Academic literature on the topic 'Animal-human relationships - Fiction'

This paper examines posthumanism as a philosophical position equipped to inform ecocriticism and the potential of popular fiction to articulate ecological complexity. Posthumanism will be reappraised as a dialectical model that decentres the human in relation to ‘evolutionary, ecological, or technological coordinates’ (Wolfe 2010: xvi) while nevertheless retaining a sense of the integrity of, and boundaries between, human and nonhuman species or phenomena. It will be argued that a novelistic emphasis on human being, agency, and action, coupled with devices of genre, plot, and narrative – are consistent with the process of human self-examination engendered by posthumanism. The essay will, thereafter, illustrate and examine this approach through the French crime writer Fred Vargas’s1999 novel Seeking Whom He May Devour. Identifying two human protagonists – the Canadian conservationist Johnstone and his girlfriend Camille – an initial decentring of the human subject will be examined in relation to two equivalent, nonhuman protagonists, the French Alps and the wolf. Utilising newspaper interviews that highlight Vargas’s own posthumanist perspective (grounded in her profession as an archaeologist), I will examine a) how the novel explores appropriate relationships between human and nonhuman animals; b) how Vargas utilises both the generic features of the crime novel – e.g. the resolution of a ‘crime’ – and the subtle narrative manipulations of character focalisation to construct (via the preferred ‘point of view’ offered by Camille) a posthumanist position on human/animal relations which Vargas explicitly opposes to the inhumanism represented by Johnstone. Resumen Este artículo examina el posthumanismo como una posición filosófica dotada para contribuir con la ecocrítica y el potencial de la ficción popular para articular la complejidad ecológica. El posthumanismo será revaluado como un modelo dialéctico que descentra al ser humano en relación con “las coordinadas evolutivas, ecológicas o tecnológicas” (Wolfe, Posthumanism xvi), mientras que aún así retiene un sentido de la integridad de, y de las fronteras entre, las especies o fenómenos humanos y no-humanos. Se argumentará que un énfasis novelístico en el ser humano, la agencia y la acción, junto con los recursos del género, argumento y narración, son consistentes con el proceso del auto-examen engendrado por el posthumanismo. Después, este ensayo ilustratá y examinará este enfoque a través de la novela Seeking Whom He May Devour (1999), del escritor francés de novela policíaca Fred Vargas. Identificando a los dos protagonistas humanos, el conservacionista canadiense Johnstone y su novia Camille, el de-centramiento inicial del sujeto humano será examinado en relación a los dos protagonistas no-humanos equivalentes: los Alpes franceses y el lobo. Usando entrevistas en periódicos que destacan las perspectiva posthumanista de Vargas (basada en su profesión como arqueólogo), examinaré: a) cómo la novela explora las relaciones apropiadas entre animales humanos y no-humanos; b) cómo Vargas utiliza tanto las características genéricas de la novela policíaca (e.g. la resolución de un crimen) y las sutiles manipulaciones narrativas en la focalización de los personajes para construir (a través del favorecido “punto de vista” que ofrece Camille) una posición posthumanista en las relaciones humanas/animales que Vargas explícitamente opone al inhumanismo que Johnstone representa.

Abstract The study draws on scholars (Leech and Short 1981; Wales 1994; Fowler 1996; Ball 1997; Semino 2002; Leech and McIntyre 2006) who focused on the ‘point of view’ in dramatic texts as a concept which permits an authoritative voice to enter the narrative and arise in discourse. It intends to examine how im/politeness contributes to renegotiating some special themes in fiction like, for instance, how the human-animal relationship is to be portrayed in two Greek translations (1995, 2015) of Edward Albee’s play The Zoo Story (1958). The claim is that translators’ ideological positioning regulates pragmatic aspects of meaning-making like the use of aggression and intimacy in reshaping the identity of characters and entities in the translated versions. Τhe study traces how the two translators attributed aggression to humans/animals in the universe of The Zoo Story by taking into account lay people’s evaluation of the two translations. Results show that TTa (by Kaiti Chistodoulou 1995) uses im/politeness strategies which indicate lower esteem for animals and higher esteem for humans. By contrast, TTb (by Errikos Belies) shapes a different identity of the human-animal relationship: it indicates higher esteem for animals, doing justice to the zoo imagery. The findings suggest that the narratives that permeate discourse crucially affect the use of im/politeness of the fictional interactants and that im/politeness is a powerful tool in the hands of translators. Im/politeness research may also benefit from translational data in that they can provide multiple contexts in which im/politeness can be studied in interaction cross-culturally.

