Table Of ContentAnimals and
Desire in South
African Fiction
Biopolitics and the
Resistance to Colonization
Jason D. Price
Palgrave Studies in
Animals and Literature
Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature
Series editors
Susan McHugh
English Department
University of New England
Biddeford, ME, USA
Robert McKay
School of English
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK
John Miller
School of English
University of Sheffield
Sheffield, UK
Before the 2000s the humanities and social sciences paid little attention to the
participation of non-human animals in human cultures. The entrenched idea
of the human as a unique kind of being nourished a presumption that Homo
sapiens should be the proper object of study for these fields, to the exclusion of
lives beyond the human. Against this background, various academic disciplines
can now be found in the process of executing an ‘animal turn’, questioning the
ethical and philosophical grounds of human exceptionalism by taking seriously
the animal presences that haunt the margins of history, anthropology, philoso-
phy, sociology and literary studies. Instances of such work are grouped under the
umbrella term ‘animal studies’, having largely developed in relation to a series
of broad, cross-disciplinary questions. How might we rethink and problema-
tise the separation of the human from other animals? What are the ethical and
political stakes of our relationships with other species? How might we locate and
understand the agency of animals in human cultures? While debates around these
themes continue to develop across academic disciplines, this series will publish
work that looks, more specifically, at the implications of the ‘animal turn’ for
the field of English Studies. Language is often thought of as the key marker of
humanity’s difference from other species; animals may have codes, calls or songs,
but humans have a mode of communication of a wholly other order. Literature,
as the apogee of linguistic expression in its complexity and subtlety, may there-
fore seem a point at which ‘the human’ seems farthest removed from the world
of ‘the animal’. Our primary motivation is to muddy this assumption and to ani-
malise the canons of English Literature by rethinking representations of animals
and interspecies encounter.Whereas animals are conventionally read as objects of
fable, allegory or metaphor (that is, as signs of specifically human concerns), this
series significantly extends the new insights of interdisciplinary animal studies by
tracing the engagement of such figuration with the material lives of animals. The
series will encourage the examination of textual cultures as variously embodying
a debt to or an intimacy with non-human animal and advance understanding of
how the aesthetic engagements of literary arts have always done more than sim-
ply illustrate natural history. Consequently, we will publish studies of the repre-
sentation of animals in literary texts across the chronological range of English
studies from the Middle Ages to the present and with reference to the discipline’s
key thematic concerns, genres and critical methods. This will be the first series
to explore animal studies within the context of literary studies; together, the vol-
umes (comprising monographs, edited collections of essays and some shorter
studies in the Palgrave Pivot format) will constitute a uniquely rich and thorough
scholarly resource on the involvement of animals in literature. The series will
focus on literary prose and poetry, while also accommodating related discussion
of the full range of materials and texts and contexts (from theatre and film to fine
art, journalism, the law, popular writing and other cultural ephemera) with which
English studies now engages.
More information about this series at
http://www.springer.com/series/14649
Jason D. Price
Animals and Desire in
South African Fiction
Biopolitics and the Resistance to Colonization
Jason D. Price
University of North Alabama
Florence, AL
USA
Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature
ISBN 978-3-319-56725-9 ISBN 978-3-319-56726-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-56726-6
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017938318
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For Colleen, Revis (the dog), and Carter—my partners in learning
and practicing the arts of love
A
cknowledgements
One never writes alone, and many people have contributed to helping me
to write this book. The project began as dissertation, and I am indebted
to many professors, friends, and family members who have read parts of
the work, engaged in conversations about its ideas, and otherwise sup-
ported this scholarship. Thanks, of course, are also due to the authors
and filmmaker; without their creative efforts, this work would not have
been possible. Thanks go as well to the human and non-human animals
who may have inspired and supported their writing. Acknowledgements
are due especially to the professors of my dissertation committee at
Arizona State University for their thoughtful and generous guidance of
this project in its early stages. Thank you to Joni Adamson, J. Edward
Mallot, and Ron Broglio for their inspired support, criticisms, and feed-
back throughout the writing of an early draft of the book. Our discus-
sions of indigenous studies, feminism, ecocriticism, postcolonial studies,
posthumanism, and animal studies have been invaluable to my think-
ing. Any flaws found in this book are my own and not of their making.
