Wes Jamison

A provocative and meticulously structured exploration of identity, language, and the body, My Corpse Inside exposes the thin and increasingly blurry line between the physical and the digital, between the living and the dead. Jamison contends with the complex and disturbing relationship of sexuality and violence through a torrent of virtual horrors—shock sites, hookup apps, beheading videos, and creepshots—as well as through Jamison's own experiences of being surveilled and exploited online. Inspired by Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s master horror film Kairo, which portrays ghosts overflowing into our reality through the internet, this fragmented book-length essay clarifies Julia Kristeva’s infamously abstruse theory of abjection and subjectivity and updates it for today’s constant virtuality. My Corpse Inside is a disquieting work that asks readers to confront the violence, fetish, horror, and loneliness inherent in our eternal connectivity.

Just as Odin’s ravens, named Huginn and Muninn (translated to Thought and Memory), would whisper everything he couldn’t see, so too do these and other mythical ravens—of Athena, the Biblical Eve and Noah, Coronis, and others—function in Jamison’s essay collection: they are tools to interpret and make meaning of their world, rent as it is between the rural and urban, the romantic and abusive, where language is both surfeit and dearth. This collection sees mythical ravens murmur alongside the actual bone and viscera of crows, starlings, and pigeons in disarming explorations of desire and destruction, the body and creation. Carrion is an ambitiously structured collection that honors the literary forebears at its center while lamenting our inability to communicate anything—love, need, hope—except in metaphors.

"Until relatively recently, vegetarianism was a dietary alternative for Christians--a mere option or perhaps, for some, a conviction. But the biblical tradition recognized that a plant-based diet isn't more spiritual or moral than eating meat. Meat-eating is legitimate for humans; it is not prohibited and is even blessed by God. Increasingly, secular organizations and activists have been pressuring Christians to turn their freedom into bondage and to adopt false commandments based on activist convictions. Voices from inside the church have joined the chorus. This group of scholars have applied their expertise in biblical studies, theology, philosophy, resource management, communication, and generational pig farming to write an accessible response for Christians who rightly believe that meat-eating is a gift from God. This book responds to leading challenges from animal activism outside the church--offering important biblical and practical correctives to a growing but misguided compassion."