Mel Y. Chen draws on studies of sexuality, race, and affect to consider how matter that is considered insensate, immobile, deathly, or otherwise "wrong," animates cultural life in important ways.

Acknowledgments vii
Introduction: Animating Animacy 1
Part I * Words
1. Language and Mattering Humans 23
2. Queer Animation 57
Part II * Animals
3. Queer Animality 89
4. Animals, Sex, and Transsubstantiation 127
Part III * Metals
5. Lead's Racial Matters 159
6. Following Mercurial Affect 189
Afterword: The Spill and the Sea 223
Notes 239
Bibliography 261
Index 283