Challenging Humanism: Human-Animal Relations in Recent Postcolonial Novels
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Middlesex University Research Repository An open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Borrell, Sally (2009) Challenging humanism: human-animal relations in recent postcolonial novels. PhD thesis, Middlesex University. [Thesis] Final accepted version (with author’s formatting) This version is available at: https://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/6520/ Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this work are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners unless otherwise stated. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non-commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. 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See also repository copyright: re-use policy: http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk/policies.html#copy Middlesex University Research Repository: an open access repository of Middlesex University research http://eprints.mdx.ac.uk Borrell, Sally, 2009. Challenging humanism: human-animal relations in recent postcolonial novels. Available from Middlesex University’s Research Repository. Copyright: Middlesex University Research Repository makes the University’s research available electronically. Copyright and moral rights to this thesis/research project are retained by the author and/or other copyright owners. The work is supplied on the understanding that any use for commercial gain is strictly forbidden. A copy may be downloaded for personal, non- commercial, research or study without prior permission and without charge. Any use of the thesis/research project for private study or research must be properly acknowledged with reference to the work’s full bibliographic details. This thesis/research project may not be reproduced in any format or medium, or extensive quotations taken from it, or its content changed in any way, without first obtaining permission in writing from the copyright holder(s). If you believe that any material held in the repository infringes copyright law, please contact the Repository Team at Middlesex University via the following email address: [email protected] The item will be removed from the repository while any claim is being investigated. Challenging Humanism: Human-Animal Relations in Recent Postcolonial Novels A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Sally Borrell Middlesex University September 2009 i Acknowledgements I would particularly like to thank Erica Fudge for her advice and encouragement throughout, and Lawrence Normand who provided valuable feedback on later drafts. I am also grateful to Philip Armstrong, Garry Marvin, Tom Tyler, Steve Baker and Tanja Schwalm for their helpful suggestions. Thanks also to those who supported me during the process, especially Rebecca Cox, Sama’a Al Hashimi, Ayumi Ueda, Nicola Cleland, Meredith Carew, Hamish Low, Brynmor Thomas, Heather Cottam, Isabelle Hedges, Francis John, and as ever, my parents and Mark. ii Abstract This thesis identifies and examines a conjunction between white postcolonial cultural and species concerns within recent novels from South Africa, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. The argument takes as a starting point a suggestion by Philip Armstrong that postcolonial and animal studies discourses might form an alliance based on a common antagonist: humanism. Here, this idea is applied in the context of literature by white postcolonial writers. I explore the extent and nature of the alliance and the degree to which it can be called successful within the selected novels. Each of the five chapters concerns a different text, and the thesis is also divided into two sections. The first addresses the contrasting approaches to humanism and to animals offered by J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001). The second addresses the representation of these themes in Fiona Farrell’s Mr Allbones' Ferrets (2007), Julia Leigh’s The Hunter (1999), and Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake (2003), set in the past, present and future respectively, to illustrate the temporal dimension of the white postcolonial-animal alliance in question. Overall, the thesis emphasises the relevance of species concerns within white postcolonial culture, and posits the existence of a thread running through contemporary white postcolonial novels in which animals are a priority. All of the novels examined here, I argue, represent animals as more than victims in relation to humanist discourse: they emphasise animals’ potential to disrupt that discourse by affecting the attitudes of individual humans or by resisting humanist endeavours by their own actions. The result of this, I suggest, is that animals appear as allies in white postcolonial cultures’ attempts at self-definition against historical colonialism and contemporary globalisation, while white postcolonial literature portrays animals in ways that promote positive human perceptions of them. iii Contents Introduction: Writing others ………...……………………………………………...…1 Animals in humanism and imperialism.............................................................................5 White postcolonialism and species……………………………………………………..16 Anti-humanism and posthumanism ……………………………………………………23 Section One 1: Like a dog: animals and humility in Disgrace .........................................................33 J.M. Coetzee: cultural and species relations in literature ……………………………....33 Disgrace ..........................................................................................................................36 Theory ………………………………………………………………………………….37 Encounters ………………………………………………………………………….…..41 Animals and Africa ………………………………………………………………...…..47 Humility ………………………………………………………………………………..56 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………..65 2: A story with animals: theoretical anti-humanism in Life of Pi …………………. 67 Disrupting boundaries ………………………………………………………………….70 Maintaining boundaries ……………………………………………………………..…75 A survival story ………………………………………………………………………...80 A story without animals ………………………………………………………………..87 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………………...…92 Section Two 3: Subject to nature: retrospect in Mr Allbones’ Ferrets ……………………………95 Science …………………………………………………………………………….…...99 The natural solution ……………………………………………………………….….108 Subversions …………………………………………………………………………...114 Animal actions ……………………………………………………………………..…118 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………123 iv 4: What his ancestors have always done: repeating history in The Hunter ………126 History contemporised ………………………………………………………………..127 Hunterly empathy ……………………………………………………………………..149 Familial alternatives …………………………………………………………………..146 Extinction …………………………………………………………………………..…151 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………....156 5: What if? Playing God in Oryx and Crake ……………………………………..…158 Post-postcolonialism and post-nature ………………………………………………...159 Posthumanist resistance ………………………………………………………………170 Post humans ………………………………………………………………………..…175 Conclusion ……………………………………………………………………………186 Conclusion: challenging humanism ……………………………………………....…187 Anti-humanism and posthumanism …………………………………………….…….187 Gender and religion …………………………………………………………………...195 Animals in white postcolonial literature …………………………………………...…204 Bibliography .…………………………………………………………………...……215 1 Introduction: writing others In an article entitled ‘Bats in the Gardens’, Helen Tiffin investigates the response to the presence of native Australian fruit bats in the Melbourne Botanical Gardens (an urban space of largely imported European vegetation). Though the bats are protected, Tiffin notes that ‘Their consumption of orchard fruits and fruit in urban gardens … has often made them unpopular’, and she explains that in the campaign to evict them from the Botanical Gardens, they ‘were ironically depicted as outsiders; invaders, newcomers, vandals destroying “centuries” of European culture’. 1 The case that Tiffin describes is revealing of human attitudes to animals on several levels. One important point underscored by the response to the fruit bats is that anthropocentric and imperialistic perspectives often overlap. The idea that nonhuman animals should not be allowed to share spaces that humans want to inhabit or to access resources that humans want for themselves is an example of humans’ common desire to set themselves apart, physically but also conceptually, from other species. At the same time, the opposition to the bats’ presence also has a cultural