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.