Posthumanist Perspectives on Literary and Cultural Animals by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9783030761592
Publisher: Springer International Publishing

Scholotmeijer’s critique, fails to realize the greater implications of Gowdy’s use of religion. In an interview, Gowdy said she “didn’t want to write a novel… designed to shed light on human folly through animal behavior. Rather than being a social satire, The White Bone is an attempt, however presumptuous, to make a huge imaginative leap” (qtd. in Gordon, 2005, pp. 88–9). This leap, even if it was a bit presumptuous, offers the readers a revolutionary view into a world that is not dominated by humans. In Gowdy’s world, humans, although present, are in the background, posing a looming, yet distant threat. Even when the humans are in a scene, Gowdy writes them in such a way in which they are barely present. In one scene, humans descend from a vehicle and slaughter several of the She-S’s. However, even in this scene, with the humans literally right next to the elephants, Gowdy writes her scene in such a way as to squash all anthropocentric expectations and tendencies. Everything is told from the elephant’s perspective, not from the human’s. For example, Gowdy does not write that humans slit She Scares’ throat, but rather explains that “pink blood froths from She-Scares’ throat, and blood jets from a hole in her trunk” (1998, p. 86). There is very little explanation of what the humans are doing and, in the context of the novel, it does not really matter. What does matter is the elephants’ reactions, experiences, and perceptions. Even though the human threat on elephants is a central theme on the story, Gowdy includes the human because they are simply part of elephant life. She focuses intensely on all aspects of what it could mean to be an elephant, from their physicality to their psychology to their spirituality, providing an example of an animal world that is as detailed, complex, and as important as human’s. This kind of imaginative leap challenges the anthropocentric tradition, which Derrida argues, haunts modern human thought towards animals. The White Bone works to show how false animal life writings, even with the great amount of creative license taken by the writer, are able to not only expose the human-animal barrier but question whether or not the traits humans consider exclusively their own are truly unique among both human and non-human animals.

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