Rethinking the Animal: Post-Humanist Tendencies in (Post) Modern Literature

• Thesis title in Czech: Přehodnocení zvířete: posthumanistické tendence v (post) moderní beletrii
• Thesis title in English: Rethinking the Animal: Post-Humanist Tendencies in (Post) Modern Literature
• Key words: zvíře, Animal Studies, carno-phallogocentrismus, post-humanismus, James Joyce, Virginia Woolfová, Djuna Barnes, Brigid Brophy J.M. Coetzee.
• English key words: animal, Animal Studies, carno-phallogocentrism, post-humanism, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Brigid Brophy, J.M. Coetzee.
• Academic year of topic announcement: 2014/2015
• Thesis type: diploma thesis
• Thesis language: angličtina
• Department: Department of Anglophone Literatures and Cultures (21-UALK)
• Supervisor: Mgr. David Vichnar, Ph.D.
• Author: hidden - assigned and confirmed by the Study Dept.
• Date of registration: 03.09.2015
• Date of assignment: 03.09.2015
• Administrator's approval: not processed yet
• Confirmed by Study dept. on: 21.09.2016
• Date and time of defence: 01.02.2017 09:00
• Date of electronic submission: 09.01.2017
• Date of proceeded defence: 01.02.2017
• Submitted/finalized: committed by student and finalized
• Opponents: prof. PhDr. Martin Procházka, CSc.

Guidelines

After the First World War but even more noticeably after the Second World War Western philosophical thought started to turn against itself. The theme of the death of metaphysics was anticipated by the writings of Nietzsche and was later fully developed by Heidegger. Eventually, these tendencies in philosophical thinking inspired an attack on anthropocentrism as such and there emerged a discourse that today is often referred to as post-humanism. Having been provoked to a certain extent by the new consciousness of the damage inflicted upon the Earth and its living creatures (humanity included) by civilization, it attempts to create new ways of understanding that would surpass traditional humanism and redraw the established boundaries. The subversion of the nature-culture and animal-human dichotomies is often at the core of these attempts as it is often through such oppositions that humanism constructs meanings and values.
This thesis undertakes to trace the development of the concept of animality in the 20^th century fiction. It delineates the change in sensibility that occurred at the beginning of the previous century when many long-standing assumptions about the world and humanity lost their value and a new approach to animality appeared in literature. While literary realism tended to use the animal instrumentally to construct metaphors and allegories for humankind, modernist narratives left behind this reductive approach and started questioning the concept of animality as such. This tendency received further development in the works of contemporary authors who seriously undermine the human-animal opposition relying heavily on the philosophical discourse of post-humanism. In my thesis I combine the methodologies developed by Animals Studies and Critical theory in order to describe how 20^th century fiction departs from merely appropriating the animal and aims at genuine understanding of animality or at least the assertion of its incognizability.
Authors and works covered include: James Joyce’ Ulysses; Virginia Woolf’s Flush and her short stories; Brigid Brophy Hackenfeller’s Ape and In Transit: An Heroicycle Novel; J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace and Elizabeth Costello.

References

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Baker, Steve. The Postmodern Animal. London: Reaction Books: 2008.
Calarco, Matthew. Zoographies: the Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida. New York: Columbia University Press, 2008
Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press: 2005.
DeMello, Margo. Animals and Society: An Introduction to Human-Animal Studies. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012
Derrida, Jacques The Animal Therefore I Am. New York: Fordham University Press, 2008.
Derrida, Jacques Writing and Difference. London: Routledge Classics, 2001.
Derrida, Jacques. "Force of Law: 'The Mystical Foundation of Authority.” Deconstruction and the Possibility of Justice. Ed. Drucilla Cornell and Michael Rosenfeld. New York: Routlege, 1992.
Derrida, Jacques. “And Say the Animal Responded?” Trans. David Wills. Zoontologies the Question of the Animal. Ed. Cary Wolfe. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2003.
Foucault, Michelle. The Courage of The Truth. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Haraway, Donna. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
Steiner, Gary. Animals and the Limits of Postmodernism. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013
Wolfe, Cary What Is Posthumanism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010.