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Paper short abstract

This paper analyses the blurring of the human/non-human boundary through the centrality of familiar-like mashavi in Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City and the extent to which this leads to a mode of post-anthropocentric storytelling.

Paper long abstract

The paper examines the significance of mashavi (familiar-like animals) in Lauren Beukes’ Zoo City (2011), a novel set in an alternate Johannesburg shaped by Shona cosmology and mythology. In this world, human and non-human lives are inextricably linked – socially, ethically, and materially – as those who commit murder gain mashavi. I argue that mashavi evoke key ecocritical concepts such as enmeshment (Morton 2010) and/or polycrisis (Morin and Kern 1999). Situating the narrative within the context of interconnected crises, socio-political, historical and ecological alike, this paper introduces what I am calling the ‘sloth effect’, i.e., the narratological effects of incorporating the protagonist’s shavi (Sloth) into the structure of the novel. This paper engages with three central questions: 1) how does the inclusion of mashavi question (and subsequently redefine) what it means to be human?; 2) to what extent does the novel’s blurring of the human-non-human boundaries lead to a post-anthropocentric mode of storytelling?; 3) do mashavi function simply as an allegorical device to explore contemporary concerns that affect South Africans, including xenophobia, racism, and the ongoing effects of apartheid? The ‘sloth effect’ is emblematic of a reconfigured post-human identity, one that destabilises binaries between the material and spiritual, the human and the animal. Through its hybrid narrative and speculative world-building, Zoo City gestures towards new ecologies of identity, responsibility, and relationship in the face of interconnected crises.