Animals and Armed Conflict in Contemporary Literature from Latin America and Africa

FAIN: FT-270602-20

Sophie Esch
Rice University (Houston, TX 77005-1827)

Writing one chapter of a book on animals and the experience of war in African and Latin American literature.

This book-length study analyzes the presence of animals in recent war and postwar narratives from Latin America and Africa, be it as companions of humans or as victims of the armed conflict, killed, wounded, displaced, or trafficked alive or as parts. My work takes up recent debates within ecocriticism, animal-human studies, and posthumanism and further expands them by discussing the presence of the non-human animal in war and postwar literature. I posit that the animal appears as both a symbol and an anchor point to reflect upon humanity and war in relation to topics such as trauma, innocence, redemption, domesticity, and agency; but I also push these questions further by asking whether the non-human animal can figure as a subject (not just an allegory) within literature and history. Reading Latin American and African literature together, my work uses a rare South-South comparative framework that adds to recently revived debates about world literature.

Associated Products

Is this the End? (Course or Curricular Material)
Title: Is this the End?
Author: Sophie Esch
Author: Andrea Bajani
Abstract: A Humanities Big Questions Course Is this the end? The end of our planet? Of truth? Of certainty? This course explores these questions via contemporary writing. Taught from a global perspective, the course will examine writers' responses to major topics of our age, including truth, doom, living together and borders. [Includes novels about war from Mozambique and Angola]
Year: 2020
Primary URL: https://humanities.rice.edu/is-this-the-end
Audience: Undergraduate

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