Short Abstract

This panel encourages multidisciplinary perspectives from critical animal studies, critical race studies, feminist care traditions, decolonial scholarship, zoology, animal ethics and beyond to engage with the representations and roles of non-human animals in African literatures.

Long Abstract

In Natures of Africa (2016), Fiona Moolla notes that “nature and animals are so fundamentally constitutive of African culture that they form an invisible backdrop” (p. 9), that has required multiple ecological crises to come into focus. She adds that “natural worlds and animals” have always been active agents in African literatures, although they have only recently started receiving sustained academic attention. This panel encourages multidisciplinary perspectives from critical animal studies, critical race studies, feminist care traditions, decolonial scholarship, zoology, animal ethics and beyond to engage with the representations and roles of non-human animals in African literatures: how are animals depicted participating, resisting or evading processes of domination, colonisation, exploitation and modernisation? How are more-than-human existence and agency made present to the reader? What literary strategies and devices are mobilised to decentre human perspectives and open possibilities to envision more-than-human African worlds? How are colonially-inflected binary conceptions of humanity and animality subverted, challenged or sustained in African texts? Finally, to what extent did our modes of reading, shaped by Western literary studies, and focused on (human-centred) political, historical, and social issues, prevent us from grasping the importance of animals in canonical African literary texts?

To allow for concrete and meaningful analysis and exploration, we encourage participants to focus on a limited number of primary texts (novels, short stories, poems, memoirs…), although comparative and multilingual perspectives are very welcome. We welcome presentations in English, French and Portuguese, ideally with a power point in English to maximise the engagement of the audience.

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