Grenzen der Verstrickung

‚(Dis)Entanglement‘ von Mensch-Tier-Beziehungen in der Gegenwartsliteratur

Abstract

This article compares two examples of life writing in contemporary literature which deal with human-animal relations in the age of ecological crises in contrasting ways: Autobiographie d’un poulpe by Vinciane Despret and Croire aux fauves by Nastassja Martin. The comparison shows that the often generalized narrative of ‘entanglement’, i.e., the inextricable entanglement of humans and animals in the posthuman Anthropocene, needs to be differentiated further. While Despret's critical fabulation is primarily concerned with attributing subjectivity and agency to animals as well as dissolving the ontological boundaries between humans and animals in a ‘sympoietic’ writing, Martin's autobiographical examination of a traumatic event experienced with a bear represents an attempt to re-establish protective boundaries between humans and animals — a process referred to here as ‘disentanglement’. In comparing the two texts, the establishment and dissolution of boundaries become decisive categories for describing human-animal relationships in contemporary literature.