Don’t Feed the Animals

Master copy after Cranach
Master copy after Cranach

 

On October 31, 1589, Peter Stubbe was executed by breaking on the wheel for the crime of Lycanthropy. According to a 1590 pamphlet published in London, Stubbe was guilty of cannibalism, murder, and the terrifying/delightful crime of ‘werewolfery.’

I’m thinking lately about chimerism, the thin barriers between the human/the animal, and the fine line of normativity that holds hunger at bay in the face of a barely-suppressed ferality.