The Politics of Animosity: Nonhuman Resistance and Interspecies Solidarity in the Contemporary Cultural Imagination

Activity: Talk or presentationInvited talkAcademic

Description

As the war against nature enters its critical phase, nonhuman resistance and revolt are becoming an increasingly prominent theme in literature, film, and popular culture. With Hollywood franchises such as Planet of the Apes or Jurassic World inviting viewers to cheer as nature rises up to take revenge on humanity, disanthropy has gone mainstream. Speculative fiction and comics series such as Animosity imagine an all-out war between the species, while on social media, orcas attacking yachts in the Strait of Gibraltar are recruited as allies in a multispecies anti-capitalist struggle. What can this investment in interspecies conflict tell us about the possibility of imagining more-than-human communities? This paper focuses on two recent novels, Adam Roberts’s Bête and Ned Beauman’s Venomous Lumpsucker, which, through irony and satire, push the motif of animal rebellion beyond anthropocentric fantasies of punishment and redemption, and toward more ambiguous and radical visions of inter-species solidarity and coexistence.
Period17 Oct 2024
Event titleMultispecies Conviviality: Annual MESH Symposium 2024
Event typeConference
LocationCologne, Germany, North Rhine-WestphaliaShow on map
Degree of RecognitionInternational