Narrating the Animal Subject: Concurrences as Narrative Strategy
The material consists of literary texts with animal narrators or animal protagonists from different cultural contexts written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. These texts represent a variety of different approaches to human-animal relations, from the reworking of traditional legends to stories inspired by a humanist or posthumanist world view. A central focus of this study will be on how the texts construct ideas of species-specific concurrent worlds, theoretically inspired by the Estonian-born biologist and philosopher Jakob von Uexküll (1864 - 1944). Concurrences as a method will focus on narratological devices in the texts used to create different worlds within the same space and time.
Project aim and development
The aim of the project is to study animal narrators in literary texts with a special focus on the concurrences that appear with representations of both human and animal experiences of the same events. In the original project idea the texts were from a number of different geographical areas but, as the expert readers pointed out already at this stage, the most interesting material were the novels written by present-day African authors with both local and global connections. The development of the project has therefore been into a more focused study of the texts by these authors whose work is further characterized by posthumanist theory and evolves out of a critique of the use of essentialised notions of African identities within structures of political repression. The study will also be published as a monograph rather than in the form of individual articles.
Implementation
All chapters in the monograph have been presented at international conferences and workshops with scholars from different disciplines. During the work on the project I have participated in different research groups where the focus has been on theory development within the area of postcolonial study (English Department Research Seminar at Stellenbosch University and Concurrences in Colonial and Postcolonial Studies at Linnaeus University) and within Environmental Humanities (at the University of Gothenburg). I have also arranged and participated in writing workshops held at Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study.
The three most important results and contribution to international research
Discussions within Environmental Humanities focus increasingly on a critique of central tenets of modernity and the possibilities for alternative ideas about human- nature relations found in indigenous societies. The most important findings in this project problematize these assumptions and stress the importance of paying attention to the formal aspects and political contexts of these ideas as they are expressed today. African legends and fables are not always seen as innocent carriers of a critique of modernity, but as potential weapons for political repression building on essentialised ideas of African cultures. A second important finding concerns the connection between these aspects and the use of the literary form and genre. Many of these texts are political satires and the satire is directed against the growing tendency among a corrupt political elite to refer to African cultural values when directing their repression against ethnic and sexual minorities. A development of the theoretical focus can be identified as a third result. The texts in my material can be read as a critique of the postcolonial Transition Narrative where a protagonist goes from tradition to modernity through a complete and radical break with the past. In opposition to this idea, my material shows, alongside other research within this area, that ideas connected to traditional societies, such as, for instance, animism, instead take on new expressions. Human-animal relations in a given cultural context must therefore be studied as part of the form in which these relations are expressed.
New research questions generated through the project
New research questions within the area Human-Animal Studies concern primarily the complexity of the colonial legacy. How do we approach the radical difference in our view of the relation between humans and nature that Enlightenment modernity brought about and which placed some humans in a context where they were identified as part of nature rather than with humanity? This in turn generates new questions concerning the construction of the human-animal dichotomy from the perspective of those on the other side of the discourse of modernity.
The international dimensions of the project
The project is international in scope and all research findings have been presented and discussed at international conferences and workshops. Through the project I have established a strong connection to the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa where I have held a position as Professor Extraordinaire, now Research Associate, and my work there has enabled me to develop the theoretical frame and the choice of material further. I presented the papers Narrating the Animal Subject: Concurrences as Narrative Strategy and Mimesis and the Animal Double in Alain Mabackou’s Memoirs of a Porcupine at Stellenbosch University, English Research Seminar. Further presentations are Unclean life and animal writing in The Book of Chameleons by José Eduardo Agualusa at Stellenbosch Dirt/Waste Colloquium in March 2015, organised by Professor Stephanie Newell (Yale University) as well as The Re-enchantment of the World: Animal voices in African novels at the ACLALS conference held at Stellenbosch in 2016. Other international contacts are at Oxford University (Professor Elleke Boehmer) where I presented a paper at the Postcolonial Writing and Theory Seminar, Pennsylvania State University (Professor Rosemary Jolly) who arranged a panel on New Materialism and African Literature at the MLA conference in 2017 and the University of Dar es Salaam (East African Literature Association) where I participated in a conference in 2018. The international dimensions also comprise work with doctoral students and MA students at Stellenbosch who, to a large degree, are recruited from other African universities. I will also present parts of the theoretical introduction at a Nordic symposium on Writing Repression at Uppsala in May 2019. This symposium is the starting point for a Nordic collaboration on the teaching and research on African literature.
Dissemination and collaboration with other research groups and the general public
The collaboration within the research groups at Stellenbosch, Linnaeus University and the University of Gothenburg involves students at all levels. Doctoral students have participated in research seminars and courses. The project findings have also been disseminated within courses at BA and MA levels in Animal Fiction and Southern African Literatures: Environmental Perspectives. These courses will now be offered at Gothenburg in collaboration with Stellenbosch where we have also received planning funding for a Linneaus-Palme application. Other forms of dissemination are the presentations: Allt vi inte vet om Djur Vetenskap de Lux, Växjö, 2015 and Omsorg om djur: En del i att bli människa at Jonsereds Herrgård, 2016.