Sincere thanks go to Eddie Mallot as well for his positive mentorship,
support, and humor—our conversations helped me to imagine a future
for myself as a scholar. Special thanks are due to Ron Broglio for direct-
ing the dissertation and for his dedication to the profession, his unflag-
ging positivity and hospitality as a mentor, and for his commitment to
thinking the “animal revolution.” As a young scholar, I’ve been repeat-
edly blessed with the finest mentors. Thanks go to the many English and
vii
viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
literature teachers, professors, and mentors—especially Cassandra Jackson
and Angela Weisl—who have encouraged my scholarship over the years.
Thanks go also to the scholars whose work has established the many
fields of scholarship to which this book seeks to contribute. Much
of the writing here began as conference papers delivered at Society for
Literature, Science, and the Arts and African Literature Association con-
ferences. My sincere thanks go to those who organized these conferences,
and to the organization members whose scholarship, conversations, and
feedback have inspired this project. Thanks go as well to the Graduate
and Professional Student Association at Arizona State University (ASU),
the Socio-Legal Studies Association, the United States Military Academy
(USMA), Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and family for their
financial support for conference travel. Sincere thanks go to ASU as well
for the dissertation completion fellowship, which enabled me to continue
the research and writing that eventually became this book.
Thanks go also to friends, colleagues, and family who have carefully
read or otherwise discussed the ideas in this book. Most profound thanks
go to the anonymous reviewer of the manuscript who provided sug-
gestions for revision that have greatly improved it. Thanks go to Jenny
Downer and Alaya Swann, who provided vital feedback on the earliest
drafts of the project. Thanks go to colleagues at VCU, particularly those
in the First Book Group at the Humanities Research Center, for their
criticisms and generous feedback, especially Chris Cynn, Myrl Beam,
Cristina Stanciu, and Jesse Goldstein. Of course, I should like to thank
VCU’s English Department and David Latané for the postdoctoral fel-
lowship that has enabled me to complete this project. Thanks go also
to USMA’s Department of English & Philosophy and Pat Query, who
organized a literature course around the theme “the arts of love.” Also,
many thanks go to Alastair Hunt for his feedback on Chap. 5.
I should also like to express my gratitude to those who have advanced
conversations or created new forums for discussions about the issues cen-
tral to this book. In this spirit, I’d like to thank Susan McHugh, Bob
McKay, and John Miller, the founding editors of the Studies in Animals
and Literature book series at Palgrave. Thanks go also to the editors at
Palgrave: Ryan Jenkins, Allie Bochicchio, and Emily Janakiram. It’s
been a pleasure to work with you and I thank you for your patience as
I completed this project. Thanks go also to the Institute for Humanities
Research at ASU for hosting the Animal Studies Research Cluster in
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ix
2014, and for inviting key theorists of animal studies and environmental-
ism. Thanks go also to the graduate student-organized ASU postcolonial
studies group led by Sebastian Terneus for creating a forum for people
to discuss postcolonial literatures. Thanks are due as well to the students
who have taken literature classes with me, especially those who enrolled
in the animals in postcolonial literature courses that I taught at ASU and
VCU. Their contributions and critical perspectives have influenced the
direction of this book. My utmost thanks are due to my partner Colleen,
who has so selflessly supported me and our family, making the time avail-
able for me to write and pursue this scholarship. Last, but not least, I
am especially grateful to my sister Jodi, who is currently completing her
Ph.D. in literature, for our many theoretical conversations, for our shar-
ing of our work and feedback, and for her unwavering support. Thank
you all and any others I’ve forgotten.
An earlier version of Chap. 3 first appeared as “Ways of Desiring:
Postcolonial Affect in Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller” in Configurations:
A Journal of Literature, Technology, and Culture 25, no. 1 (January, 2017):
57–88. Copyright © 2017 The Johns Hopkins University Press. Thanks
go to the journal for permission to reproduce that article here. Thanks go
as well to the anonymous reviewers for their feedback on that essay.
c
ontents
1 Introduction: Sameness and Difference in the “New”
South Africa—Desire and Nonhuman Resistance 1
2 Space and Desire on the (non)Farm: The Return of the
Same in Disgrace and The Devil’s Chimney 63
3 Ways of Desiring: Postcolonial Animals and Affect in The
Whale Caller 115
4 Consuming the Other and the Ethics of “Eating”:
Dominant Desire in Tanuki Ichiban and the Mother of All
Eating 147
5 Desire and the Law: Creative Resistance in the Reluctant
Passenger and the Heart of Redness 181
6 Coda: Transformative Encounters: Desiring Aliens
and Hospitality in District 9 237
Index 271
xi
