Animal Autobiography; Or, Narration beyond the Human

Abstract

In engaging with acts of self-narration that cross species lines, creators of animal autobiographies also broach questions about genre, truth status, and the structure as well as the politics of narrative representation. To address these questions, the present article draws not just on scholarship on (animal) autobiography but also on ideas from the fields of linguistic semantics, politeness theory, and discourse analysis, including the "framing and footing" approach that focuses on talk emerging in contexts of face-to-face interaction and that derives most directly from the work of Erving Goffman. On the basis of this research, and using case studies that range from animal riddles to Ceridwen Dovey's Only the Animals (2014), a collection of life stories posthumously narrated by a variety of nonhuman tellers, I profile autobiographical acts that reach beyond the human as ways of speaking for or in behalf of animal others. Some animal autobiographies correlate with acts of telling for which humans themselves remain the principals as well as authors; their animal animators remain relegated to the role of commenting on human institutions, values, practices, and artifacts. Other examples, however, can be read as co-authored acts of narrating in behalf of equally hybrid (or "humanimal") principals. These experiments with narration beyond the human afford solidarity-building projections of other creatures' ways of being-in-the-world-projections that enable a reassessment, in turn, of forms of human being.

Narrating Entanglement: Cixous’ “Stigmata, or Job the Dog”

“…As Margaret Ronda put it: "We might see anthropos and its related term anthropogenic, then, as words that speak to the non-identity and internal estrangement that accompany this species-wide agency" (Rigby 2016, p. 103). 7 On animal autobiographies, see also (Colombat 1994;Dwyer 2015;Herman 2016;Huff and Haefner 2012;Middelhoff 2017). 8 On this pivotal shift, see also (Braidotti 2009, pp.…”

Literary Autozoographies: Contextualizing Species Life in German Animal Autobiography

“…Thus, the neologism tries to highlight the fact that the narrated bios, i.e., the events and subjective experiences presented in animal life writing, is based on epistemologically and culturally contingent assessments of animals and what might be considered their selves (autos). 11 The texts discussed as 'literary autozoographies' in this article present animal narrator-protagonists as self-aware beings able to distinguish themselves from (non)human others. However, these ascriptions of the self continuously oscillate between the poles of agency vs. submission, anthropomorphism vs. realism/naturalism, defamiliarizing vs. confirmative perspective etc.…”

“…However, these ascriptions of the self continuously oscillate between the poles of agency vs. submission, anthropomorphism vs. realism/naturalism, defamiliarizing vs. confirmative perspective etc. In this, as David Herman observes, they are part of "a multiplicity of discourse practices that involve speaking in behalf of another being who is assumed, inferred, or hypothesized to have a perspective on and interest in situations and events" ( [11], p. 6). Like any literary text featuring animals, literary autozoographies are steeped in knowledge, socio-cultural practices and discursive currents of the time in which they have been and still are composed and published ( [27]).…”

“…10 For a philosophical and rhetorical approach to autozoographies via Derrida, see [31]. 11 Moreover, autobiographical research has developed a number of new genre concepts substituting bios for terms suitable to the authors of and subjects constructed in particular autobiographies. Domna C. Stanton, for example, discusses women's autobiographies as "autogynographies" ( [33], see also ( [1], pp.…”

“…1-2). While critics have traditionally read these texts as social satires and parodies, recent scholarship has probed the historical and discursive contexts [3][4][5][6][7][8][9] as well as the theoretical, narratological and ethical implications [10][11][12][13] of how and 1 Since the article focuses on texts written at a time when terms such as 'nonhuman animals' and 'human animals' were hardly ever used, I will here be using 'animals' and 'humans' respectively to underscore the historical meaning of this (anthropological and anthropocentric) differentiation. 2 "Auto/biography, or a/b.…”