Gabriel Gudding's Blog

Literature for Nonhumans

is now available for order at Ahsahta Press. 

"The following is a small fantasy expressing the wish for the advent of a heterodox school of economic history and thought that sees economic systems as schemas expressly for creating, regulating, and satisfying the bodily habits of both human and nonhuman animals. Seeing economic systems in this light — as schemas for bringing realities to porches, goods to ports – will make, hopefully

On why we should consider literature a force that can also benefit nonhumans:


"The idea that literature should be written to benefit nonhumans is new. We see no hint of this in western letters prior to now. Book X of The Republic maintains that the only permissible literature is that which praises gods and famous men. Aristotle remarks in Book IV of The Poetics that literature’s purview is the

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h o l z w e g e

"...there is no higher life. This is the life there is. Which we share with animals." Bleak & intransigent vision of Coetzee, Disgrace.
— Joyce Carol Oates (@JoyceCarolOates) July 5, 2013

Ecopoetry, Speculative Ontology, and the Disavowal of the Slaughterhouse: Some Notes on Ethics and Capital

On some common failings in ecopoetry and ecopoetics.

Found at Matter: A Monthly Journal of Political Poetry and Commentary

“It is scarcely possible, according to our notions, to commit crimes upon any beings in the world except men. There are no beings in the universe, according to human beings, except themselves. All others are commodities. They are of consequence only because they have flesh and fill up the empty void of the human stomach. Human beings are persons and have souls, and gods, and places to go when

The rugged old Norsemen spoke of death as Heimgang—”home-going.” So the snow-flowers go home when they melt and flow to the sea, and the rock-ferns, after unrolling their fronds to the light and beautifying the rocks, roll them up close again in the autumn and blend with the soil. Myriads of rejoicing living creatures, daily, hourly, perhaps every moment sink into death’s arms, dust to dust,

 Mercy for animals, 2011.

"You gotta love the people at Mercy for Animals. They don't stop. And neither do we."