Dr Amaleena Damle amaleena.damle@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Towards a Poetics of Reconciliation: Humans and animals in Ananda Devi’s writing
Damlé, Amaleena
Authors
Abstract
This article analyses the flux of metamorphosis that is richly evoked in the literary works of the Mauritian-born writer Ananda Devi and that testifies both to the radical positions of alterity experienced by her various protagonists and to the political and poetical possibilities involved in reimagining boundaries between humans and animals. Placing Moi, l’interdite and La Vie de Joséphin le fou (A. Devi) in dialogue with Giorgio Agamben’s theorizations of bare life and Judith Butler’s expositions on precarious life, the article explores the multiple tensions at play in Devi’s depictions of the human-animal. Devi’s writing neither exclusively relegates the human-animal to an abject debasement, nor excessively celebrates the hybrid as a revolutionary figure. At times basely stripped of their humanity, at others tantalizingly transgressive, and often both, Devi’s metamorphic protagonists are intricately and subtly bound up with the political layerings and divisions of postcolonial Mauritian society, all the while hinting towards a poetics of reconciliation that emerges in an acknowledgment of shared vulnerability.
Citation
Damlé, A. (2013). Towards a Poetics of Reconciliation: Humans and animals in Ananda Devi’s writing. International Journal of Francophone Studies, 15(3), 497-516. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfs.15.3-4.497_1
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Publication Date | 2013-02 |
Deposit Date | Apr 26, 2019 |
Publicly Available Date | Nov 3, 2020 |
Journal | International Journal of Francophone Studies |
Print ISSN | 1368-2679 |
Electronic ISSN | 1758-9142 |
Publisher | Intellect |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 15 |
Issue | 3 |
Pages | 497-516 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfs.15.3-4.497_1 |
Public URL | https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1332240 |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(213 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
© Ingenta 2013. The definitive, peer reviewed and edited version of this article is published in Damlé, Amaleena (2013). Towards a Poetics of Reconciliation: Humans and animals in Ananda Devi’s writing. International Journal of Francophone Studies 15(3): 497-516. https://doi.org/10.1386/ijfs.15.3-4.497_1
You might also like
Struggling for Breath: Reflections on Respiration in Ananda Devi's Les Jours vivants
(2021)
Journal Article
Introduction
(2014)
Book Chapter
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search