- 他者·他性·他我：当代新英语小说中的动物研究
- 段燕
- 971字
- 2025-04-28 20:23:48
Abstract
Since the 21st century，the achievements in animal studies made through papers，monographs，conferences，etc. have witnessed a quick rise，and a universal trend of “animal turn” appears in Western humanities and social sciences. Tom Regan，the founder of the animal rights theory，noticed that the animal issue had been frequently discussed in recent years. He wrote，“Philosophers have written more about animal rights in the past twenty years than their predecessors wrote in the previous two thousand”[1].Lawrence Simmons and Philip Armstrong held that “animal turn” was comparable in significance to “linguistic turn” that revolutionized humanities and social science disciplines from the mid-20th century onwards[2]. In the literary field，researchers have been studying animal writing with a range of critical theories in and across disciplines. However，most of them focus on British and American literature and are often limited to discourse analysis. Moreover，they are seldom involved in natural sciences，especially the life sciences. The biggest problem，as Kenneth Shapiro and Marion Copeland pointed out，lies in that our literary criticism is “speciesism”. A full-blown，animal-based interpretative theory should examine the status of the use of nonhuman animals as symbols，that is，whether an animal could appear as himself or herself “as an individual with some measure of autonomy，agency，voice，character，and as a member of a species with a nature that has certain typical capabilities and limitations”[3].
Contemporary new English fiction is a by-product of the long-term usage of English in the colonies，which mainly involves English literature in Africa，Australia，New Zealand，the South Pacific，the Indian subcontinent，Canada，the Caribbean except Britain and the United States. Since the second half of the 20th century，the rising new English literature has greatly enriched the traditional English literature and attracted wide attention of the global literary critics. At present，researchers mostly conduct the discussion from such perspectives as post-colonialism，diaspora and feminism while ignoring animal writing. As a matter of fact，animal writing in such works has constituted an indescribable phenomenon and a rich landscape. Ontologically focusing on the animal，the writers have made a stable improvement in theme exploration，image shaping，artistic representation and ethical appeal.
Starting from the perspective of animal studies and integrating such perspectives as Marxism，feminist studies，postcolonial studies，ecocriticism，psychoanalysis，neo-historicism，new criticism，posthumanism，cyborg and cognitive ethology，this book aims to explore the animal representation and systematic relationship between its symbolic meanings and real animals in the following masterpieces of contemporary new English fiction：the South African writers J.M.Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians（1980） and The Lives of Animals（1999），Zakes Mda's The Heart of Redness （2000），the Indian writer Indra Sinha's Animal's People（2007），the Canadian writers Margaret Atwood's Oryx and Crake（2003），Yann Martel's Li of Pi（2001），the Australian writer Tim Winton's Shallows（1984） and the New Zealand writer Witi Ihimaera's The Whale Rider（1987）. My research will examine how that animals are configured differently in human societies gives significance to animals and human culture per se，how literature represents an authentic animal voice and speaks for animals beyond anthropocentrism，and how animals shape the ideologies and the material experience of internal and external spaces of human beings in civilization.
It contends that “Other，Alterity and Humanimal”，the defining characteristic of animal writing in contemporary new English fiction，is not only the animal narrative strategy of a single literary text but also the dominant theme through all animal representations. In “Other Writing”，the writers challenge the anthropocentrism and the deriving discriminations by exposing the ultimate power-oppression behind life politics；in “Alterity Writing”，the writers correct the above by making an attempt to construct animal subjectivity with recognition of differences；in “Humanimal Writing”，the writers reveal the paradoxical coexistence between humanity and animality and between humans and animals. Combining nature writing and political，economic and societal discourses，the three integral parts examine the ontological and ethical status of animals and reexamine the boundary between humans and animals as well as the subjectivity of human beings.
It is of academic value to study animal writing in contemporary new English fiction：（1） to encourage endeavors to step outside anthropocentrism in traditional literary studies and begin to understand the other species on whom our own survival depends；（2） to provide a much-needed corrective to the Euro-American-centrism of literary studies in general by taking new English fiction as the research subject；（3） to enlarge the horizons of literary criticism through important reference theories ranging from philosophy to sociology，from history to ethics and from anthropology to cognitive ethology.
Keywords：Other；Alterity；Humanimal；animal studies；new English fiction
[1] Regan，Tom，Defending Animal Rights，Urbana：University of Illinois Press，2001，p.67.
[2] Armstrong，Philip，and Lawrence Simmons，“Bestiary：An Introduction”，Knowing Animals，Ed.Lawrence Simmons and Philip Armstrong，Leiden：Brill，2007，pp.1-24.（p.1）
[3] Shapiro，Kenneth，and Marion Copeland，“Toward a Critical Theory of Animal Issues in Fiction”，Society and Animals，Vol.13，No.4，2005，pp.343-346.（p.344）