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"Both Men and Beasts" : Rereading Karen Blixen's Anthropomorphisms. / Mortensen, Peter.
In: Orbis Litterarum, Vol. 73, No. 6, 2018, p. 506-519.Research output: Contribution to journal/Conference contribution in journal/Contribution to newspaper › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - "Both Men and Beasts"
T2 - Rereading Karen Blixen's Anthropomorphisms
AU - Mortensen, Peter
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - Danish author Karen Blixen's frequent use of human–animal comparisons in Out of Africa (1937) has been critically controversial ever since the early 1980s, when the Kenyan writer and critic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o cited this practice as evidence of Blixen's racist and dehumanizing portrayal of Africans. In this essay, I outline an alternative way of thinking about anthropomorphism and zoomorphism that is inspired by current theoretical developments in critical posthumanism, animal studies, new materialism, and ecocriticism. Reading the anthropomorphic/zoomorphic imagery that pervades Out of Africa, I endeavor to show that the premises underpinning Ngũgĩ's influential critique are precisely the problematic assumptions that Blixen labors to destabilize. As I interpret Blixen's textual maneuvers, these tropes function less to privilege some characters and dehumanize others along social and racial lines than to make it radically unclear exactly what the categories “human” and “animal” mean in her narrative world.
AB - Danish author Karen Blixen's frequent use of human–animal comparisons in Out of Africa (1937) has been critically controversial ever since the early 1980s, when the Kenyan writer and critic Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o cited this practice as evidence of Blixen's racist and dehumanizing portrayal of Africans. In this essay, I outline an alternative way of thinking about anthropomorphism and zoomorphism that is inspired by current theoretical developments in critical posthumanism, animal studies, new materialism, and ecocriticism. Reading the anthropomorphic/zoomorphic imagery that pervades Out of Africa, I endeavor to show that the premises underpinning Ngũgĩ's influential critique are precisely the problematic assumptions that Blixen labors to destabilize. As I interpret Blixen's textual maneuvers, these tropes function less to privilege some characters and dehumanize others along social and racial lines than to make it radically unclear exactly what the categories “human” and “animal” mean in her narrative world.
KW - animal studies
KW - anthropomorphism
KW - creatureliness
KW - dehumanization
KW - posthumanism
KW - zoomorphism
UR - https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/oli.12195
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85050675901&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1111/oli.12195
DO - 10.1111/oli.12195
M3 - Journal article
VL - 73
SP - 506
EP - 519
JO - Orbis Litterarum
JF - Orbis Litterarum
SN - 0105-7510
IS - 6
ER -