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Ansikte mot ansikte. Om etiska kortslutningar i mötet mellan människor och apor – och om skönlitterära motarbeten

Face to face. On ethical deadlocks and undoings in literary encounters between humans and apes

På svenska

Author

  • Amelie Björck

Summary, in English

The modernisation of human civilisation demands sacrifices of other species for work, food, clothing, medical research, space exploration – and human self affirmation. To enable the asymmetrical relations, a hierarchical dualism between Man and Animal has been constructed and is maintained by a mechanism of continual differentiation. My aim in this article is to consider how literary fiction may take part in the denaturalisation of this mechanism, named by Giorgio Agamben as the ”anthropological machine”. For this purpose I highlight five different meetings between apes and humans, as narrated in Swedish novels from the last decades, and analyse them from an ethical and animal discourse point of view. My readings demonstrate how literature can call acute attention to the recurrent human blockage of the face of the animal other, and to the emotional unsettlement evoked by this act. Hereby, I argue, the human/animal divide is put into question as a relevant basis of ethical decision.

Publishing year

2013

Language

Swedish

Publication/Series

Edda

Issue

2013:1

Document type

Journal article

Publisher

Universitetsforlaget

Topic

  • Languages and Literature

Keywords

  • Human–animal studies
  • apes
  • animal ethics of encounter
  • contemporary literature
  • anthropological machine
  • carnophallogocentrism

Status

Inpress

Project

  • Nosce te ipsum. On literary engagements between apes and humans in literature after Darwin.

ISBN/ISSN/Other

  • ISSN: 0013-0818