The Animal Gaze: Animal Subjectivities in Southern African Narratives

by Wendy Woodward

Many humans do not regard animals as complex beings. Instead, they objectify animals, relate to them as 'pets,' or see them simply as spectacles of beauty or wildness. By contrast, the southern African writers whose work is explored in The Animal Gae, including Olive Schreiner, Zakes Mda, Yvonne Vera, Eugene N. Marais, J.M. Coetee, Luis Bernardo Honwana, Michiel Heyns, Marlene van Niekerk and Linda Tucker, represent animals as richly individual subjects. The animals-including cattle, horses, birds, lions, leopards, baboons, dogs, cats and a whale-experience complex emotions and have agency, intentionality and morality, as well as an ability to recognie and fear death. The Animal Gae engages with the writings of Jacques Derrida, J.M. Coetee, Val Plumwood and Martha C. Nussbaum, as it brings together literary studies, ethics, animal studies and African traditional thought, including shamanism, in a way that compels the reader to think differently about nonhuman animals and human relationships with them.

208 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2008

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book changed not only the way I look at animals, but how I now realize they look at me: not literally, but from an empathetic standpoint. For the first time, after reading this book, animals entered my dreams as familars rather than as aliens. Its a ground-breaking and erudite book with a post-human vision. Highly recommended.