Maja Smrekar is a visual artist addressing current phenomena in contemporary society. Her earlier works often touch upon the mundane permeated by stereotypes of popular culture, the future as understood through fiction, and the ethical aspects of human interventions in nature and natural processes. In 2014, she began performing her continuous work K-9_topology, in which she analyses the causes and consequences of human domination on the planet, and questions the self-evidence of the anthropogenic mentality. During the following four years, this artistic research and extremely interdisciplinary action led her to deeply explore the relationship between a human and a dog. Individual elements of the project were introduced through performance, installation, artist book, and photography. The following interview focuses on this segment of her work; on her reflections on the relationship between a human and an animal; and on certain important social contexts that define her work. Keywords: contemporary art, human-dog relation, performance art, posthumanism, wildlife domestication

This article analyses the relationship between humans and animals, and more importantly between humans and their animality. Concretely, this project proposes an ecocritical reading of fin de siècle gothic fiction, as it provides insight on the ideological foundation of humanity’s anthropocentric relation towards the environment. Through the analysis of the gothic hybrid monster, it is possible to grasp society’s interpretation and assimilation of Darwin’s revolutionary discoveries. However, not all gothic writers assimilated the apparent artificiality of humanity’s superiority in the same way. Thus, I hereby argue that rejection and fear is not the only response to the monstrous hybrid in fin de siècle gothic fiction. On the contrary, there are also critical voices who understood this new Darwinian human-hybrid identity as an opportunity to renew human relations towards nature. Therefore, I analyse the constructions of and reactions to the hybrid monster in Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Richard Marsh’s The Beetle against Vernon Lee’s Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady. By doing so, I aim at revealing and ultimately challenging the main dualism that sustains the hierarchical organization of the species: the privileging of culture over nature and reason over animality. The gothic genre is indeed characterised by the blurring of boundaries. Consequently, it reveals the human as irrational, the monster as natural and culture as repression, suggesting the need for the reconstruction of human identity and its place in the world.

Yann Martel’s novel Life of Pi, the winner of numerous prestigious awards, was described as“very bold and extreme with a wonderful central idea” (Irish Examiner 2002). The “central idea” of the novel has been described differently by readers and literary critics around the world. For many, it is Pi’s relationship with the tiger, Richard Parker; for some, it is the decentering of humans in favour of animals; and yet for others, the central idea of Life of Pi lies in Martel’s unusual treatment of religions and their role in human life. In this paper we argue that that the main idea of the novel is Martel’s ecocriticism of humanity in general, and especially the tendency of humans to put themselves at the center of any story, whether about animals or gods. Martel creates a tangled web of many different stories which define Pi’s life in order to prioritize the role of fiction in the development of human personality and dissect the relations between the human, the natural world, and the text. Although he favors the animal story, the final chapter reveals that the only story humans find “real” is the one in which animals are seen as anthropomorphic.

More than one million new cancer cases occur worldwide every year. Although many clinical trials are applied and recent diagnostic tools are employed, curing cancer disease is still a great challenge for mankind. Heredity and epigenetics are the main risk factors often related to cancer. Although, the infectious etiological role in carcinogenesis was also theorized. By establishing chronic infection and inflammation in their hosts, several microorganisms were suggested to cause cell transformation. Of these suspicious microorganisms, mycoplasmas were well regarded because of their intimate parasitism with host cells, as well as their silent and insidious role during infections. This assumption has opened many questions about the real role played by mycoplasmas in oncogenesis. Herein, we presented a sum up of many studies among the hundreds which had addressed the Mycoplasma-cancer topic over the past 50 years. Research studies in this field have first started by approving the mycoplasmas malignancy potential. Indeed, using animal models and in vitro experiments in various cell lines from human and other mammalians, many mycoplasmas were proven to cause varied modifications leading to cell transformation. Moreover, many studies have looked upon the Mycoplasma-cancer subject from an epidemiological point of view. Diverse techniques were used to assess the mycoplasmas prevalence in patients with cancer from different countries. Not less than 10 Mycoplasma species were detected in the context of at least 15 cancer types affecting the brain, the breast, the lymphatic system, and different organs in the genitourinary, respiratory, gastrointestinal, and urinary tracts. Based on these revelations, one should concede that detection of mycoplasmas often linked to ‘‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’’ is not a coincidence and might have a role in cancer. Thorough investigations are needed to better elucidate this role. This would have a substantial impact on the improvement of cancer diagnosis and its prevention.

