Article Summary by Brad Bolman

My article sets out to analyze the new ways of being together that exist when military veterans suffering from PTSD begin relational therapy programs involving care for abandoned parrots. I wanted to explore not only the idea of interspecies trauma, but the possibility that such a thing might be shared and even cooperatively alleviated. I turn to two philosophical sources, Peter Sloterdijk and Giorgio Agamben, in order to describe a kind of healing togetherness or “becoming-well-together” beyond the confines of everyday linguistic human interaction that might hold radical possibilities. The article is, more broadly, an attempt to reflect on the many ways that human and non-human beings can build and repair fractured worlds, however fleeting they may be.

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