Animals and Desire in South African Fiction

Animals and Desire in South African Fiction
Author: Jason D. Price
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 286
Release: 2017-07-15
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3319567268

This book considers the political potential of affective experiences of desire as reflected in contemporary South African literature. Jason Price argues that definitions of desire deployed by capitalist and colonial culture maintain social inequality by managing relations to ensure a steady flow of capital and pleasure for the dominant classes, whereas affective encounters with animals reveal the nonhuman nature of desire, a biopower that, in its unpredictability, can frustrate regimes of management and control. Price wonders how animals’ different desires might enable new modes of thought to positively transform and resist the status quo. This book contends that South African literary works employ nonhuman desire and certain indigenous notions of desire to imagine a South Africa that can be markedly different from the past.

The White Giraffe

The White Giraffe
Author: Lauren St. John
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 210
Release: 2008-05-01
Genre: Juvenile Fiction
ISBN: 1440638640

When Martine’s home in England burns down, killing her parents, she must go to South Africa to live on a wildlife game preserve, called Sawubona, with the grandmother she didn’t know she had. Almost as soon as she arrives, Martine hears stories about a white giraffe living in the preserve. But her grandmother and others working at Sawubona insist that the giraffe is just a myth. Martine is not so sure, until one stormy night when she looks out her window and locks eyes with Jemmy, a young silvery-white giraffe. Why is everyone keeping Jemmy’s existence a secret? Does it have anything to do with the rash of poaching going on at Sawubona? Martine needs all of the courage and smarts she has, not to mention a little African magic, to find out. First-time children’s author Lauren St. John brings us deep into the African world, where myths become reality and a young girl with a healing gift has the power to save her home and her one true friend.

Routledge Handbook of African Literature

Routledge Handbook of African Literature
Author: Moradewun Adejunmobi
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 543
Release: 2019-03-13
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1351859374

The turn of the twenty-first century has witnessed an expansion of critical approaches to African literature. The Routledge Handbook of African Literature is a one-stop publication bringing together studies of African literary texts that embody an array of newer approaches applied to a wide range of works. This includes frameworks derived from food studies, utopian studies, network theory, eco-criticism, and examinations of the human/animal interface alongside more familiar discussions of postcolonial politics. Every chapter is an original research essay written by a broad spectrum of scholars with expertise in the subject, providing an application of the most recent insights into analysis of particular topics or application of particular critical frameworks to one or more African literary works. The handbook will be a valuable interdisciplinary resource for scholars and students of African literature, African culture, postcolonial literature and literary analysis. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature

The Palgrave Handbook of Animals and Literature
Author: Susan McHugh
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 631
Release: 2020-11-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 3030397734

This volume is the first comprehensive guide to current research on animals, animality, and human-animal relations in literature. To reflect the history of literary animal studies to date, its primary focus is literary prose and poetry in English, while also accommodating emergent discussions of the full range of media and contexts with which literary studies engages, especially film and critical theory. User-friendly language, references, even suggestions for further readings are included to help newcomers to the field understand how it has taken shape primarily through recent decades. To further aid teachers, sections are organized by conventions of periodization, and chapters address a range of canonical and popular texts. Bookended by sections devoted to the field’s conceptual foundations and new directions, the volume is designed to set an agenda for literary animal studies for decades to come.

Literature as a Lens for Climate Change

Literature as a Lens for Climate Change
Author: Rebecca L. Young
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2022-03-03
Genre: Science
ISBN: 1498594123

Each chapter in this collection offers a practical approach for using literature to engage and empower students to confront aspects of climate crises. Educators from different backgrounds and parts of the world share their experience using novels, short stories, drama, poetry, and nonfiction to help students understand the causes and consequences of climate change as well as how they can contribute to potential solutions.

A Companion to African Literatures

A Companion to African Literatures
Author: Olakunle George
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 512
Release: 2021-03-22
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1119058171

Rediscover the diversity of modern African literatures with this authoritative resource edited by a leader in the field How have African literatures unfolded in their rich diversity in our modern era of decolonization, nationalisms, and extensive transnational movement of peoples? How have African writers engaged urgent questions regarding race, nation, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality? And how do African literary genres interrelate with traditional oral forms or audio-visual and digital media? A Companion to African Literatures addresses these issues and many more. Consisting of essays by distinguished scholars and emerging leaders in the field, this book offers rigorous, deeply engaging discussions of African literatures on the continent and in diaspora. It covers the four main geographical regions (East and Central Africa, North Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa), presenting ample material to learn from and think with. A Companion To African Literatures is divided into five parts. The first four cover different regions of the continent, while the fifth part considers conceptual issues and newer directions of inquiry. Chapters focus on literatures in European languages officially used in Africa -- English, French, and Portuguese -- as well as homegrown African languages: Afrikaans, Amharic, Arabic, Swahili, and Yoruba. With its lineup of lucid and authoritative analyses, readers will find in A Companion to African Literatures a distinctive, rewarding academic resource. Perfect for undergraduate and graduate students in literary studies programs with an African focus, A Companion to African Literatures will also earn a place in the libraries of teachers, researchers, and professors who wish to strengthen their background in the study of African literatures.