The current study examines the fictional screen figure King Kong—as envisioned by the New Zealand director Peter Jackson in his 2005 remake—to question European ambivalence towards the Self/Other binary division. The modern 2005 Kong acts as a counter visual icon to the Eurocentric version of colonialist ideologies to expose their hypocrisy and myth-making colonial history. The present study is an attempt to integrate the visual narrative of King Kong (2005) into the framework of Postcolonial paradigm and within the theory of Adaptation to highlight the points of departure undertaken by the Postcolonial director Peter Jackson. The study seeks to establish Jackson’s revisit of a prior work as a “willful act” to reinterpret the screen figure Kong as a “Subaltern” subject whose quest for a voice is central to the film’s message. The dialogic relationship between the old and the new cinematic narratives is investigated to challenge Essentialist Western View of “Othering” so as to provide a Postcolonial revision of a fluid relationship between a prior work and a belated one. Thus, the aim of the present study is to deconstruct stereotypical representations, to historicize and contextualize Kong as a cultural and historical metaphor in Postcolonial Cinema. Animal Studies can offer new interpretations of how nonhuman animals can deconstruct the ontological Western discourses of rationality and capitalism within Postcolonial Cinema to rethink the boundaries that separate human and nonhuman.

In The Future of Human Nature, Jürgen Habermas raises the question of whether the embryonic genetic diagnosis and genetic modification threatens the foundations of the species ethics that underlies current understandings of morality. While morality, in the normative sense, is based on moral interactions enabling communicative action, justification, and reciprocal respect, the reification involved in the new technologies may preclude individuals to uphold a sense of the undisposability (Unverfügbarkeit) of human life and the inviolability (Unantastbarkeit) of human beings that is necessary for their own identity as well as for reciprocal relations. Engaging with liberal bioethics and Catholic approaches to bioethics, the article clarifies how Habermas’ position offers a radical critique of liberal autonomy while maintaining its postmetaphysical stance. The essay argues that Habermas’ approach may guide the question of rights of future generations regarding germline gene editing. But it calls for a different turn in the conversation between philosophy and theology, namely one that emphasizes the necessary attention to rights violations and injustices as a common, postmetaphysical starting point for critical theory and critical theology alike. In 2001, Jürgen Habermas published a short book on questions of biomedicine that took many by surprise.[1] To some of his students, the turn to a substantive position invoking the need to comment on a species ethics rather than outlining a public moral framework was seen as the departure from the “path of deontological virtue,”[2] and at the same time a departure from postmetaphysical reason. Habermas’ motivation to address the developments in biomedicine had certainly been sparked by the intense debate in Germany, the European Union, and internationally on human cloning, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, embryonic stem cell research, and human enhancement. He turned to a strand of critical theory that had been pushed to the background by the younger Frankfurt School in favor of cultural theory and social critique, even though it had been an important element of its initial working programs. The relationship of instrumental reason and critical theory, examined, among others, by Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse and taken up in Habermas’ own Knowledge and Interest and Theory of Communicative Action became ever-more actual with the development of the life sciences, human genome analysis, and genetic engineering of human offspring. Today, some of the fictional scenarios discussed at the end of the last century as “science fiction” have become reality: in 2018, the first “germline gene-edited” children were born in China.[3] Furthermore, the UK’s permission to create so-called “three-parent” children may create a legal and political pathway to hereditary germline interventions summarized under the name of “gene editing.”In this article, I want to explore Habermas’ “substantial” argument in the hope that (moral) philosophy and (moral) theology become allies in their struggle against an ever-more reifying lifeworld, which may create a “moral void” that would, at least from today’s perspective, be “unbearable” (73), and for upholding the conditions of human dignity, freedom, and justice. I will contextualize Habermas’ concerns in the broader discourse of bioethics, because only by doing this, his concerns are rescued from some misinterpretations.[1] Jürgen Habermas, The Future of Human Nature (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2003).[2] Ibid., 125, fn. 58. 8[3] Up to the present, no scientific publication of the exact procedure exists, but it is known that the scientist, Jiankui He, circumvented the existing national regulatory framework and may have misled the prospective parents about existing alternatives and the unprecedented nature of his conduct. Yuanwu Ma, Lianfeng Zhang, and Chuan Qin, "The First Genetically Gene‐Edited Babies: It's “Irresponsible and Too Early”," Animal Models and Experimental Medicine (2019); Matthias Braun, Meacham, Darian, "The Trust Game: Crispr for Human Germline Editing Unsettles Scientists and Society," EMBO reports 20, no. 2 (2019).

