Overview
- Presents an approach to reading and studying farm animal narratives
- Showcases literature's significance in discourse on species extinction
- Uses science fiction to consider postanimal futures
Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature (PSAAL)
Buy print copy
Keywords
- Literature and Animal Studies
- human-animal studies
- animal studies
- farm animal narratives
- extinction
About this book
This book explores the past and current traces that cows, pigs, chickens, and other animals used by humans have left in Anglophone literary fiction. In times of accelerated global warming, an acute pandemic, and breakthroughs in bioengineering practices, discussions on how to rethink the relationships to these animals have become as heated as perhaps never before. Livestock and Literature examines what literature has to contribute to these debates. In particular, it draws on counter-narratives to so-called livestock animals’ commodification in selected science- and speculative fiction (SF) works from the twenty-first century. These texts imagine ‘what if’ scenarios where “livestock” practice resistance, transform into biotechnologically modified, postanimal beings, or live in close companionship to humans. Via these three points of access, the study delineates the formal and thematic strategies SF authors apply to challenge anthropocentric and speciesist thought patterns. The aim is to shed light on how these alternative storyworlds expand readers’ understanding of the lives of farmed animals; seeking insight into how literature shapes human-animal relationships beyond the page.
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Liza B. Bauer is the Interim Scientific Manager of the Panel on Planetary Thinking and co-speaker of the interdisciplinary research section on Human-Animal Studies at the Justus Liebig University, Giessen, Germany.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Livestock and Literature
Book Subtitle: Reimagining Postanimal Companion Species
Authors: Liza Bauer
Series Title: Palgrave Studies in Animals and Literature
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Cham
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media Studies, Literature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2024
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-031-58115-1Due: 11 July 2024
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-031-58118-2Due: 11 July 2024
eBook ISBN: 978-3-031-58116-8Due: 11 July 2024
Series ISSN: 2634-6338
Series E-ISSN: 2634-6346
Edition Number: 1
Number of Illustrations: 5 b/w illustrations