Wild Things: The Disorder of Desire

Halberstam (The Queer Art of Failure), a professor of English and gender studies, leverages expertise in both areas in this creative, discipline-smashing study exploring the human attraction to “the wild.” Halberstam defines the wild as “a challenge to an assumed order of things from, by, and on behalf of things that refuse and resist order itself.” Using texts and artifacts as varied as T.S. Eliot’s Four Quartets, the work of Canadian artist Kent Monkman, the picture book Where the Wild Things Are, and the animated movie The Secret Life of Pets, Halberstam shows how exploring the wild can expand and critique worldviews. Regarding gender studies, the author proposes “wildness” as a way to move beyond rigid conceptions of sexuality and gender. In general, Halberstam proposes exploring the wild as a way to escape the “tight webs made up of race, class, gender, and sexuality.” The book also suggests that this draw to the wild is distorted by pet ownership, which Halberstam criticizes as a form of “living death” for the pet. Halberstam’s approach is equal parts academic and poetic, making for a dense and, at times, beautiful text. This is a work that demands attention, which it rewards with both insight and entertainment. (Oct.)