory and Critique 47, no. 2 (2006):107–31. Thanks to those journals for allowing me to use this same material here.