Storytelling for earthly survival: cenas de uma tensão entre animais humanos e não humanos

Abstract

The dissertation aims to investigate literary ways of cultivating a multispecies consciousness, especially regarding the relationship between human and non-human animals. Starting from the writings of Donna Haraway and scenes from the books Oryx and Crake (2003), by Margaret Atwood, and Never Let Me Go (2005), by Kazuo Ishiguro, the first chapter explores the fine line that is created by placing the Human above and distinctly from other terrestrials. In the second chapter, the theory takes from Jacques Derrida, John Berger and Maria Esther Maciel to address the erasure of non-human animals as individualities and subjectivities of their own, imbued with autonomy and agency. Literarily, the chapter selects scenes from the books The Planet of the Apes (1963), by Pierre Boulle, and The Animals in That Country (2020), by Laura Jean McKay, as well as the film Nope (2022), written and directed by Jordan Peele. In the third and final chapter, Haraway returns to focus, joining Vinciane Despret and Ursula K. Le Guin, to build a new model of storytelling, based on the universe of Communities of Compost, more interested in replanting relationships between humans and non-humans than in the same and insistent narrative (in form and content). Ailton Krenak helps build a bridge between multispecies relationships and the search for new stories, taking the research to scenes from the work Split Tooth (2018), by Tanya Tagaq, as a final subject of analysis given the protagonist's relationship with her surroundings, human and non-human