In the midst of the climate crisis and the threat of the sixth extinction, we can no longer claim to be the masters of nature. Rather, we need to unlearn our species’ arrogance for the sake of all animals, human and non-human. Rethinking our being-in-the-world as Homo sapiens, this monograph argues, starts precisely from the way we relate to our closer companion species. The authors gathered here endeavour to find multiple exit strategies from the anthropocentric paradigms that have bound the human and social sciences. Part I investigates the unexplored margins of human history by re-reading historical events, literary texts, and scientific findings from an animal’s perspective, rather than a human’s. Part II explores different forms of human-animal relationships, putting the emphasis on the institutions, spaces, and discourses that frame our interactions with animals. Part III engages with processes of "translation" that aim to render animals’ experience and perception into human words and visual language.
Author(s): Chiara Mengozzi
Series: Perspectives on the Non-Human in Literature and Culture
Publisher: Routledge
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 284
City: Abingdon
Cover
Half Title
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
Introduction: Ways Out of the Anthropological Machine, or How and Why to Defamiliarize Ourselves
PART I “Playing a Part in the Dramaturgy of the Real”: (Hi)story on the Side of Animals
1 A Giraffe’s Journey to France (1826–1827): Recording the Encounter From the Animal’s Point of View
2 Structures of Captivity and Animal Agency: The London Zoo, ca. 1865 to the Present Times
3 Atlantic History From the Saddle: The Role of Horses in the Slave-Trading Atlantic World
4 Re-animalizing Animals, Re-animating Humans
5 Laika’s Lullabies: Post-anthropocentric Representations of the First Dog in Space
6 The Blind Spot of the Plot: Thinking Beyond Human With Karel Čapek
Part II “I Relate, Therefore I Am”: Human-Animal Encounters
7 Animals and Their Keepers in Belle Époque Postcards of the Jardin des Plantes Menagerie
8 "Seeing Eye to Eye, Through a Glass Clearly”? Blurring the Boundary Between Humans and Animals
9 Flesh, Fur, and Forgetting
10 Animals as Monsters, Victims, and Models in the Age of Decadence
PART III “Across the Narrow Abyss of Non-comprehension”: Entering Animals’ Lives
11 Literature and Animal Expressiveness: On the Cognitive and Ethical Aspects of Zoopoetics
12 “Une langue ou une musique inouïe, assez inhumaine . . .”: Narrative Voice and the Question of the Animal
13 From Being a Beast to Becoming-Animal: Literary Experiments in Crossing the Species Divide
14 Cameras That Pose as Animals: Imagining Non-human Animals Through the POV Shot
15 Playing (With) the Non-human: The Animal Avatar in Bear Simulator
Biographical Statements
Index
