Encounters at the limit: Literary representations of animals and animality

Abstract

The thesis analyses how the concept of anthropocentrism, or human exceptionalism, structured through the exception of a fraction of humanity, permeates and impacts both animal and human lives. Anthropocentrism refers to a set of systems, practices, and institutions that grant a privileged status to only those deemed fully human, resulting in the subjugation of animals and large groups of humanity. In such logic, the animal acts as the constitutive inside and outside of humanity, representing a lack, a negative, an unfulfillable deprivation, an absence. The exclusion and inclusion parameters within humanity are premised upon the animal, evident in discriminatory practices such as that of race, class, and gender in which certain groups become less than human, antihuman, inhuman, beast, wild, or even animal. The question arises, then, as to how, why, and in what ways a wide variety of lifeforms, discovered and undiscovered, preceding and potentially succeeding us, amassed under the common heading of the animal are defined in opposition to the human, in turn justifying the oppressions within humanity. The novels in this study depict animal deaths and lives to articulate a vision from below that challenges anthropocentrism and highlights the interconnected nature of different oppressions and discriminations. In examining the literary representations of animals and animality, the thesis seeks to understand how boundaries between humans and animals are created, the contemporary implications of these boundaries, and the consequences of the dissolution of the boundaries.