Temporality underpins how living systems coordinate and function. Unlike measures that use mathematical conventions, lived temporalities grant functional cohesion to organisms-in-the-world. In foxtail grasses, for example, self-maintenance meshes endogenous processes with exogenous rhythms. In embrained animals, temporalities can contribute to learning. And cowbirds coordinate in a soundscape that includes conspecifics: social learning allows them to connect copulating with past events such that females exert ‘long-distance’ control over male singing. Using Howard Pattee’s work, we compare the foxtail’s self-maintenance, gender-based cowbird learning and how humans manage multi-scalar activity. We argue that, while all living things coordinate, temporal ranging is typical of vertebrates. As primates, humans too use temporal ranging – they can draw on social learning, anticipate winter and manage coordinated action. However language behaviour (or languaging) grants new control over the scales of time. People connect the impersonal to lived experience in narratives, as they draw on autobiography and enact cultural practices. Humans become singular individuals who use temporal experience to manage affect, relationships, beliefs, fictions, and knowledge. Individual subjectivity permits collaborative and competitive activity based on linking events with quite different histories. As a result, alone of the vertebrates, we claim that humans become time-rangers.

Text in Afrikaans
In hierdie studie word die verbandhoudende teoretiese begrippe van trans-liggaamlikheid, kriptosoölogie en dieresiele ondersoek met verwysing na drie magies-realistiese Afrikaanse romans, naamlik Kikoejoe (Etienne van Heerden, 1996), Die olifantjagters (Piet van Rooyen, 1997) en Dwaalpoort (Alexander Strachan, 2010). Die gewaande dualisme tussen kultuur en natuur word in die tekste bevraagteken en vrye interaksie tussen biologiese, klimatologiese, ekonomiese en politieke magte vind plaas in die onderskeie romanruimtes. Die toenemende druk op die omgewing word uitgebeeld en in hierdie opsig sluit die romans aan by ʼn eietydse tendens in die (Afrikaanse) letterkunde waar die klem op ekologiese kwessies val. Hierdie drie kontemporêre romans reflekteer voorts die komplekse interaksie tussen menslike en niemenslike diere en kan beskou word as dierenarratiewe (met ’n mitiese onderbou) waar tradisionele beskouings oor diere in die samelewing deurentyd ondermyn word.
In this research report, related theoretical concepts such as transcorporeality, cryptozoology and animal souls will be explored with reference to the magic-realistic Afrikaans novels Kikoejoe (Etienne van Heerden, 1996), Die olifantjagters (Piet van Rooyen, 1997) and Dwaalpoort (Alexander Strachan, 2010). The perceived dualism of nature versus culture is undermined in the respective novels and the environment is exposed as a space where the interaction between biological, climatological, economical and political forces takes place freely. The novels portray the increasing demands on the environment and in this respect these texts become representative of a current trend in (Afrikaans) literature to reflect ecological issues. The three contemporary novels further reflect the complex interaction between human and nonhuman animals and can be described as animal narratives (underpinned by myths) where traditional perspectives on animals in society are constantly subverted.
Afrikaans and Theory of Literature
M.A. (Afrikaans)

Chapter 4 focuses on fiction which responds to the prospect of human cloning following the birth of Dolly the sheep. Eva Hoffman’s novel The Secret deploys the trope of the clone to figure the sense of inauthenticity experienced by many second-generation Holocaust survivors and goes on to examine cloning’s potential to dislodge sexual reproduction as the cornerstone of the social order. Drawing on the work of Catherine Malabou, the chapter follows Hoffman’s representation of the clone as a figure portending the disruption of genealogy. Kazuo Ishiguro’s Never Let Me Go is read in the light of Giorgio Agamben’s theorization of ‘bare life’ and ‘states of exception’ and the novel’s clones are seen to represent those who are relegated to the category of bare life in contemporary global biopolitics, notably refugees and asylum seekers. The clones are also linked with Agamben’s understanding of the enigmatic relationship between the human and the animal and his concept of indifference and emphasis on a subjectivity which precedes the construction of identity and difference.