Handout 7: Posthumanism, Human-Animal Studies &Ecocriticism

Working against Anthropocentrism

Posthumanism is one of the latest movements in philosophy, cultural, literary studies and not
only. Its main aim is to re-examine what it means to be human and to question the 400 years
tradition of privileging the human over all and any nonhuman others.
Big Names
Carry Wolfe, Donna Haraway, Erica Fudge

Influences/Precursors
Sigmund Freud, Charles Darwin, Jacques Derrida, H.D. Thoreau (for Ecocriticism)

Three Major Strands of Posthumanism

Technology: Transhumanism (H+): focusing on how technology changed us, how it
made us more than human, like some sort of hybrids. H+ = human + where the “+” marks
the more than human part.
The Environment/ Ecology (Ecocriticism): reanalyzes the division between nature and
culture, human’s treatment and attitudes towards Nature and their representations in
literature and not only. Ecofeminism: association between feminism and ecology (finds
connections between women, men and the treatment of nature. The domination of nature
is seen as typically masculine and phallocentric. Women are associated with nature.
Criticized as being essentialist.)
The Animal Turn (Human-Animal Studies) seeks to re-examine the relationships
between humans and nonhumans, as well as the representations of animals in art, film,
culture, language, etc. H.A.S also strives to re-examine human animality and the
consequences of its repression.

Human-Animal Studies: An Overview of the Field

Freud, “A Difficulty in the Path of Psycho-analysis”: three “blows” given to Man’s self-
love: the cosmological one/ Copernicus (man is not in the center of the Universe), the
biological one
H.A.S, not just about animals. Keyword: interaction. Haraway “becoming with”;
Anthropocentrism, beginning with the Renaissance
Rampant in language. Examples. Derrida “animot.” (using “animot” as an
alternative to “the animal” which encages all animals linguistically).
Deconstruction of the Human/Animal binary (also Nature/Culture, Sight/Smell,
Speaking/Barking, Reason/Instinct, Voiced/Unvoiced)
Anthropomorphism: projecting human characteristics on animals.
Zoomorphism: projecting animal qualities on humans (or apparently animal ones).
Examples in Literature:
I.B. Singer, “The Letter-Writer” (short story)
HermanGombiner is a Holocaust survivor who has emigrated to the United States. His
family had been killed by the Nazis in the Treblinka concentration camp. Living alone in
his New York apartment, one day he spots a mouse in there. Herman starts to lay out a
little bit of food for her every day and names the mouse “Huldah.”. At one point in the
story, thinking Huldah to be dead (which she was not as we later find out), Herman says:
What do they know—all those scholars, all those philosophers, all the leaders of
the world—about such as you? They have convinced themselves that man, the
worst transgressor of all the species, is the crown of creation. All other creatures
were created merely to provide him with food, pelts, to be tormented,
exterminated. In relation to them, all people are Nazis; for the animals it is an
eternal Treblinka.