Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the ways in which fictional texts – by D.Lessing (1963), L.B.Honwana (1964) and J.M.Coetzee (1999) – link betrayal and remorse in interspecies relationships to political dilemmas of colonialism and its legacy in Southern Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The paper takes up three fictional texts, which approach different time/spaces in Southern Africa, namely, the short stories "The story of two dogs" by Doris Lessing (1963), "We killed the mangy dog", by Luís Bernardo Honwana (Nós matamos o cão tinhoso, 1964) and the novel Disgrace, by J M Coetzee (1999). Although focusing on different cultural and historical setbacks, these texts share common ground – they all refer the dilemmas of colonialism and its legacy to the imagery of interspecies relationships, more specifically, to the relationships between humans and dogs. The paper intends to highlight the ways in which the fictional texts encode domesticity, betrayal and remorse – a “biteback”, according to felicitous ethymology – as perspectives through which to discuss biopower, class, gender , ethnic explotation and violence.