Animals in the City

Animals in the City
Author: Laura A. Reese
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 325
Release: 2021-11-15
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0429559453

This book presents interdisciplinary research to examine the ongoing debates around nonhuman animals in urban spaces. It explores how we can better appreciate and accommodate animals in the city, while also exploring the ecological, health, ethical, and cultural implications of the same. The book addresses seven interrelated themes such as blurred boundaries between the human and the nonhuman, the right of nonhuman species to the city, interactions between the human and nonhuman animals, the fabric of urban space, human and nonhuman complex systems, and collective welfare that forms the basis of a transspecies urban theory. It explains how a holistic understanding of the city requires that these blurred boundaries are acknowledged and critically examined. Chapters analytically consider the need to bring interspecies relationships to the fore to tackle questions of legitimacy and who has the "right" to the city. These also consider important intersections between the economic, political, social, and cultural aspects of the urban experience. The research contained in this book focuses on the development of an urban theory that would eradicate the divide between humans and other species in cities, and it depicts nonhuman animals as social actors that have voices within urban spaces. With global insights on human–animal relationships in a contemporary context, this book will be useful reading for scholars and students of urban studies, animal sciences, animal law, animals and public policy, anthropology, and environmental studies who are interested in the study of animals in cities.

Love in a Time of Slaughters

Love in a Time of Slaughters
Author: Susan McHugh
Publisher: Penn State Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2019-05-07
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0271084529

Love in a Time of Slaughters examines a diverse array of contemporary creative narratives in which genocide and extinction blur species lines in order to show how such stories can promote the preservation of biological and cultural diversity in a time of man-made threats to species survival. From indigenous novels and Japanese anime to art installations and truth commission reports, Susan McHugh analyzes source material from a variety of regions and cultures to highlight cases where traditional knowledge works in tandem with modern ways of thinking about human-animal relations. In contrast to success stories of such relationships, the narratives McHugh highlights show the vulnerabilities of affective bonds as well as the kinds of loss shared when interspecific relationships are annihilated. In this thoughtful critique, McHugh explores the potential of these narratives to become a more powerful, urgent strategy of resistance to the forces that work to dehumanize people, eradicate animals, and threaten biodiversity. As we unevenly contribute to the sixth great extinction, this timely, compelling study sheds light on what constitutes an effective response from a humanities-focused, interdisciplinary perspective. McHugh’s work will appeal to scholars working at the crossroads of human-animal studies, literature, and visual culture, as well as artists and activists who are interested in the intersections of animal politics with genocide and indigeneity.

New International Voices in Ecocriticism

New International Voices in Ecocriticism
Author: Serpil Oppermann
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 229
Release: 2014-12-18
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1498501486

With twelve original essays that characterize truly international ecocriticisms, New International Voices in Ecocriticism presents a compendium of ecocritical approaches, including ecocritical theory, ecopoetics, ecocritical analyses of literary, cultural, and musical texts (especially those not commonly studied in mainstream ecocriticism), and new critical vistas on human-nonhuman relations, postcolonial subjects, material selves, gender, and queer ecologies. It develops new perspectives on literature, culture, and the environment. The essays, written by contributors from the United States, Canada, Germany, Turkey, Spain, China, India, and South Africa, cover novels, drama, autobiography, music, and poetry, mixing traditional and popular forms. Popular culture and the production and circulation of cultural imaginaries feature prominently in this volume—how people view their world and the manner in which they share their perspectives, including the way these perspectives challenge each other globally and locally. In this sense the book also probes borders, border transgression, and border permeability. By offering diverse ecocritical approaches, the essays affirm the significance and necessity of international perspectives in environmental humanities, and thus offer unique responses to environmental problems and that, in some sense, affect many beginning and established scholars.

Entangled Fictions

Entangled Fictions
Author: Suvadip Sinha
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2022-08-26
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1000607208

Entangled Fictions: Nonhuman Animals in an Indian World studies the ethical and affective relationships between human and nonhuman animals in Indian fictional worlds. While drawing upon existing theoretical and philosophical texts with nonhumanist underpinnings, Entangled Fictions argues that the corpus is limited epistemologically and politically when it comes to their examinations of the nonhuman in India. Deeply influenced by the political/existential expediencies of our times, the book traverses several genres, shifts from fictional to anecdotal, and transitions from autobiographical to spectra in effort to introduce readers to fictional worlds marked by human-nonhuman fluidity and trans-species contiguity that was imagined and lived much before the telos of human extinction became either a global or local concern.