Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Histories
- Part III People and Places
- Part IV Theories
- Chapter 17 Short Fiction, Language Learning, and Innocent Comedy
- Chapter 18 The Technology of the Short Story
- Chapter 19 Homelessness
- Chapter 20 The Human and the Animal
- Chapter 21 The End of the Story
- Chapter 22 The Affordances of Mere Length
- Notes
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to…
- References
Chapter 20 - The Human and the Animal
Toward Posthumanist Short Fiction
from Part IV - Theories
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 May 2023
Book contents
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Figures
- Tables
- Contributors
- Chronology
- Introduction
- Part I Contexts
- Part II Histories
- Part III People and Places
- Part IV Theories
- Chapter 17 Short Fiction, Language Learning, and Innocent Comedy
- Chapter 18 The Technology of the Short Story
- Chapter 19 Homelessness
- Chapter 20 The Human and the Animal
- Chapter 21 The End of the Story
- Chapter 22 The Affordances of Mere Length
- Notes
- Further Reading
- Index
- Cambridge Companions to…
- References
Summary
This chapter tracks the figure of the rat across American short fiction, focusing in particular on H. P. Lovecraft’s “The Rats in the Walls” (1924), Ursula K. Le Guin’s “Mazes” (1975), and Karen Joy Fowler’s “Us” (2013). These stories illustrate powerful narrative effects that can be produced by constructing particular forms of animality, while also blurring, at times, the boundaries between what it means to be a human and what it means to be an animal. The chapter engages with the academic fields of human–animal studies, multispecies studies, and animality studies, exploring the short stories not only in relation to animal advocacy, but also problematic histories of animalizing certain human groups. Posthumanism cuts across these various fields, questioning constructions of the human as fundamentally different and superior to all other species on the planet. The chapter ultimately argues that some narrative techniques have more posthumanist potential than others.
Keywords
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Cambridge Companion to the American Short Story , pp. 313 - 326Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023
References
Works Cited
Deleuze, Gilles and Guattari, Félix. 2002. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Massumi, Brian. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 2008. The Animal That Therefore I Am. Ed. Mallet, Marie-Louise. Trans. Wills, David. New York: Fordham University Press.Google Scholar
Despret, Vinciane. 2015. “Thinking Like a Rat.” Trans. Bussolini, Jeffrey. Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities 20.2 (June): 121–134.Google Scholar
Despret, Vinciane. 2016. What Would Animals Say If We Asked the Right Questions? Trans. Buchanan, Brett. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Karen Joy. 2013. “Us,” special issue on “Species/Race/Sex.” American Quarterly 65.3 (September): 481–485.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna J. 2008. When Species Meet. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna J. 2016. Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Harman, Graham. 2012. Weird Realism: Lovecraft and Philosophy. Winchester, UK: Zero Books.Google Scholar
Herman, David. 2018. Narratology beyond the Human: Storytelling and Animal Life. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kim, Claire Jean and Freccero, Carla. 2013. “Introduction: A Dialogue,” special issue on “Species/Race/Sex.” American Quarterly 65.3 (September): 461–479.Google Scholar
Le Guin, Ursula K. 1987. “Mazes,” in Buffalo Gals and Other Animal Presences, 61–67. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Le Guin, Ursula K. 2017. “Deep in Admiration,” in Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet: Ghosts and Monsters of the Anthropocene. Ed. Anna, Lowenhaupt Tsing, Anne Swanson, Heather, Gan, Elaine, and Bubandt, Nils, M15–M21. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Lovecraft, H. P. 1987a. “The Call of Cthulhu,” in Tales. Ed. Straub, Peter, 167–197. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Lovecraft, H. P. 1987b. “The Rats in the Walls,” in Tales. Ed. Straub, Peter, 77–97. New York: Library of America.Google Scholar
Lundblad, Michael. 2013. The Birth of a Jungle: Animality in Progressive-Era US Literature and Culture. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poe, Edgar Allan. 1994. “Review of Twice-Told Tales,” in The New Short Story Theories. Ed. May, Charles E., 59–64. Athens: Ohio University Press.Google Scholar
Rose, Deborah Bird and Dooren, Thom van. 2011. “Introduction” to “Unloved Others: Death of the Disregarded in the Time of Extinctions,” special issue of Australian Humanities Review 50: 1–4.Google Scholar
Tsing, Anna. 2015. The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Vint, Sherryl. 2010. Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal. Liverpool: Liverpool University Press.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Cary. 2013. Before the Law: Humans and Other Animals in a Biopolitical Frame. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar