Ecocritical Geopolitics

What is the role of popular culture in shaping our discourse about the multi-
faceted system of material things, subjects and causal agents that we call
“environment”? Ecocritical Geopolitics offers a new theoretical perspective and
approach to the analysis of environmental discourse in popular culture. It
combines ecocriticial and critical geopolitical approaches to explore three main
themes: dystopian visions, the relationship between the human, post-​human,
and “nature” and speciesism and carnism.
The importance of popular culture in the construction of geopolitical dis-
course is widely recognized. From ecocriticism, we also appreciate that litera-
ture, cinema, or theatre can offer a mirror of what the individual author wants
to communicate about the relationship between the human being and what
can be defined as non-​human. This book provides an analysis of environmental
discourses with the theoretical tools of critical geopolitics and the analytical
methodology of ecocriticism. It develops and disseminates a new scientific
approach, defined as “ecocritical geopolitics,” to offer an idea of the power of
popular culture in the realization of environmental discourse.
Referencing sources as diverse as The Road, The Shape of Water, Lady and the
Tramp, and TV cooking shows, this book will be of great interest to students and
scholars of geography, environmental studies, film studies, and environmental
humanities.

Elena dell’Agnese teaches political geography and cultural geography at the

University of Milano-​Bicocca, where she is also Director of the Centre of
Visual Research. Her work has been mainly focused on developing a wide-​
spectrum approach to “peripheral geographies.” For this reason, she is interested
in any form of —​apparently innocent —​“geo-​graphical representation,” from
movies to television drama, cartoons and popular music, with specific attention
given to issues relating to politics, gender, and race. She publishes exten-
sively on these topics, mostly in Italian and in English, but also in French,
Spanish, Japanese, and Croatian. In 2009, she founded the Association of Italian
Geographers Study Group on “Media and Geography,” which she chaired until
2015. She is now Vice-​President of the Società Geografica Italiana. In 2014, she
was elected Vice-​President of the International Geographical Union.
Routledge Explorations in Environmental Studies

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Warwick Frost

Daoism and Environmental Philosophy

Nourishing Life
Eric S. Nelson

Ecological Law and the Planetary Crisis

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Geoffrey Garver

From Environmental to Ecological Law

Kirsten Anker; Peter D Burdon; Geoffrey Garver; Michelle Maloney and Carla Sbert

Climate Change Temporalities

Explorations in Vernacular, Popular, and Scientific Discourse
Edited by Marit Ruge Bjærke, Anne Eriksen and Kyrre Kverndokk

Rights of Nature
A Re-​examination
Edited by Daniel P. Corrigan and Markku Oksanen

Ecocritical Geopolitics
Popular Culture and Environmental Discourse
Elena dell’Agnese

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Deadly Struggles for Land and Territory
Edited by Mary Menton and Philippe Le Billon

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Ecocritical Geopolitics
Popular Culture and Environmental
Discourse

Elena dell’Agnese
First published 2021
by Routledge
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British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data
Names: Dell’Agnese, E. (Elena), author.
Title: Ecocritical geopolitics : popular culture and
environmental discourse / Elena dell’Agnese.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2021. |
Series: Routledge explorations in environmental studies |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020055338 (print) | LCCN 2020055339 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780367264994 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032010748 (paperback) |
ISBN 9780429293504 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Geopolitics. | Ecocriticism. | Popular culture.
Classification: LCC JC319 .D44 2021 (print) |
LCC JC319 (ebook) | DDC 304.2–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055338
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020055339
ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​26499-​4 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-​1-​032-​01074-​8 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​29350-​4 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
Contents

Acknowledgments  ix

Introduction  1
I.1 Why we need an “ecocritical geopolitics” 1
I.1.1 From Katniss Everdeen to Greta Thunberg (and back) 1
I.1.2 Popular culture and the “environment” 2
I.1.3 Ecocritical geopolitics 3
I.1.4 Chapters outline and structure 5

1
Theoretical framework  17
1 Geo(-​)graphy, critical geopolitics, popular geopolitics  19
1.1 “Geo-​graphy is about power” 19
1.2 Critical geopolitics/​popular geopolitics 21
1.3 Ecocriticism 23

2 What kind of environmental discourse is that?  29

2.1 D
 iscourse about the multifaceted system of material things, subjects
and causal agents that may be called “environment” 29
2.2 Anthropocentrism and speciesism 30
2.3 Thinking outside the box 33
2.4 Conservation /​preservation 36
2.5 Challenging anthropocentrism: biocentrism, ecocentrism, deep ecology 39
2.6 Ecofeminism and posthumanism 42
2.7 Spatializing ecofeminism /​Posthumanizing geo-​graphy 44
vi Contents
3 Assembling the toolkit  53
3.1 M aking ecocritical geopolitics: research questions and analytical
tools 53
3.2 Analysis of the textual content: narrative structure, genre and
composition 56
3.3 Territory, place, landscape: clarifying some geographical notions 58
3.4 Discourse analysis 60
3.5 What about the audience? 61

2
Landscapes and fears: discourse about the environment
(and unavoidably also about race and gender) in
dystopian texts and post-​apocalyptic narratives  67
4 Re-​visioning the future  69
4.1 Popular culture and landscapes of fear 69
4.2 Dystopian texts and post-​apocalyptic stories 70
4.3 Increasingly successful narratives 72

5 Dystopian settings and (post)human landscapes  78

5.1 Settings and landscapes 78
5.2 Green places: dreaming of “nature” in dystopian settings 79
5.3 Dystopian borderscapes 81
5.4 Wastelands: capitalism, consumerism, garbage 83
5.5 Post-​human landscapes in biocentric/​ecocentric perspectives:
The Last Man and Earth Abides 87
5.6 The Drowned World and the landscape as main character 90
5.7 The Road and the landscape as a corpse 92

6 Gulliver and beyond: gender, race and

“environmental” clichés  97
6.1 T
 he “heroic male agent”: white, male, young, heterosexual,
and non-disabled 97
6.2 What about the girls? 99
6.3 Indigenous and settlers: “invasion fiction” and the apocalypse
as historical experience 103

3
Posthuman worlds  109
7 Post-​human/​transhuman/​posthuman  111
7.1 (Post)human wor(l)ds? 111
7.2 The Time Machine and the post-​sapiens future 113
 Contents vii
7.3 Transmogrifying epidemics and new world orders 115
7.4 Improving humanity? The (anti)utopian dream of perfection 117
7.5 “I’m not machine, not man. I’m more”: Terminator and the
other transhumans 119

8 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses  126

8.1 “ Dogs are my story here, but they are only one player in the large
world of companion species” 126
8.2 Dogs on the leash: “the law of the stronger over the weaker” 129
8.3 Tray and Trixy: vivisection and the antivivisectionist debate 133
8.4 “Like a lady’s ringlets brown”: exploring the dog’s Umwelt in
Flush 139
8.5 “Friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood”: Ouida and
A Dog of Flanders in posthuman perspective 141
8.6 “Jara is my friend”: antispeciesism (and environmental justice)
in Animal’s People 144

9 Posthuman (dis)orders: monsters, hybrids, metamorphosis  152

9.1 F antastic beasts, monsters and non-​“normate” bodies, from
Homer to Harry Potter 152
9.2 Body order versus extra-​ordinary bodies: The Dolphin People
and The Shape of Water 155
9.3 Between human and animal: Truismes 158

4
Reframing carnism  163
10 Carnism in popular culture  165
10.1 Introducing “carnism” 165
10.2 The “meat paradox” and beyond: how the hegemonic dietary
discourse of carnism is produced and reproduced
by advertising 170
10.3 “Let’s have a hot dog”: meat eaters (and veg*ns) in
popular culture 172

11 Engendering meat  178

11.1 Meat, myths, masculinity 178
11.2 Real men don’t eat quiche: gender stereotypes and dietary
habits in the media 180
11.3 The “cow” and the “boy” along the trails of the west(ern) 181
11.4 Mastering carnonormativity: television cooking shows
and reality formats 184
viii Contents
12 Carnonormativity and its discontents  190
12.1 Cracking carnonormativity 190
12.2 The Jungle and more: investigative journalism and the
power of the “cognitive trio” 195
12.3 Consider the animals: empathy and the role of literature 198
12.4 “How can you watch that stuff?” … “I don’t know …
How can you eat it?” 202
12.5 Back to the visual 203

Index  209
Acknowledgments

This book would not exist if Rebecca Brennan, from Routledge publishing
house, having seen an abstract of mine at the Association of American
Geographers in 2016, had not suggested the idea. Rebecca is therefore the first
person I have to thank.
This book would have been written in bad English, and full of errors, if
Tim Stroud had not lost many of his days and probably nights reviewing and
correcting the text. Tim is therefore the second person I want to thank.
The third person I thank is my son Edoardo Floriani. I know that family
members are usually thanked at the end, for their support and patience.This case
is different. Edoardo opened me to the discussion on the themes of veganism
and carnism, and so I owe to him, and his ethical practice, many intellectual
stimuli, which allowed me to develop the fourth part of the volume. I thank
him also for having suggested many films and television series, and for having
insisted that I see them all. And I thank my younger son Amedeo, for having the
patience to watch them with me.
Then I would like to thank, for the bibliographical suggestions and advice,
Marcella Schmidt of Friedberg, Virginie Mamadouh and Gerard Toal, in add-
ition to the three anonymous reviewers. For the discussions Franco Farinelli,
Fabio Amato, Bruno Vecchio, Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, and Giorgio Mosterts;
for the intellectual collaboration in the animal studies field, Ivan Bargna, Anna
Mannucci and Gabi Scardi; for being a model to imitate, Michael Shapiro; for
the appreciation they have shown towards me, giving me the confidence I need,
Claude Raffestin, Vladimir Kolossov, and John O’ Loughin; for the technical
suggestions, Chiara Giubilaro and Stefano Malatesta; for the spur to act (and
to write), Marco Grasso and Antonio Schizzerotto. I thank also the riders who
in the months of the 2020 lockdown, when most of the Italian libraries and
bookstores were closed, delivered me books otherwise untraceable, allowing
me to work.
I thank Maria Chiara Zerbi for having taught me much of what I have
learned. What I have not learned is not her fault. I would also like to thank
Giacomo Corna Pellegrini, who is no longer here, for having taught me that
intellectual freedom, in academic life, is the strongest weapon.
newgenprepdf

x Acknowledgments
I would like to thank the following publishing houses for allowing the
publication of excerpts from their titles: Penguin Random House, G ROV E /​
ATLANTIC, INC. , ECW Press Ltd., Simon & Schuster, P.O.L., Princeton
University Press, Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette Book
Group, Inc. (the data relating to the permissions are given in the notes, in
connection with each excerpt). I would also like to thank Grace Harrison,
Christine Bondira, Mary Dalton, and the other people who collaborate with
Routledge for valuable support and help.
And finally, I thank all the members of my multispecies family, for keeping
me company on or under my desk, bearing the deprivation of play and walks
that I have imposed on them in these last two years.
Introduction

I.1 Why we need an “ecocritical geopolitics”

I.1.1 From Katniss Everdeen to Greta Thunberg (and back)

We all know who Greta Thunberg is. However, for those who are not too
familiar with Young Adult Literature and the films adapted from it, it is neces-
sary to explain who Katniss Everdeen is.When Greta became famous, she was a
teenager. Like Greta, Katniss is a teenage girl who rebels against the system. She
is the main character in a very famous literary trilogy (The Hunger Games, 2008–​
10, by Suzanne Collins) and its equally successful film adaptation (together, they
form a “franchise”). According to the author’s website,1 over 100 million copies
of the books have been sold, while the four films have grossed around three
billion dollars worldwide.2
Katniss struggles against a system which is unjust economically, socially, and
environmentally. To do so, she has to fight against a world of adults. Her heroic
figure thus breaks gender, age, and class stereotypes. She defines herself as a
fighter capable of promoting new ideals against corruption, vice, and the greed
of previous generations. For this reason, she has been described as “emblematic
of a new kind of progressive, female, Hollywood action hero” (Kirby 2015, 462).
The popularity of The Hunger Games has helped launch the fashion of fiction
with a rebel girl as the protagonist. Katniss is arguably the most admired in what
is now a long list of teenage heroines, from Hermione Granger in the Harry
Potter saga, Beatrice Prior, called Tris, in the Divergent series, Rey in the Star Wars
franchise, to a girl called Jiya in the Pakistani TV cartoon series Burka Avenger
(Kimball 2019).
There is a long list of teenage heroines in the real world as well; some are
famous worldwide, like Malala Yousafzai and Greta Thunberg, others only
locally (Kimball 2017). As Gayle Kimball (2019) writes: “media empowers
brave girls to be global activists.” The question is how this happens and what
kind of relationship there is between media heroines like Katniss and real ones
like Greta. It is conceivable though not certain that one of the young “rebels”
listed by Gayle Kimball has read a book or seen a film in the series The Hunger
2 Introduction
Games, or another text starring a media heroine. It is much more likely that
real figures inspired some of the media heroines. For instance, Jiya from Burka
Avenger (2013–​) struggles to defend the right for girls to go to school, just as
Malala did (Pirzada 2017). She even broadens Malala’s scope and promotes
environmental awareness, like Katniss and Greta. However, “empowering media
images” (Kimball 2019) does not necessarily imply that media images have a
direct influence on inspiring human behavior, or that real people influence
media images. More simply, the public’s attention to media heroines in many
cases paves the way for similar attention to be paid to the real rebels, giving
them credit and the freedom to act. Alternatively, popular culture may create a
milieu where the figure of a teenager fighting the system becomes acceptable
For sure, the media convey (and in turn are influenced by) a particular way of
seeing the world and our relations with that world, human and nonhuman.
Trying to figure out which is this “particular way of seeing the world and
our relations with that world, human and nonhuman” is important, not only for
analytical interest, but also, and perhaps above all, to understand if it is possible
to intervene, if necessary, to modify it. In the theoretical framework of post-​
structuralism, the set of interpretative categories, values, and logics that we take
for granted, and which correspond to this “particular way of seeing the world”
is called “discourse,” to use the term in the Foucauldian sense, which is to say
as “the condition for the production and ordering of meaning and knowledge”
(Rossini 2006). In order to understand our relation with the world, human and
not human, the analysis must therefore lead to an understanding of the “dis-
course” about the “environment.”

I.1.2 Popular culture and the “environment”

The analysis must put together the message, the genre, and the taken-​for-​
granted world of the author to understand what in popular culture is going to
filter through to its audience.Then, of course, there is the audience itself, which
can interpret all these things in its own ways.
The first question to ask is “How do we define ‘environment’?”The produc-
tion of texts, whether filmic, literary, videogames or graphic novels, which deal
with themes related to the “environment” is very wide. Even if the text we want
to examine is presented as a “green” text (i.e., a product that conveys an envir-
onmentalist message), it is important to understand whether it presents “the
environment” as “a juxtaposed externality in which humans dwell and conflict”
in a dualistic approach, or instead as a “model that includes a wider number
of subjects and causal agents, introducing issues of ontology, epistemology, and
posthuman ethics” (Iovino 2012, 59–​60). If the “environment” is dualistically
considered a resource, the message will probably be a bit anthropocentric, and
suggest that it must be conserved, because otherwise future generations will
not have the same resources that we do. In the other case, it will be about the
relative importance of humans among the multitude of other species living on
the planet.
 Introduction 3
The genre and the taken-​for-​granted world of the author are also meaningful.
Thus, a western movie may promote a conservationist message, displaying “a
nostalgic yearning for the unspoiled wilderness,” (Ingram 2000, 15) and at the
same time belong to a film genre that exalts the alienation of a people from
its land (the Native Americans), the near extinction of an animal species (the
bison), and the construction of a regional economy based on the exploitation
of an animal species for commercial purposes (cattle). A dystopian represen-
tation of the future may warn against the excessive power of corporations,
consumerism, waste; at the same time, it may strengthen race and gender
stereotypes, because in the taken-​for-​g ranted world of the author in question
women are only housewives and people of color subordinates. Alternatively,
a film about intensive farming and the American meat industry may at the
same time mourn the end of traditional extensive farming, falling into the
dichotomy typical of carnism, between the meat that one should not eat,
because it comes from industrial farms and meat that one can eat since it
comes from extensive farms.
The context where the action takes place also matters. Almost every text,
even if it does not have a deliberately environmental message, has a setting,
and therefore it speaks in some way of the system of material things, subjects,
and causal agents that we call “environment.” If we reflect on the relation-
ship between human beings and whatever is perceived as “other” (nonhuman
animals, plant life, other humans) the range widens further. Is popular culture
still communicating dualisms, separating the “human” par excellence (male, white,
handsome, healthy), from those who are not male, not beautiful, not healthy, not
white, or is it making an effort to overcome these dichotomies with a different
approach?
In this regard, everyday actions performed by characters may count. Thus,
questions multiply: is it “normal” to see a fictional program on TV where the
family has bacon and eggs for breakfast, or should we consider it a proof of the
strength of the taken-​for-​granted exceptionality of humans as a species? Usually,
it is considered “normal” to eat animals of certain species but not others, for
instance, not the ones we keep as pets. Speaking of pets, there are many books
and movies about dogs. How do we represent the relationship we have with the
animals we say we love? Is it dominance or affection (Tuan 1984)? Lastly, who
can speak? The omniscient narrator, perhaps from a presumably objective point
of view, or the “subaltern”? Is it possible to give a voice to “our dumb animals”
(as suggested by the title of a US magazine dedicated to animal welfare)? If so,
how, without falling into anthropomorphism? And finally, we can investigate
whether writing is more effective than images, albeit violent and graphic, in
preventing animals from being sent to slaughter.

I.1.3 Ecocritical geopolitics

All these questions may be formulated from different scientific perspectives.
For this reason, the theme of the representation of “environmental” issues
4 Introduction
by popular culture is addressed by various research approaches, from media
studies, to English literature, cultural studies and environmental cultural studies
(Sturgeon 2009), but also sociology, ecocriticism and environmental humanities
(Opperman and Iovino 2016). So why do we need one more?
The proposal advanced here is aimed at emphasizing the connection
between power and knowledge, and, in particular, the power of representation
over reality. To do this, it is suggested that the theoretical frame developed by
critical geopolitics should be used. As described by McFarlane and Hay (2003,
212), critical geopolitics problematizes “prevailing geopolitical orders not as
given, but as ‘historically constructed perspectives asserting privileged forms
of representation’” and “challenges the unremarkable quality of hegemonic
representations within the international sphere.”
Popular geopolitics, a subfield of critical geopolitics, specifically “demands
that attention be given to examination of the role of the media in the construc-
tion and perpetuation of dominant geopolitical understandings” (McFarlane and
Hay 2003, 211). The idea is also that the way we interpret the “environment”
is connected with a somewhat hegemonic representation that deserves to be
challenged, and that this representation is perpetuated through popular culture.
“We are interested in how popular culture constructs and reveals spatial and
political fields of meaning,” state Robert A. Saunders and Vlad Strukov (2018),
introducing a reader to the subject (Popular Geopolitics: Plotting an Evolving
Interdiscipline). To these “spatial and political fields of meaning” we wish to add
environmental ones. From a methodological point of view, this approach will
combine the analytical tools of geography with those of ecocriticism, while
theoretically it will be heavily indebted to other approaches, such as ecofem-
inism, posthumanism, and environmental cultural studies, which seek to bring
together environmental issues with reasoning on the relationship between
human beings (Sturgeon 2009). I propose the term “ecocritical geopolitics.”
The Hunger Games provides excellent examples from this point of view.
Katniss’ role as a teenage heroine has aroused considerable scholarly interest
about the saga in terms of gender, class, race, and also environment. In “an
ecocritical reading,” Janice Bland and Anne Strotmann (2014) identify the lit-
erary tropes related to environmental issues in the book trilogy. The tropes are
the “apocalypse,” because the setting of the saga is in a post-​apocalyptic future
in North America; the “pastoral,” which creates the spatial distinction of city
and countryside and the temporal distinction of a dreadful present and an idyllic
past; and the “wilderness,” the natural one surrounding the district where Katniss
lives, and the artificial one in the arena of the Capitol, where she has to prove
her bravery. Wilderness is not just the only space where freedom is to be had, it
also plays an important role in the story, since Katniss manages to survive in the
Capitol arena precisely because of her wilderness skills (even though, in order to
acquire them, she broke the law by going hunting across the district boundary).
This also enables a look at the trilogy through an ecofeminist lens. Katniss’
closeness to nature leads Tan (2017) to propose a parallel between her rebellion
 Introduction 5
against patriarchy and nature’s revolt against the industrial system: “As a result,
Katniss’ quest in The Hunger Games is homogenous to nature’s quest for sur-
vival against an industry-​driven totalitarian regime which exploits nature and
its resources to the fullest extent. Nonetheless, the survival and rebellion of
Katniss is equally symbolical for the revival and continuation of nature” (Tan
2016, 39).
With a similarly ecofeminist approach, Burke (2013) stresses how the trilogy
brings to the fore the issue of environmental justice.The post-​apocalyptic world
where Katniss lives is represented as a geopolitical system where the rich city
center exploits the poor suburbs environmentally to produce its food, while
the locals starve. To get food, Katniss, who lives in one of the poorest districts,
learns to hunt (breaking the law). In this way, she fights against environmental
injustice.
The themes of feminist rebelliousness and socio-​spatial injustice are also
taken up by Kirby in an article in the journal Geopolitics (Kirby 2015), where he
tries to systematize a theoretical approach to critical geopolitics that includes
the suggestions of feminist geography and paying attention to audience response
(in order to avoid the risk of “abstracting popular texts from context, place and
reception,” Kirby 2015, 464). In the paper, Kirby emphasizes Katniss’ positive
reach and her great success on social media and feminist blogs; yet he notes
that the trilogy falls into several clichés, like “the classic philosophical pos-
ition, popularised by Henry Thoreau, that goodness comes from a proximity to
nature” (Kirby 2015, 476).
Overall, the analysis carried out by Kirby remains anchored to the themes
of critical geopolitics (socio-​spatial inequality, class, race), even if in part it
conjugates them with those of feminist geography (gender). An ecocritical
geopolitics approach could similarly underline that Katniss fights against
socio-​spatial and gender inequalities, and that her struggle launches a message
about environmental justice; however, beyond the cliché that Kirby underlines,
attention should also be drawn to the fact that Katniss’ attitude towards the
environment remains utilitarian (she goes hunting and, after admiring its beauty,
kills a deer) (Burke 2015) and therefore that the discourse developed by the
trilogy is still anchored to mainstream anthropocentric assumptions. In addition,
an approach linked to geographical analysis tools could help highlight how wil-
derness is represented as opposed to humanized space, in a rather stereotyped,
and dualistic, reading of territorial diversity.

I.1.4 Chapters outline and structure

The first part of this book, dedicated to introducing critical geopolitics, popular
geopolitics, ecocriticism and their research tools, will be followed by three
sections of “applied” analysis. Each part is divided in chapters, each chapter in
sections. The three topics analyzed are chosen by way of example, to see how
ecocritical geopolitics can be used to analyze a narrative strategy —​such as
6 Introduction
dystopian and post-​apocalyptic narration —​a theme, the posthuman, and a
discourse, carnism.
The three areas of analysis have been chosen for their relevance. The apoca-
lypse is considered the environmental metaphor par excellence. Dystopias and
post-​apocalyptic narratives tell of human beings’ fears, and therefore of their
relationship with their environment. In addition, they are often accompanied
by environmental and landscape descriptions capable of offering an insight
from this perspective.
The posthuman theme is the theoretical approach that best helps us to reflect
on the limits of the definition of human and nonhuman, and more generally on
the dualisms typical of the Western tradition. If dystopian and post-apocalyptic
themes reflect fears about the future of humanity, a posthumanist approach
allows us to think about the representation of our relationship with technology,
on the one hand, and with nonhuman animals, on the other.
Lastly, if “landscape epitomizes aesthetic conceptualizations of nature,” food
is one of the principal modes of negotiating and representing the nature –
culture relationship, because it turns nature into “a consumable thing” (Gersdorf
2010, 4). “Carnism” is a way of considering the relationship between human
and nonhuman animals, which, on the basis of a high degree of speciesism,
takes eating dead animals for granted. Eating meat is “normal,” “natural” and
“necessary” (Joy 2010), even if cattle farming is today one of the main envir-
onmental threats globally. According to a 2006 FAO report, “Expansion of live-
stock production is a key factor in deforestation”; moreover, in terms of climate
change, livestock “is a major player,” responsible for a percentage of greenhouse
gas emissions measured in CO2 equivalent, which is higher than transport. It
is also “a key player in increasing water use, […] mostly for the irrigation of
feedcrops. It is probably the largest sectoral source of water pollution, contrib-
uting to eutrophication, ‘dead’ zones in coastal areas, degradation of coral reefs,
human health problems, emergence of antibiotic resistance and many others.” It
should also be added that livestock is also a threat to biodiversity, “since it is the
major driver of deforestation, as well as one of the leading drivers of land deg-
radation, pollution, climate change, overfishing, sedimentation of coastal areas
and facilitation of invasions by alien species. In addition, resource conflicts with
pastoralists threaten species of wild predators and also protected areas close to
pastures” (Steinfeld et al. 2006).
Deconstructing carnism as discourse therefore has not only an ethical pur-
pose, with regard to nonhuman animals, but also a political sense, in terms of
environmental conservation.
Each of the three areas of analysis is also characterized by the prevalence of
a different environmental discourse, albeit with notable exceptions. Dystopian
narratives tend to express a mainstream concern about environmental issues,
conveying a conservationist attitude towards the environment as a resource
and a predominantly anthropocentric mindset, although they often address
social issues and can include important reflections on environmental justice.
 Introduction 7
Post-​apocalyptic fiction can overcome the anthropocentrism of dystopia, and
offer a biocentric point of view, even if it can hardly overcome the stereo-
types of race and gender typical of dystopian fiction. The posthuman often
involves an ecofeminist approach, and carnism may be questioned, to challenge
anthropocentrism and speciesist ideologies.
Analyzing a narrative genre for its environmental discourse requires that
a great number of texts are considered, examined more for their clichés and
points in common than for their artistic uniqueness. For this reason, Chapter 4
examines the birth and evolution of dystopian and post-​apocalyptic narrative
strategies, the relationship between fear and popular culture, and the role
of dystopian and post-​apocalyptic narratives, as a vehicle to express the fears
of their times. It then highlights what fears have been expressed over time by
these narrative strategies and how environmental issues have become so main-
stream in recent years as to be the object of dystopian parodies. Eventually, it is
stressed that the great popularity of post-​apocalyptic and dystopian narratives
risks undermining their communicative power.
Chapter 5 focuses on the use of the setting and landscape in dystopian and
post-​apocalyptic literature. After proposing a distinction between the two —​
the setting is the description of the context, while the landscape presumes
a relational dimension between the human being and the context —​the
chapter examines settings and landscapes of dystopian and post-​apocalyptic
narratives. As far as dystopian narratives are concerned, since they are gen-
erally anthropocentric in approach, the setting is heavily artificial, generally
characterized by a high urban density and a marked territorialization. Nature,
within a fairly traditional dualism, is opposed to culture. It exists externally,
beyond a border, and constitutes an element of disorder, but also of freedom,
to aspire to (or as a possible place to flee to). These green spaces of freedom
are a recurrent element in dystopic (and sometimes post-​ apocalyptic)
fiction, even if, as other texts make clear, a Planet B is not yet conceivable.
In addition to the border between anthropic and natural spaces, dystopian
territorializations may also include a spatial demarcation of social inequalities.
The setting is therefore characterized by rigid boundaries between the spaces
of the privileged and those of the poor, spaces which, in texts straddling dys-
topia and science fiction, can also extend to artificial worlds. In the spaces
of the poor, the representation of conditions of environmental exploitation
and pollution also triggers issues of environmental justice. The fear of the
overwhelming power of capitalism and corporations, the conditioning of
consumers and the excessive consumerism that follows is increasingly present
in dystopian narratives. The recurring metaphor in this regard is that of the
accumulation of waste. Some post-​apocalyptic narratives give the setting an
even more important value, or even exploit the relational dimension between
the human protagonist and what surrounds him/​her to charge the landscape
with a metaphorical dimension. In this regard, the chapter examines three
post-​apocalyptic texts, which, in a biocentric perspective, deal with a future in
8 Introduction
which the planet continues its history, indifferent to the disappearance of the
human species. On the contrary, it becomes more luxuriant and richer than
other forms of life. The texts are The Last Man (1826, Mary Shelley), Earth
Abides (1949, George Stewart) and The Drowned World (1962, J.G. Ballard).
The chapter ends with the analysis of a text that has enjoyed great crit-
ical acclaim: The Road (2006, Cormac McCarthy). Here too the landscape
has great importance. In this case, however, the biosphere was destroyed, and
the planet died. Taking a more anthropocentric approach than the previous
texts, Cormac McCarthy focuses on the spiritual dimension of the human
being, and the ability to “carry the fire” (i.e. love), even when the struggle for
resources is extreme.
The main characters in all the texts examined in Chapter 5 are males,
white and non-disabled. The next chapter, Chapter 6, therefore examines
how race and gender stereotypes enter into dystopian and post-​apocalyptic
narratives and how, and whether, they have any connection with environ-
mental discourse. The “heroic male agent” is the first object of attention, as
this figure reflects all the possible factors for discrimination: those of gender
(he is male and heterosexual), race (he is white), age (he is usually in his 30s),
and those related to the body (he is always, or almost always, without dis-
abilities). This, together with the fact that he is often also a father, allows him
to have a protective attitude not only towards women and the family, but
also towards nature. This anthropocentric dualism is also reflected in the more
recent narrative, where adolescent and rebellious heroines have emerged (as
women, they are closer to nature, according to the old stereotype). In add-
ition to human heroines, the chapter also examines virtual, android, or digital
female characters, to show how, even in this case, there is often an overlapping
domination (over women and technology). Finally, the theme of the apoca-
lypse deserves to be read from the point of view of those who have already
had such an experience, that is, have seen their world end, to be replaced by a
different world. Native Americans and many indigenous peoples have already
experienced their apocalypse. In this regard, I consider Moon of the Crusted
Snow (2018), a post-​apocalyptic novel by the Anishinaabe author Waubgeshig
Rice. The novel, which plays with the tropes of mainstream post-​apocalyptic
literature, shows how those fears are something external to a people who have
already experienced their own apocalypse.
In Part 3, I turn to a philosophical approach, which may be present in
narratives of different genres, posthumanism. Chapter 7 starts with the
quote: “Posthuman is a seductive term, being both nebulous and popular”
(Gray 2017, 148), then seeks to shed light on three expressions that are some-
times used in overlapping ways: post-​human, transhuman, and posthuman. We
use the expression post-​human, with the hyphen, to define something that
comes after the human, in relation to something that has to do with evolution,
or rather with the possible future evolution of the human being. The term
“posthuman,” not hyphenated, is used to indicate the desire (or need) to over-
come the binary distinction between the human and the “other,” whatever the
 Introduction 9
other is. Transhuman is related to a technologically enhanced human being.
Posthumanism considers the posthuman product of transhumanism (the
cyborg) as a metaphor (Haraway 1985), in order to break three dichotomies —​
between human and animal, between organism and machine, and between
physical and nonphysical —​and to overcome all the binary oppositions typical
of Western society, such as male/​female, nature/​culture, human/​animal, and
so on. Having set this theoretical framework, the chapter moves on by first
analyzing post-​human scenarios, like those proposed in the novel The Time
Machine (1895, H.G. Wells), then the loss of humanity, or most of the salient
features of humanity, in different texts presenting a variation of zombie apoca-
lypse, from the novel I Am Legend (1954, Richard Matheson) to the videogame
The Last of Us; control over fertility and genetic manipulation, with the goal
of improving the human species, in the texts Brave New World (1932, Aldous
Huxley) and the MaddAddam trilogy (2003–​13, Margaret Atwood); the review
is concluded with transhuman creations, in the form of androids and cyborgs.
The topic of the cyborg introduces the theme of the posthuman, which is
analyzed in relation to popular culture in Chapters 8 and 9. To investigate post-​
human and transhuman perspectives in popular culture, science fiction and dys-
topian narratives provide an excellent platform. The posthuman approach is
broader, perhaps too broad to be fully explored within these frameworks. So, to
limit the scope of research, a first step in this direction has been taken by trying
to understand how the relationship between humans and nonhuman animals is
represented in terms of “companion species,” as suggested by Donna Haraway
(2003). To this end, it was decided to examine the representation of a non-
human animal that has always had a particularly strong relationship with human
beings, the dog (Chapter 8). A brief review of how the dog is represented
in popular culture highlights how dogs are often anthropomorphized, gen-
dered or stereotyped, and portrayed in an unbalanced relationship of power, in
which they are items of property more than companions. The chapter goes on
to show how the dog ̶ human rapport, far from being based on companion-
ship, risks being naturalized as a servant ̶ master relationship with a connection
symbolized by the leash and the joy that, in the “happy ending” of many dog
stories, the dog is supposed to feel when it is given a collar. The process of
denaturalizing the dog and imposing rules on him is present in many dog
stories set in the American West (The Old Yeller, 1956; Stickeen, 1897; White
Fang, 1906; Where the North Begins, 1923), but also in the city, as evidenced by
the famous animated cartoon Lady and the Tramp (1955). In these dog stories,
the relationship between nature and culture is still seen in the rigid perspective
of binarism, with nature that must be dominated, and the human being as the
dominator (the holder of the leash).
Those who lead a dog on a leash may believe that they love the dog, even if in
fact they dominate it. On the contrary, for those who practice vivisection, there
is no doubt. What is interesting to note is that even among those who oppose
vivisection the motivations are often anthropocentric (Section 8.3). Even more
marked is the anthropocentrism at the basis of the practice of vivisection, but
10 Introduction
among antivivisectionists attitudes can also vary between strongly anthropocen-
tric positions (vivisection has the effect of making practitioners insensitive) and
more biocentric/​posthuman attitudes (the extreme diversity of power between
the animal victim, totally deprived of agency, and the human executioner).
Section 8.4 is dedicated to certain dog stories that express antivivisectionist
feelings, and to the antivivisection debate. The subject is very interesting from
the point of view of ecocritical geopolitics, on the one hand because the debate
has involved some of the greatest exponents of the culture of the time (such as
Lewis Carroll, the poets Tennyson and Browning, and the authors H.G. Wells
and G.B. Shaw), who mobilized popular culture for the cause; on the other
hand because the movement was marked by a large presence of women activists
and intellectuals, sharing with feminism the fight against objectification, body
control, and male domination. In the section, I consider some poetic texts (Tray,
1879), novels and short stories (A Dog’s Tale; 1903; Trixy, 1904) where the canine
protagonist risks, or even ends up on the vivisector’s table.
The chapter then examines three texts that differ from most dog stories,
precisely because of their ability to deal with the relationship between human
beings and nonhuman animals from a posthuman perspective. The first is
Flush: a Biography (1933) by Virginia Woolf, in which the writer, with a great
exercise of imagination, manages to represent the “smellscape” of the dog and
to penetrate his Umwelt (Uexküll 1934). In this way, the reader is introduced
to the spatial experiences of a dog in a way that challenges the empirical
belief in the authority of vision. The second novel is A Dog of Flanders (1872)
by Ouida; the book is a curious literary case since it is very famous in Japan
but almost forgotten in Europe, albeit its author is English. The novel is about
the friendship of a human being (a boy, named Nello) and a dog (Patrasche)
that describes a very intense and equal relationship, and illustrates arguments
similar to those later developed by Donna Haraway (2003). The third novel is
Animal’s People (2007), a text by a contemporary Anglo-​Indian author, Indra
Shina. Again, the story is about the friendship between a boy, who is disabled
and walks on all fours, and a dog named Jara. The story takes place in a fic-
tional city that stands for Bhopal in the aftermath of the gas tragedy, a setting
that allows the author to raise a series of fundamental themes. Beyond the
posthuman approach connected with the relationship between the boy (called
Animal) and Jara the dog, the novel touches on the themes of “slow violence,”
linked to the environmental damage caused by the gas tragedy, and environ-
mental justice.
Chapter 9 goes one step further in the direction of posthumanism when it
addresses the notion of the “hybrid.” Hybrids, “monsters,” and “extra-​ordinary
bodies” provide the means to consider the themes of dualism, dichotomizations,
and easy classifications. After an introduction to the different notions of mon-
strous, from classical culture onwards, a review of the representation of the
non-​“normate” body is made, with the idea that “normate” refers to “the
constructed identity of those who, by way of the bodily configurations and
cultural capital they assume, can step into a position of authority and wield
 Introduction 11
the power it grants them” (Garland Thompson 2017, xii). We thus reach the
position of posthumanism, which internalizes the hybrid, the “cyborg,” the
monster, as a starting point, to destabilize the symbolic boundaries set by
the notion of the human, as referred to in Western history. Such representations
of fantastic animals and extraordinary beasts, bodily instability and mutations
of various kinds can be read in the Harry Potter saga. In the second section,
we examine two very different texts (a novel and a film) that share points in
common. The novel is The Dolphin People (2006, Torsten Krol), and the movie
The Shape of Water (2017, Guillermo del Toro). Their point of contact is given
by the opposition between those who want to impose order, and therefore con-
sider scientifically impure and expendable those who have an extra-​ordinary
body, and those who defend the right to be non-​“normate.” In both texts,
the villain is impersonated by a character who demonstrates all the physical
characteristics of the “human” imposed by Western humanism: he is a white
male, heterosexual, handsome, and able-​bodied. He represents “modernity.” In
both cases, the mysterious Otherness, in spatial term, is provided by the image
of Amazonia. So, the two texts openly question body dualisms, but fail to over-
come geographical ones, and fall into the spatial stereotype that what is outside
the West is less civilized, less ordered, and closer to nature.
The third section (9.3) is devoted to the analysis of Truismes (1996, Marie
Darrieussecq), a novel about a metamorphosis: the body (in this case, the body
of a woman) here varies, in the course of the narration, from “normal” (indeed,
beautiful) to “monstrous,” because, through various stages, it becomes the body
of a sow. Appreciated for its strong message against the exploitation of women,
the novel also opens up a reflection that departs from traditional anthropocen-
tric assumptions. Metamorphosis is a metaphor, used to highlight the violations
that specifically animalize the narrator, but it is also a way to explore animality
as a condition and different perception of the world, introducing the idea of
hybridity as a way to overcome the separation between human and nonhuman
animals. Finally, the novel leads inside a slaughterhouse, opening a “fissure” in
carnism as a discourse.
One difficult question runs through almost all the texts examined in this
part of the book: “Can the subaltern speak?” (Spivak 1988), that is, how can we
interpret, and express, the sensitivity of nonhuman animals? Or, more generally,
who is on their side? Stylistic responses vary, from attempting to write the auto-
biography of an animal, to assuming animals’ point of view, to simply offering
an “écriture de cochon” (literally, “pig writing,” that is, writing in a messy way), as
the narrator-​sow of Truismes refers to her writing.
The fourth part deals with a commonsensical attitude: carnism. Carnism, as
defined by Melanie Joy (2010), is the dominant discourse of human nutrition;
based on rigidly speciesist assumptions, carnism considers eating meat to be
normal, natural, and necessary. This part of the book is dedicated to the decon-
struction of carnism as a discourse. The question here is even more challen-
ging: is it possible to produce a popular culture that is capable of going against
the dominant ideology? Does it make sense to defend animals in writing? Or is
12 Introduction
it better to replace writing with visual evidence? The answer to the latter case
can only be given by the audience.
After introducing “carnism,” Chapter 10.1 presents the “Three Ns of the jus-
tification” (normal, natural, and necessary), and the three cognitive mechanisms
that lead to a distortion of perceived reality, which Joy (2010) calls “the Cognitive
Trio” (“objectification,” “deindividualization,” and “dichotomization”). The
chapter then introduces the “meat paradox” represented by the awareness that
eating animals involves killing them, the conflict triggered by this awareness
between our desire to be moral people and our desire to eat meat, and the role
played by advertising when it skirts around the fact that meat-​eating requires
animal deaths. Lastly, the role of literature, cinema, and television in repli-
cating the dominant way of viewing animals and food is highlighted, together
with the “carnonormativity” (Freeman 2014) of popular culture. There are few
vegetarians or vegans; moreover, as a brief review shows, if they are men they
are “different,” if not, they are girls.
The association between meat consumption (and, more generally, non-
human animal domination) and gender is explored in Chapter 11, where
the concepts of “carno-​f allogocentrism” (Derrida 1991) and “anthroparchy”
(Cudworth 2005) are introduced, then the connection between masculinity
and meat in cultural traditions and in media is explored. A narrative genre
that glorifies the combination “masculinity–​meat” is the western movie,
which celebrates the breeding of wild cattle as one of the founding elem-
ents of American national identity, and its workers (the cowboys) as national
heroes. At the same time, the genre manages to glorify the genocide of a
people (Native Americans), the almost total extinction of an animal species
(the bison), and the exploitation of another (cattle). It succeeds in bringing
together anthroparchy, racism, and a geographical dualism in the land of
“the others” (the West), which is conceived as virgin land to be conquered.
Another form of popular culture that promotes animal-​based food, meat,
and masculinity is represented by culinary talent shows on TV. Particular
attention is paid to Masterchef, the most successful culinary talent show,
where the judges are almost always male chefs. This kind of show not only
contributes to normalizing and even promoting the consumption of meat
and other animal products, but helps to create the figure of the chef as a
media star, fostering a gender discourse, where masculinity implies power
and hierarchical superiority. In this way, once again, carnism is mixed with
gender issues and popular culture.
Chapter 12 changes perspective and discusses whether popular culture
can undermine the dominant discourse. In particular, through the analytical
approach of Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-​Lewis (2005), I try to highlight
which products of popular culture can be classified as “resistant,” “formally
resistant,” and “fissure” texts, with reference to carnism as ideology and also
for problematizing representations of nonhuman animals and consumption
practices. In the first part of the chapter, feature films for adults (a few) and
children (more), which somehow question carnism and anthroparchy, are
 Introduction 13
examined. I then examine some texts that, by mixing fiction and investiga-
tive journalism, have partly succeeded, in both past and present, in disturbing
readers’ consciences: The Jungle (1906, Upton Sinclair), Fast Food Nation (2001,
Eric Schlosser) and Eating Animals (2009, Jonathan Safran Foer). Later, attention
is turned to literary texts written by critically acclaimed writers with the same
objective: to unhinge carnism.The texts taken into consideration are The Lives
of Animals (1999) by J.M. Coetzee, The Slaughterer (1967) by Isaac Bashevis
Singer, and Consider the Lobster (2004) by David Foster Wallace. Though with
different styles, the three texts embrace empathy rather than denunciation,
addressing the core tactics of carnist discourse, such as dichotomization or
denial. A mention is also made of novels that, though dedicated to other events,
open, with a single sentence or a paragraph, a crack in the carnist discourse
(such as Benoni, 1908, by Knut Hamsun).
Finally, taking inspiration from a novel entitled My Year of Meats (1998, Ruth
Ozeki), the chapter questions the role of materials of visual denunciation, which
have sometimes been considered too violent to achieve the hoped-​for result,
and yet seem to have converted some viewers to vegetarianism and veganism.

Notes
1 www.suzannecollinsbooks.com/​bio.htm
2 www.the-​numbers.com/​movies/​franchise/​Hunger-​Games#tab=summary

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 Introduction 15
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1

Theoretical framework
1 
Geo(-​)graphy, critical geopolitics,
popular geopolitics

1.1 “Geo-​graphy is about power”

The connection between representation and reality is intrinsic to the very name
of the discipline.The word “geo-​graphy” comes from the Latin word geōgraphia,
which in turn comes from the Ancient Greek γεωγραφία (geōgraphía), from
γῆ (gê), land or earth, and γρᾰφω (gráphō), to draw or to write. “Geography”
means “writing” or “drawing” the Earth. At the same time, the term “geog-
raphy” is currently used to refer to the material object, the Earth, with its
regional characteristics and differences (see Robert Kaplan’s book, The Revenge
of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle against
Fate, 2012).
This terminological ambiguity, according to which both the object and
the representation of the object are defined with the same word, postulates,
according to Claude Raffestin (1983), the perfect adaptation between the object
of discourse and the discourse. So, geo-​graphy, as a discourse, is placed outside
historical conditioning, while, far from being a-​historical, it is controlled by
power. And power, through geographical discourse, manages to make the geo-​
structure it produces more acceptable. Representation, which is supposed to
be the same as reality, but in fact is historically determined and influenced by
power, makes reality “normal” and therefore “acceptable.”
Before Raffestin, already Yves Lacoste (1976) in France, and Lucio Gambi
(1968) and Massimo Quaini (1974) in Italy had shown how knowledge of
the territory, and therefore geography, was an instrument at the service of the
prince, to administer, to collect taxes, and to make war. Quaini showed that
geography is an instrument of power in a dual sense: it supplies useful infor-
mation to the ruling classes while simultaneously providing mystifying infor-
mation to the subaltern classes, thus negating them the chance of a proper
knowledge of space and power.
To this path of reasoning, however, Raffestin adds something more.
Geography is not just an instrument in the hands of powerful people, it is
power in itself, because geography is representation and representation has the
power to change reality. This suggestion, clearly connected with Foucault’s idea
20 Theoretical framework
of power-​knowledge (Raffestin 1978), has since been developed in other —​
but somehow interconnected —​contexts of European and American academic
thought.
Critical attention to geography as representation, and its power to transform
reality, was also urged by Giuseppe Dematteis (Fall and Minca 2013), who, in
1985, published, in Italian, Le metafore della Terra (The Metaphors of the Earth).
Here, he takes up the idea of geography as an “active” practice, capable of
modifying reality. He writes that: “The ideological function of ‘textbook geog-
raphy’ is […] complex […] Not only does it make geographical knowledge
look like an innocent form of knowledge, and not only does it teach people
that what exists is natural and cannot be changed, but also, and more subtly, it
teaches people that what exists is normal […] that it is natural because it is normal”
(Dematteis 1985, 10).
Then, he adds that “geographical representation, based on evidence and
appealing to common sense, produces con-​sense […] from which normalized
behaviors derive, that is, behaviors that can be integrated into collective practices.
These, acting on Earth, transform it into territory, which in turn is the object
of geographical representation” (1985, 101).
Geography represents the world and produces consensus, but it is not
a specular reproduction of the world. It is just a set of metaphors. Only the
awareness that these metaphors are just partial representations of reality can help
people to escape, according to Dematteis, from the loop of their “normalizing”
effects (dell’Agnese 2008).
In geographical representation, not only information provided by writing
or statistics matters. Cartographic visualization counts as a form of power as
well. In this regard, Franco Farinelli’s work opens a new page in the analysis of
geography as a form of geo-​power. Farinelli distinguishes geo-​writing and geo-​
mapping, and their different roles in transforming places into spaces. Mapping
means trying to represent a sphere on a flat surface. To do so, one must move
away from the sphere, i.e., put one’s perspective above reality, and assume that
one can read/​dominate the world from above. From the presumption of zenithal
vision comes what Farinelli himself defines as “cartographic reason” (Farinelli
1992 and Farinelli 1998), an attitude typical of Western thought, which leads to
seeing the world in two dimensions, as if it were a “table.” Thinking in carto-
graphic terms, that is along with cartographic reason, means detaching oneself
from reality, and presuming to be able to read/​dominate it from above. The
notion of “cartographic reason,” as developed by Franco Farinelli (1992), but
also by Gunnar Olsson (1998) and Tom Conley (1996), can be seen as “the
missing element in social theories of modernity” (Pickles 2004, xi), as it helps
to emphasize “the role of mapping in shaping social, spatial and natural iden-
tities” (Pickles 2004, xi). The role of maps in the connection between power
and knowledge has also been pointed out by Harley (1988) who, drawing on
Foucault’s ideas, defines maps as perfect instruments to promote a hierarchical
vision of the space they represent.
 Critical geopolitics and popular geopolitics 21

1.2 Critical geopolitics/​popular geopolitics

The awareness of the power of geography to produce and transform the world by
describing it is one of the most important developments in contemporary geo-
graphical thought. Hence, when Gerard Toal opens his book Critical Geopolitics
(Ó Tuathail 1996, 1) with the sentence “Geography is about power,” he is not
inventing something new. However, he is formalizing a combination of ideas in
a clear theoretical approach and on that approach, he bases a new way of doing
and thinking geopolitics. He writes: “Although often assumed to be innocent,
the geography of the world is not a product of nature but a product of histories
of struggle between competing authorities over the power to organize, occupy,
and administer space […]. Geography was not something already possessed
by the earth but an active writing of the earth by an expanding, centralizing
imperial state. It was not a noun but a verb, a geo-​graphing, an earth-​writing”
(Ó Tuathail 1996, 1).
In this way, he restates the idea that “the land is not only represented, it is also
produced by geography.” Starting from Gerald Toal’s contribution, Foucault’s
notions of power/​knowledge and discourse spark the revolution in geography
advocated by Raffestin (1997). Since then, the act of “writing the world” has
no longer been seen as a straightforward performance. On the contrary, the idea
that writing, representation and mapping are all forms of geo-​power is now
mainstream among the practitioners of the discipline.
Critical Geopolitics has been defined as “[i]‌maginative, intellectually ambi-
tious […] engaging […] outstanding” (Hague 2011, 417). For this reason,
the book has become a reference text for political geography worldwide.
However, it is not the first step in this direction. Starting from the conviction
that geography is never a non-discursive phenomenon, separated from ideology
and politics, but a form of knowledge in the Foucauldian sense, Toal wrote,
together with John Agnew, an article in 1992 where they proposed “the re-​
conceptualization of geopolitics using the concept of discourse” (Ó Tuathail
and Agnew 1992). In the paper, geopolitics is defined as “a discursive practice
by which intellectuals of statecraft ‘spatialize’ international politics and represent
it as a ‘world’ characterized by particular types of places, peoples and dramas”
(Ó Tuathail and Agnew 1992, 190). At the beginning of the 1990s, Simon Dalby
was also moving in the same direction with the book Creating the Second Cold
War (Dalby 1990) and the article “Critical Geopolitics: Discourse, Difference,
and Dissent” (Dalby 1991).
The notion of discourse refers to the interpretative, not simply verbal,
tools that are put in place for the construction of meaning. In Foucauldian
terms “discourses are not simply reflections or (mis)representations of ‘reality’;
rather they create their own ‘regimes of truth’—​the acceptable formulation
of problems and solutions to those problems” (Lees 2004, 102–​103). In this
perspective, the geopolitical is “a differential discourse that mobilizes spatial
logics and imaginaries for processes of identity construction, while presenting
22 Theoretical framework
itself as merely reporting on the final product of these processes” (Grayson
2018). A geopolitical discourse is always “localized” in time and space and has
a “naturalizing” function, i.e., it allows us to accept as “natural” things that
are not natural at all. Hence, it must be deconstructed starting from its rhet-
orical artifices, the reference lexicon, the basic postulates and all those cat-
egories which, although they are themselves a product of a given historical and
cultural context, are instead considered bearers of an interpretative capacity of
absolute value. In this regard, any form of representation that has as its object
the depiction of spaces and/​or spatially connoted individuals constitutes a form
of knowledge/​power capable of producing a discursive narrative and deserves
to become an object of research, including popular culture.
A geopolitical discourse is also embedded, i.e., deeply rooted in historical,
geographical and cultural reality. At times, a certain tradition of thought, and
the ensuing discourse, takes precedence over the others and prevails. In this
perspective can be read, for example, the imposition of the Westphalian system
of the nation-​state on all other potential forms of political-​spatial control of
power. Within this “territorial trap” (Agnew 1994), the dominant geopolitical
discourse can be defined as a process of spatial exclusion: “it can be argued
that the essential moment of geopolitical discourse is the division of space into
‘our’ place and ‘their’ place” (Dalby 1991, 274), dividing “our” national terri-
tory, but also “our” urban neighborhood, from “their” national territory and
“their” urban district. Geopolitical discourse not only works by dividing spaces,
it also divides human beings associated with them, “its political function being
to incorporate and regulate ‘us’ or ‘the same’ by distinguishing ‘us’ from ‘them’,
the same from ‘the other’” (ibid.). According to this theoretical approach, “geo-
politics is about the assignment of values to places, and it constructs hierarchies
of people and places that matter and those that do not” (Dittmer and Bos
2019, xix).
To understand how a given geopolitical discourse develops, that is which
values are assigned to people and places, it is important to analyze representations.
They can be produced from a wide variety of sources. In this regard, Gerald Toal
(Ó Tuathail 1999) distinguishes between different types of representation: those
provided by “formal geopolitics,” i.e., the set of studies and research that form
the object of geopolitics as a discipline; those consisting of the discourses and
practices of active politics, which are part of so-​called “practical geopolitics”;
those produced by popular culture (“popular geopolitics”). Practical geopolitics,
formal geopolitics, and popular geopolitics are all forms of power-​knowledge,
which tend to intersect. Practical geopolitics can influence popular geopolitics
(through the production of propaganda films, for example), and be influenced
by it, because “the distinction between the truly factual and fictional blurs in
this society of the media spectacle” (Sharp 1998, 155), while “The mass media
produce geo-​graphs of world politics and international relations for public con-
sumption alongside the more erudite highbrow texts mentioned above” (ibid.,
153). Just as the production of discourse is embedded, i.e. deeply rooted in his-
torical, geographical, and cultural reality, so is the audience (Dittmer and Dodds
 Critical geopolitics and popular geopolitics 23
2008), which will be able to negotiate different meanings from the same text,
depending on its location in the world, on its competence, on its education.
Popular geopolitics is a subdiscipline developed within critical geopolitics
(Dittmer 2018). Specifically, popular geopolitics studies how popular culture
constructs people and places within broader political narratives and “focuses
on the ways in which popular culture discourses contribute to the creation of
hegemony, whether that is patriarchy (gender-​based hegemony), bigotry (race-​
based hegemony), heteronormativity (sexual preference-​ based hegemony),
or other forms of hegemony” (Dittmer and Bos 2019, 30). Cinema has been
popular geopolitics’ main object of interest for a long time, since movies pro-
vide “a language and imagery,” but also “reference points and ways of en-​
framing popular understandings of the […] world” (Power and Crampton 2005,
193). Nowadays, much of the attention of popular geopolitics’ practitioners still
focuses mostly on visual media: art, cinema, comics, video games. Occasionally,
it focuses on music (Kirby 2019) and song lyrics (dell’Agnese 2015). Sometimes,
it also works on message boards and social media (Harby 2019). More rarely, it
takes into account literary texts (novels, short stories, poems).
Starting from its origins (the expression “popular geopolitics” was first used
by Joanne Sharp in 1993), popular geopolitics has broadened its interests so
much that it is very difficult to conduct an exhaustive analysis of all the trends
that are being implemented (Saunders and Strukov 2018). At the same time, it
has established itself as an indispensable approach to geopolitical analysis, aimed
at revealing how certain representations, ideas and forms of knowledge become
rooted as common sense (Grayson 2018).

1.3 Ecocriticism
Widening the scope of analysis to include the study of the relationship between
human and nonhuman brings critical geopolitics in contact with ecocriticism.
Ecocriticism, as defined by Garrard (2009, 19), is “the ability to investigate cul-
tural artifacts from an ecological perspective.” It is a cultural criticism approach,
developed in the 1990s to study the “relationships between […] human culture
and the physical world” (Glotfelty 1996, xx).
Initially, there was no agreement on how to name it. Garrard (2010, 1) writes
in this regard that “as leaders in the field, Lawrence Buell and Jonathan Bate
have expressed a preference for the names ‘environmental criticism’ and
‘ecopoetics.’” “Other suggested alternatives to ‘ecocriticism’ have included
literary-​environmental studies, literary ecology, literary environmentalism, and
green cultural studies” (Hutchings 2007, 174). However, as Garrard (2010,
1) adds, ecocriticism now “is the most prevalent and widely accepted name.”
The choice of name is important, also from a theoretical point of view.
According to Cheryll Glotfelty, one of the scholars who has contributed most
to give a canonical and recognizable form to the field, it is better to use the
prefix “eco-​,” instead of building a portmanteau with the word environment.
“In its connotations, enviro-​is anthropocentric and dualistic, implying that we
24 Theoretical framework
humans are at the center, surrounded by everything that is not us, the environ-
ment. Eco-​, in contrast, implies interdependent communities, integrated systems,
and strong connections among constituent parts” (1996, xix). Ecocriticism, in
this way, puts itself outside the anthropocentric discourse.
Ecocriticism arises as a reaction to the awareness of the looming environ-
mental crisis, with a clear political question: “How then can we contribute to
environmental restoration, not just in our spare time, but from within our cap-
acity as professors of literature?” Thus, just as feminist literary criticism shares
with feminism the commitment to women, and Marxist criticism sides with
the workers, so ecocriticism is committed to the environment (Glotfelty 1996,
xxi). “As a field of literary inquiry […] ‘ecocriticism’ […] investigates literature
in relation to the histories of ecological or environmentalist thought, ethics,
and activism” (Hutchings 2007, 172). Thus, it aims to analyze the meaning
attributed to the environment and nature by a particular author in a single text
or by an entire literary genre, or to evaluate the evolution of concepts, such as
“‘nature’, ‘wilderness’, ‘humanity’, ‘the animal’ and ‘progress’” (Kerridge 2016,
14). Specifically, it aims to answer questions such as “What role does the phys-
ical setting play in the plot of this novel? Are the values expressed in this play
consistent with ecological wisdom? How do our metaphors of the land influ-
ence the way we treat it? How can we characterize nature writing as a genre?
In addition to race, class, and gender, should place become a new critical cat-
egory? […] What view of nature informs US Government reports, corporate
advertising, and televised nature documentaries, and to what rhetorical effect?”
(Glotfelty 1996, xix).
Ecocriticism goes beyond nature writing and the writing alone. Precisely
because of the themes dealt with,ecocriticism promises to leave the rooms of
literary criticism, to encourage the cross-​fertilization of literary studies with
other disciplines such as history, psychology, art history, ethics, and above all
philosophy, especially with regard to the subject of posthumanism and eco-
feminism (Iovino 2010; Oppermann 2013; Oppermann 2016). Along this path,
ecocriticism even challenges “logocentric thought,” theorizing a “material
ecocriticism” approach, which merges “material realities into discursive
dynamics” (Iovino and Opperman 2012, 448).
Thanks to these ongoing cross-​ fertilizations, the thematic interests of
ecocriticism have greatly expanded over time. The very idea of “physical envir-
onment” has become immensely enriched, so much so that Greg Garrard, in
a theoretical synthesis (2004, 5), extends the scope of analysis to include “the
study of the relationship between human and nonhuman, throughout the cul-
tural history of humanity, and the critical analysis of the very meaning of the
term ‘human’.”
Parallel to the themes, the range of texts subject to analysis has also been
extended, because a message about the environment may be “everywhere, from
TV cookery programs to new readings of Shakespeare” (Kerridge 2016). So,
from the initial core, focused on Anglo-​American nature writing or English
 Critical geopolitics and popular geopolitics 25
romantic poetry, the interest of ecocriticism has gone in the direction of
different popular culture products, such as theatre performances, visual art, pho-
tography, cinema (Armbruster and Wallace 2001), but also “matter as a text, as
a site of narrativity, a storied matter, a corporeal palimpsest in which stories are
inscribed” (Iovino and Opperman 2012, 451).
From a methodological point of view, the analysis promoted by ecocriticism
can offer many inspiring examples.As far as the analysis is concerned, ecocriticism
suggests going beyond the simple examination of plot and characters to verify
the use of metaphors, similes and other figures of speech related to the world
of nature, or the quality of environmental descriptions and the kind of setting.
Given the attention expressed by ecocriticism towards topics such as envir-
onment and nature, sense of place and landscape, it seems difficult not to see
a convergence of interests with geography, and in particular with those forms
of geographical research that deal with analyzing the modes of representation
of the “geo” (i.e., terrestrial spaces) present outside the texts of conventional
geography. Moreover, as summarized by Serenella Iovino in an interview,1 the
relationship between ecology and literature can be considered taking either
of two approaches: thematic and “systemic.” The thematic approach highlights
how nature and the environment are represented in cultural texts and how
these representations have changed over time. This type of analysis not only
deals with representations of natural disasters, or texts with an environmen-
talist message, because any text representing contact between humans and
nonhumans (animals, context, natural life forms, or artificial intelligence) can
be the subject of analysis. Then there is the approach, which Iovino calls “sys-
temic.” It does not focus on the ideas represented in the texts, but on how ideas
interact with the socio-​cultural contexts where it circulates. Thus, she says, it
is possible to look at the role of literature and cultural texts in the collective
imagination (in the hope that they can be instruments of “environmental edu-
cation”) (see also Iovino 2013).
The attention to the “effects” that popular culture (be it literary works, films,
plays) can have in the way of thinking about the “environment” and, more gen-
erally, the relationship between humans and nonhuman elements of the con-
text, is common to ecocritical geopolitics. However, even if the texts analyzed
may coincide and the interest in environmental issues coalesce, between critical
ecocriticism and the “expanded” version of geopolitics, which is “ecocritical
geopolitics,” there is still a difference. Ecocritical geopolitics goes beyond the
formal analysis of the text, to seek the power-​knowledge mechanism in its dis-
cursive articulation; moreover, it is also interested in seeing how the audience
reacts.

Note
1 https://​ w ww.greenious.it/​ s erenella-​ i ovino-​ e cologia- ​ l etteratura- ​ u n- ​ b inomio-​
inscindibile/​, consulted on 14/​06/​2020
26 Theoretical framework
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2 
What kind of environmental
discourse is that?

2.1 Discourse about the multifaceted system of material

things, subjects and causal agents that may be called
“environment”
A fundamental thing, when dealing with the analysis of a text using the approach
of popular geopolitics, is to distinguish between the message, if there is one, and
the discourse. Discourse is defined by Brulle as “the term used to describe the
historically specific world-​views that serve as the basis for formulation of col-
lective social action” (1996, 60). If discourse is the set of taken-​for-​granted cat-
egories used to make sense of the world, the message can only be influenced by
it. However, the message depends on a conscious choice by the author, while
the discourse is linked to the cultural context in which the author is placed.
Since it is taken for granted, discourse is what the author considers natural and
normal, without questioning it. A green movie or a nature-​writing book can
therefore convey a message inspired by the author’s desire to protect the envir-
onment and at the same time be imbued with a discourse in which the human
being is given a role of exceptionality in relation to the other components of
the environment. In fact, this is what happens most often. Moreover, as has
already been said before, any other text can reflect a discourse on the envir-
onment, or rather on the relation, more or less “dualistic,” that is supposed to
exist between human beings and “nature,” even without the desire to convey
an environmental message.
Defining what is meant by environmental discourse is not easy, since both
the term discourse and the term environment can be subject to a multiplicity
of interpretations and uses. According to Giblett (2011, 9–​10), talking about the
“environment” is already a discourse above “nature.” If nature can be “defined
simply as a collective noun for land, living beings, air, water, energy and
planetary motion,” speaking about “environment” means separating “a subject
from its environs,” and producing a “master-​slave relationship between them.”
In a less drastic way, Iovino does not propose to abandon the notion of envir-
onment but to define it as a “model that includes a wider number of subjects
and causal agents, introducing issues of ontology, epistemology, and posthuman
ethics” (Iovino 2012, 59–​60).
30 Theoretical framework
About discourse, it may be intended merely in connection with Foucault’s
philosophy, as a linguistic and semiotic construction, or as a practice. Generally
speaking, it can be assumed that “Discourse about the natural world, like dis-
course generally, is composed of fragments of multiple social texts, ideologies,
or styles” (Marafiote and Plec 2011, 49). More specifically, it may be defined
as the “dominant ideological premises that both precondition and reproduce
particular human relationships with nature” (Milstein 2009, 25), no matter
what form these premises take.The connection between discourse and material
reality is in any case evident. As stated by Giblett (2011, 10), “One of the most
powerful ways in which mastery over the earth is exercised is via the discourses
of nature. I define discourses as institutionalized ways of seeing, saying and
doing.” According to Milstein (2009), “The exploration of the role of discourse
in human destruction of the environment and oppression of other species is of
central concern because, even though human power over nature is decidedly
materially experienced, the material practices themselves are both justified and
reinforced via processes and systems of discourse, or representation” (2009, 26)
Discursive practices are also power practices. Quoting Milstein again, it is
possible to observe that “discursive practices that incorporate significations of
nature, animals, and certain people as subordinated ‘others’ will inevitably be
loaded with ideology that contributes to reinforcing the structure of power
relations.” (Milstein 2009, 26).
Alongside hegemonic, or dominant, discourse and its practices, it is possible
that alternative discursive practices may develop, in contrast to them. Milstein
lists, in this regard, three dialectics typical of Western discourse on the environ-
ment: first, the presumption that the human being has mastery over nature, and,
in contrast, the idea that the ability to live in harmony with nature should be
positively evaluated; second, there is the dialectic between reading difference in
dichotomous terms, and the desire to overcome these dualisms (“This othering
often serves not only to justify exploitive views and practices, but also to divorce
humans from the knowledge that they are, in fact, animals and part of nature
themselves”, 2009, 27). Eventually, the third dialectic, which descends directly
from the first two, opposes exploitation to idealism. It should be noted that
mastering, othering, and exploitation are connected to an underlying attitude,
anthropocentrism, which has its roots in ancient times. In addition, it must be
emphasized, again with Milstein (2009, 28), that “Contemporary, profit-​driven
Western processes of excessive mass consumption largely depend upon mas-
tery, othering, and exploitation of nature, animals, and other people.” For this,
they are much more pervasive than alternative discursive practices. Both will
be examined in the following sections, even if, while being aware of the great
contribution that oriental philosophies, or indigenous attitudes towards nature,
could offer to the debate, the analysis will be limited to Western thought alone.

2.2 Anthropocentrism and speciesism

The most obvious of attitudes towards one’s “environs” is to consider one-
self at the center. Indeed, “some degree of an anthropocentric orientation
 What kind of discourse is that? 31
is inescapable simply by the fact that as humans, humans perceive the world
within the limits of human bodies and cognition” (Weitzenfeld and Joy 2014,
4). Indeed, “we are restricted to our own human interpretations of nature and
can consider our treatment of the natural world only within the framework of
human desires and needs” (Taylor 1983, 239).
Albeit “there are some ways where anthropocentrism is not objectable”
(Hayward 1997, 49), anthropocentrism, which places humans at the center of
all meaning, is not just a perceptive issue, but an attitude that takes on features
that are ontological (human beings are exceptional) and ethical (and thus they
are the masters of their universe and can exploit every other living being).
Anthropocentrism is so widespread as to appear “normal”, or rather, “nat-
ural” and therefore normal; however, it is not just an innate disposition, it is
“an historical outcome” (Weitzenfeld and Joy 2014) and has its own cultural
specificity. It is typical of Western thought, for instance, but absent in many
indigenous societies (Kopnina, Washington, Taylor and Piccolo 2018). The bio-
regional home-​habitat of the Australian Aboriginal Country, for instance, is
composed of “symbiotic livelihoods […] that work (with) the earth as a living
being” (Giblett 2011, 10).
As far as Western thought goes, the idea has ancient origins and refers both to
philosophy (Aristotle denied reason to animals, while the Stoics denied duties
of justice toward them) and religion. Specifically, “The dominant view in the
history of Western philosophy is that human beings are fundamentally superior
to nonhuman animals, typically on the grounds that only human beings possess
reason, language, and self-​awareness” (Steiner 2005, 38). This attitude belongs
to the whole “monolithic anthropocentric Aristotelian-​Ptolemaic cosmology
which came to dominate the Islamic and later the medieval European world-​
view” (Sessions 1974, 75). The view that nonhuman nature has no intrinsic
claim to exist and to prosper in itself was later reinforced by the development
of modern Western philosophy. The apex of this position was reached by René
Descartes (1596–​1650), according to whom not only do animals not have rights,
but they do not even have sensitivity (“animals are without feeling or awareness
of any kind”), because they are simple mechanisms (their body being “comme
une machine qui, ayant été faite des mains de Dieu, est incomparablement
mieux ordonnée […] qu’aucune de celles […] inventées par les hommes,” that
is as a machine that, being built by God, is much better that any machine made
by humans) (Cottingham 1978, 552).
To philosophy, religion must be added. The Greek gods had human features.
This fact “reveals their anthropocentrism, the view that human beings are pri-
mary and central in the order of things” (Steiner 2005, 1). As Lynn White (1967,
1205) adds (in “the most controversial and widely-​discussed paper to approach
the environmental crisis from a philosophic-​religious perspective”) (Sessions
1974, 72): “Christianity is the most anthropocentric religion the world has
seen. As early as the 2nd century both Tertullian and Saint Irenaeus of Lyons
were insisting that when God shaped Adam, he was foreshadowing the image of
the incarnate Christ, the Second Adam. Man [sic] shares, in great measure, God’s
transcendence of nature. Christianity, in absolute contrast to ancient paganism
32 Theoretical framework
and Asia’s religions (except, perhaps, Zoroastrianism), not only established a
dualism of man and nature but also insisted that it is God’s will that man exploit
nature for his proper ends.” From this, White derives the idea that Judeo-​
Christian thought, maintaining the superiority of human beings over all other
forms of life, encouraged the over-​exploitation of nature.
According to Robert Livingston Schuyler (1948), anthropocentrism is
“Man’s Greatest Illusion.” Like White, Livingston Schuyler spoke of “man”
instead of “human beings” (they were both integrated in the geopolitical dis-
course of their time, and thus their use of the term “man” to indicate the whole
of humanity was “taken-​for-​granted”). Yet his analysis deserves to be revisited
because it adds decidedly profound ideas to the debate. “Illusions of grandeur,”
he writes, “may take many forms; for example, individu, national, racial, and
human” (1948, 48). Precisely on the basis of these illusions, human beings
project themselves outside of reality, into that “cartographic reason” (Farinelli
1992) through which they make up another illusion, the illusion of controlling
the world (and of being its only master).
Of course, “man” also deludes himself that he is exceptional, above any other
living thing. “There are two distinguishable claims implicit in human excep-
tionalism. The first is that humans are unique, humans are the only beings that
do or have X (where X is some activity or capacity); and the second is that
humans, by doing or having X, are superior to those that don’t do or have X”
(Gruen 2011, 4). Point one can be read in many different ways: nonhuman
animals cannot write, for example, or have generally more limited forms of
communication. However, it is a fact that human beings do not know how to
fly, for instance, or return home thanks to their sense of smell. The first point
provides grounds for the second, which becomes problematic, as it justifies
feeling superior and masterful.
On this basis, a clear distinction between humans and nonhuman animals
(dualism) is drawn, whereby people are expected to value humans above other
animals. Such an attitude is called “speciesism.” The word, coined by Ryder
(1970), was later popularized by Peter Singer in his book Animal Liberation
(1975). Speciesism is used to denote “a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of
the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of
other species.” The “anthropocentric discourse” is based on the presumption
that human beings are superior to animals in terms of intellectual and linguistic
abilities, that they are therefore “exceptional” compared to them, while spe-
ciesism affirms the superior right of the species, regardless of the intellectual
qualities of individuals. An example offered by Singer (1975) shows how non-
human animals with greater cognitive abilities than orphaned children with
severe brain damage are regularly subjected to invasive and painful research,
while orphaned children are not, only because of their biological classification.
On the grounds of speciesism, in turn, it is possible to base the right for the
exploitation of species of living beings considered inferior.
As will be shown in the following sections, voices against anthropocentrism
(and against speciesism) have been raised since antiquity. In recent decades,
 What kind of discourse is that? 33
efforts to overcome anthropocentrism have become increasingly significant.
This does not mean that Leopold’s “Land Ethic” (1949) has been realized, as
Thomas A. Heberlein optimistically wrote in the now distant 1972, under-
lining how awareness of environmental issues was rapidly increasing at the time.
On the contrary, the growth of public concern over environmental problems
referred to by Heberlein stems “from a recognition of the consequences such
problems can have for human beings rather than the total (nonhuman as well
as human) environment” (Dunlap,Van Liere, & Kent 1977, 204). It follows that,
even for many of those involved in environmentalism, the growing awareness
of environment is linked to the fear that damage to the environment may result
in damage to the quality of life of human beings. “To ascribe value to things
of nature as they benefit man [sic] is to regard them as instruments to man’s
[sic] survival or well-​being. This is an anthropocentric point of view” (Murdy
1975, 1169). Holding on to this statement, most of the positions expressed
today by “mainstream environmentalism,” from conservationism to the pursuit
of sustainability, can be qualified as anthropocentric. So, despite the great fame
achieved by the works of nature writers such as Henry David Thoreau and
John Muir, despite the reflections of later authors such as Aldo Leopold, despite
the extensive discussion on environmental ethics, deep ecology, ecofeminism,
and posthumanism, and despite the growing interest in critical animal studies,
anthropocentrism and speciesism remain the dominant attitudes in the 21st
century.

2.3 Thinking outside the box

However, it must be stressed that not everyone has always shared anthropo-
centric positions. Even remaining within the tradition of Western thought, for
example, the Homeric writings show a more articulate attitude, suggesting a
continuum between humans and nonhuman animals, more than a clear divide
(Steiner 2005). This is evidenced by the frequent use of analogies between
human warriors and animals of great strength, such as lions; from the various
metamorphoses suffered by some of the characters, and by single episodes, such
as the exchange of emotion between Argos, the old dog who uses all his strength
to wag his tail seeing his master, and Ulysses, who, having arrived home incog-
nito, must hide his emotion, and looks the other way, wiping away “a salty tear.”
Some of the pre-​Socratic philosophers also advanced non-​anthropocentric
positions, since they tried “to understand [the human being] as an organism in
interaction with the environment, the two being by no means ultimately dis-
tinct” (Sessions 1974, 76). In the 6th century BCE, the Pythagoreans did not
eat animals, because they believed in metempsychosis, or the transmigration
of souls. Around the mid-​5th century BCE, Empedocles forbade the sacrifice
of animals and meat-​eating on a similar basis. In the 1st century CE, Plutarch
practiced vegetarianism out of respect for animals; he believed that their experi-
ential capacities were rich enough to prevent us using them for food, and that
eating animals was not a natural behavior, but an acquired habit. In the 3rd
34 Theoretical framework
century, the neo-​Platonic Porphyry wrote On Abstinence from Killing Animals,
where he argues that the practice of eating meat is bad for the health, that no
animal sacrifices should be made, and that every being who has perceptions and
memory deserves justice (Steiner 2005).
In Lynn White’s (1967) opinion, alternative visions,“which might provide an
antidote to the ‘arrogance’ of a mainstream tradition steeped in anthropocen-
trism” (Brennan and Lo 2020) existed even within Christianity. In the 15th cen-
tury, for instance, Saint Francis of Assisi, suggested “an alternative Christian view
of nature” substituting “the idea of the equality of all creatures, including man
[sic], for the idea of man’s [sic] limitless rule of creation” (White 1967, 1207).
Outside of Christianity, the Dutch philosopher of Jewish religion Baruch
Spinoza (1632–​1677) argued against a human-​centered view of the universe,
implying that “our value systems and judgments are usually the result of seeing
things in terms of our own narrow interests stemming from our finite human
perspective” (Sessions 1974, 79). Spinoza also does not deny that animals have
emotions and that they share with the human being the “endeavor to persist
in its own being.” This openness does not, however, prevent him from having
a perspective marked by speciesism (and also by a strong gender bias), as can
be seen from the following statement: “the law against slaughtering animals is
based more on empty superstition and effeminate pity than on sound reason.”
He goes on: “I do not deny that beasts have feelings, but I do deny that it is
impermissible, on this account, for us to consult our own advantage, and to use
them as we wish and to treat them in such a way as is more convenient for us”
(Strawser 2011, 9–​10). Later on, David Hume (1711–​1776), in his A Treatise of
Human Nature (1739–​40) states that animals are endowed with thought and
reason, and pride and humility, and love and hate; but they do not have morality
(Arnold 1995).
More advanced in this line of thought are the positions of Jeremy Bentham
(1748–​1832), starting from an “empiricist” position, who affirms, with a sen-
tence destined to become famous in the world of animal studies and beyond,
that: “The French have already discovered that the blackness of the skin is no
reason why a human being should be abandoned without redress to the caprice
of a tormentor. It may one day come to be recognized that the number of the
legs, the villosity of the skin, or the termination of the os sacrum are reasons
equally insufficient for abandoning a sensitive being to the same fate […] the
question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
(Bentham 1789, Ch. 17, Footnote b).
The German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–​1860) is “one of
the first Western philosophers to accord not only moral standing but moral
rights to animals” (Puryear 2017). As Steiner points out (2005, 188), according
to Schopenhauer, we owe animals “not mercy but justice.” Animals are in all
essential aspects identical to us, even if they are less intelligent. For this reason,
they cannot continue to appear as creatures without rights. In this respect,
Europe has much to learn from the “superior morality of the East, because
Brahmanism and Buddhism do not limit their precepts to ‘neighbours’ but take
 What kind of discourse is that? 35
‘all living beings’ under their protection.” On the other hand, he is convinced
that suffering increases with increasing clarity of conscience, and that therefore
the pain suffered by animals is less than that suffered by humans (Puryear 2017).
On this basis, he takes a stance against vivisection, unless it is a practice linked
to a very important investigation and of immediate use.With regard to the con-
sumption of meat, the death of the animal must be immediate and unexpected.
All activities that exploit animals for fun, such as hunting or bullfighting, should
be banned (Steiner 2005).
Also, on the other side of the Atlantic, “glimmerings of an alternative view-
point first appeared, developed by writers who saw that nature could serve as
an end in itself and was not merely something to be conquered or exploited”
(Payne 1996, 13). One of those writers was Henry David Thoreau (1817–​1862),
the author of Resistance to Civil Government (1849), Walking (1851) and Walden.
Or Life in the Woods (1854). He has been called “an American analogue to
Schopenhauer” (Oelschlaeger 1991, 133), because he shares with Schopenhauer
a generalized criticism towards Modernism. He also shares with the German
philosopher a similar attention to animal lives, even if his interests are mostly
focused “in the transcendental implications of nature” (Whitford and Whitford
1951, 293). Walden is an autobiographical book, in which the author tells
about his own experience of life alone in the woods, taking the opportunity to
express a critical attitude towards the consumerism of Western society. At the
same time, he exalts the ability to live alone, without needing others, to medi-
tate and spiritually immerse oneself in nature. Because of his scientific approach,
Thoreau has been defined a “pioneer ecologist and conservationist” (Whitford
and Whitford, 1951) and “the father of American phenology” (Leopold and
Jones 1947, 83). Moreover, he “had the brilliance to recognize, before Darwin
published his theory of evolution, an organic connection between Homo sapiens
and nature, a natural world from which the species had come and to which it
was bound” (Oelschlaeger 1991, 133): more specifically, his “great genius” was
able not only to see the affinity between wild nature and the human being,
but also to question the alleged dichotomy between primitive and civilized
(Oelschlaeger 1991, 134). Walden was highly appreciated by Ralph Waldo
Emerson (who actually owned Walden Pond), enjoyed moderate success from
the first edition, but was later forgotten (Dean and Scharnhorst 1990). It grad-
ually regained popularity as from the 1890s, and later became a classic of nature-​
writing (Buell 1995).
Charles R. Darwin (1809–​1882), with the theory of descent from a common
progenitor (On the Origin of Species, 1859), definitively overcomes the idea of
a clear separation between species, requiring humans to accept their “animal”
nature. In Darwin’s perspective, human beings and animals, descending from a
common origin, have similar minds, and similar emotions, even though human
beings have developed greater intellectual and emotional capacities. Superior
animals also possess language skills, again developed to different degrees, from
the limited abilities of apes, to those immensely more evolved of humans. Given
this conception of “continuity,” and given the enormous influence exerted
36 Theoretical framework
among contemporaries and later, Darwin’s theories “provided sufficient evi-
dence to finally inter the idea that nature exists to serve man [sic]” (Murdy
1975, 1168). Consequently, they had the potential to undermine anthropocen-
trism as an ideology, since they contributed to destroy “humanity’s self-​image as
a purposeful creation at the center of the universe with the exceptional capacity
of free will” (Weitzenfeld and Joy 2014, 7).
It did not happen. However, since the publication of On the Origin of Species,
Darwin had a great influence on the vision of nature of many scholars. One
of them was John Muir, perhaps one of the first and most attentive American
readers of his works. John Muir can certainly be listed, along with Thoreau,
among the American writers who have contributed to providing “glimmerings
of an alternative viewpoint” (Payne 1996, 13), but he was also something
more: he was the first to “combine esthetic, ecological, economic, and ethical
rationales into a persuasive polemic for political change” (Payne 1996, 14).
John Muir (1838–​1914) is an iconic figure in the history of environmen-
talism. Born in Scotland, he emigrated as a child to the US, where, albeit never
graduating, he became a respected botanist, geologist, and glaciologist. He was
also an explorer, and a writer. He was a co-​founder of the Sierra Club in 1892
and one of the first supporters of the idea of the national park in the US (so
much so that he is frequently referred to as “the father of American National
Parks”) (Giblett 2011). Like Thoreau, Muir insisted on the intrinsic worth of
nature. In the opinion of both, nature should be preserved for its own sake
(Dunlap and Mertig 1991, 209–​210). Although he did not leave any properly
philosophical treatises, John Muir nevertheless developed theoretical positions
in which he constantly challenged the Judeo-​Christian derived anthropocen-
trism and its affirmation within modernist thinking. Specifically, Muir attacks
the selfishness of human civilization and calls the human being “Lord Man.”
Consequently, in the journal he kept of his 1867 walk from Indiana to the Gulf
of Mexico (A Thousand-​Mile Walk to the Gulf, 1916, 122), he writes: “I have
precious little sympathy for the selfish propriety of the civilized man, and, if a
war of races should occur between the wild beasts and Lord Man, I would be
tempted to sympathize with the bears.”
In developing a biocentric attitude, Muir realized that “humankind enjoyed
no special dispensation, and therefore he abandoned the doctrine of special
creation and any supernaturalistic account of the human soul” (Oelschlaeger
1991, 191). In nature, God was incarnate; more precisely, God is nature, “a
sacred living temporal presence in everlasting process” (Oelschlaeger 1991, 191).
Within this process, the human species is no longer the chosen species, just one
of many.

2.4 Conservation /​preservation

The origins of contemporary environmentalism may be traced back to the
conservation movement that emerged in the late 1800s in the United States in
response to the exploitation of the country’s natural resources.
 What kind of discourse is that? 37
A “conservation ‘ethic’ —​if not a unified, coherent movement —​existed
long before. That ethic derived from the fear that abuse of the land threatened
the future of American civilization” writes Pisani (1985, 341), and he
adds: “Concern for the future of American forests antedated the Civil War. For
example, in both The Pioneers (1823) and The Prairie (1827), James Fenimore
Cooper lamented the destruction of trees” (1985, 342). The contributions that
have given a more important impulse to the maturation of an environmentalist
sensibility, however, are those of George P. Marsh, Henry David Thoreau, and
John Muir, all published during the second half of the century.
George Perkins Marsh (1801–​1882) was a geographer, diplomat, and polit-
ician. His role in the making of the environmental movement in the US was
critical to the point that he has been called one its “fathers.” In 1847, he gave
a speech to the Agricultural Society of Rutland County, Vermont, drawing
attention to the destructive impact of deforestation and the consequences that
this impact had on the environment. He said that “The inconveniences resulting
from a want of foresight in the economy of the forest are already severely felt in
many parts of New England, and even in some of the older towns in Vermont.
Steep hill-​sides and rocky ledges are well suited to the permanent growth of
wood, but when in the rage for improvement they are improvidently stripped of
this protection, the action of sun and wind and rain soon deprives them of their
thin coating of vegetable mold, and this, when exhausted, cannot be restored
by ordinary husbandry. They remain therefore barren and unsightly blots, pro-
ducing neither grain nor grass, and yielding no crop but a harvest of noxious
weeds, to infest with their scattered seeds the richer arable grounds below. But
this is by no means the only evil resulting from the injudicious destruction of
the woods […]” (Marsh 1848, 18). And then he added that “[I]‌n many European
countries, the economy of the forest is regulated by law; but here, where public
opinion determines, or rather in practice constitutes law, we can only appeal to
an enlightened self-​interest to introduce the reforms, check the abuses, and pre-
serve us from an increase of the evils I have mentioned” (Marsh 1848, 19).
His most important work was published a few years later (1864) with the
title Man and Nature; or, Physical Geography as Modified by Human Action. Here,
he “indicted humankind for wantonly slaughtering animals,” and destroying
nature’s largesse; at the same time, he was certain of “humankind’s superiority
over the remainder of creation” (Oelschlaeger 1991, 108), and of its capacity to
damage it. His positions were thus clearly anthropocentric, but equally clearly
capable of highlighting the role of the human being in ruining the natural
life of the planet. Today, the “distinction Marsh posited between man [sic]
and ‘brute’ creation is abhorrent to most environmentalists,” writes his biog-
rapher, David Lowenthal (2000, 17). Still, Marsh demonstrated that humanity
is “a destabilizing environmental force whose impacts portended an uncertain
future” (Oelschlaeger 1991, 107) and, therefore, that it should also “develop a
stewardship of natural resources” (Brulle 1996, 68). Thus, he may be called not
only a prophet of conservationism, but also a prophet of the Anthropocene dis-
course (Lowenthal 2016).
38 Theoretical framework
“More than Marsh had dreamed, Man and Nature ushered in a revolution
in how people conceived their relations with the earth,” writes Lowenthal
(2000, 3). More specifically, the book “initiated a radical reversal of envir-
onmental attitudes. In tandem with the tree-​planting crusade that swept the
United States in the Arbor Day movement, Marsh’s warnings led the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in 1873 to petition Congress for
a national forestry commission. From this emerged a forest reserve system in
1891, then watershed protection, eventually a federal conservation program for
natural resources” (ibid., 4).
Marsh’s book was judged “epoch-​making” also by Gifford Pinchot (Lowenthal
2009), the man who in fact put Marsh’s suggestions about a more prudent man-
agement of resources into practice and who is therefore called “the architect of
the conservation movement of the early twentieth century” (Miller 2001, 1).
A good friend of Theodore Roosevelt, Gifford Pinchot (1865–​1946) was the
first head of the United States Forest Service, which he founded in 1905. He is
usually considered the main promoter of “utilitarian conservationism,” because
his vision of “managed” conservation “basically meant that lands owned by the
federal government could not only be used for recreation by the general public
but could also be used, responsibly, by industry for logging, mining and many
other purposes including extensive scientific research on tens of thousands of
acres of land.”1
Pinchot’s positions on conservation were quite different from those of
the other prominent figure of early environmentalism, John Muir. The two
men were actually friends for part of their lives, and collaborated for a while
(Clayton 2019), but arrived at a clash over the proposed construction of the
O’Shaughnessy Dam in the Hetch Hetchy Valley, located in a remote northern
section of Yosemite National Park. While Muir opposed the flooding of the
valley because of its beauty, Pinchot argued that the beauty of the landscape
was less important than its usefulness as a reservoir for San Francisco. The dam
was built in 1913 and the friendship split, bringing with it the fracture of the
first environmentalist movement, which divided along two lines (Miller 2001).
So, the he story of the conservation movement in the US is usually told by
­structuring it on the dichotomy between the two “radically contrasting views”2
of Pinchot and Muir, conservation versus preservation (Schmidt di Friedberg
2004).
“The word conservation first took on its generally understood meaning, the
protection, management, and controlled use of natural resources” (Payne 1996).
It was connected with “the movement to construct reservoirs to conserve
spring flood waters for use later in the dry season,” and with “the concept of
planned and efficient progress which lay at the heart of the conservation idea”
(Hays 1959, 5). According to Philip P. Wells, of the National Conservation
Commission, the main aim of “conservation” was “the use of foresight and
restraint in the exploitation of the physical sources of wealth as necessary for
the perpetuity of civilization, and the welfare of present and future generations”
(Hays 1959, 123). By 1909, Pinchot claimed “to have invented the concept of
 What kind of discourse is that? 39
conservationism” (Miller 2001, 153). Concerned by the lack of coordination
between the various agencies that dealt in a fragmented way with water, soil,
wildlife, forests, etc., on the territory of the United States, he understood that
“there was a unity in this complication” and that what could find “order out of
chaos was a belief in the power of conservation to transform human activity”
(Miller 2001, 154). Specifically, he called conservation “the key to the future,” a
key whose goal was to produce “the greatest good, for the greatest number, for
the longest run.”The Pinchot faction of the movement therefore “appropriated
the term to mean the comprehensive and well-​planned management of natural
resources of every character, based on sound ethical and economic grounds”
(Payne 1996). While Pinchot appropriated the term “conservation” for his
viewpoint, there were, on the other side of the schism, those “who would pre-
serve undeveloped land for its esthetic, spiritual, and recreational values as wil-
derness” (Nash 1967, 427) and who poured all their energies into the National
Parks movement. For this reason, the term “preservation” is usually used to
define “the movement to set aside areas of natural scenery or wilderness for
appreciation and enjoyment” (Oravec 1981, 245).
Today, the distance between these two components of environmentalism
seems to have narrowed: despite much of the literature tending to portray
conservationists as “bad,” and preservationists as “good,” and despite John Muir’s
sincere biocentrism, both conservation, understood as the careful management
of “nature” as a resource, and preservation, understood as respect for “nature”
in its wilderness as a spiritual source for human beings, are anthropocentric in
their essence and both fall under the umbrella of mainstream environmentalism.

2.5 Challenging anthropocentrism: biocentrism,

ecocentrism, deep ecology
In the Western tradition, discordant positions regarding the relationship that the
human being has with his/​her surroundings have existed for centuries and have
manifested themselves even within the most “anthropocentric” of religions;
however, a philosophical discussion on these issues, aimed at achieving a “basic
change of values,” has developed under the definition of “environmental ethics”
in relatively recent times in the Anglophone world.
The so-​called “father of environmental ethics” is Aldo Leopold, who, in the
essay “The Land Ethic,” wrote: “There is as yet no ethic dealing with man’s
[sic] relation to land and to the animals and plants which grow upon it […]
The extension of ethics to this third element in human environment is […]
an evolutionary possibility and an ecological necessity” (Leopold 1949, 238–​
239). However, the field acquired a commonly agreed upon “name” only
30 years later, in 1979, with the foundation of the journal Environmental Ethics
(Hargrove 1992).
“Environmental Ethics is concerned with the values attached to the natural
world. It deliberates on the appropriate ethical stance to be adopted by humans
in order to protect or promote these values” (Tharakan, Iype, and Afonso 2011,
40 Theoretical framework
27). Its articulated discussion is very rich and nuanced, but it must be remarked
that “The opposition between anthropocentric and ecocentric or biocentric
approaches” still captures much of the debate (Kopnina 2012, 11).
The tenets of biocentrism can be summarized as follows: “each animal and
plant in the natural world pursues its own good in its own way and therefore
is similar, in that respect, to a human” (Taylor 1983, 237); “the Earth’s bio-
sphere is one total system of interdependent parts, the good of each part being
dependent on the integrity of the whole” (ibid., 238); and, eventually, “humans
have no privileged place in this whole ecological scheme of things” (ibid.).
“Biocentrism” is sometimes used synonymously with ecocentrism. Still,
there are significant differences between the two approaches, about “the focus
on the ‘unit’ of study or care —​be it individual species, individuals within the
species, or entire habitats with their biota” (Kopnina, Washington, Taylor, and
Piccolo 2018, 114). Specifically, ecocentrism also includes in its realm nonliving
elements of the environments, with an “acknowledgment of value in geology
and geomorphology of the land itself.”
In consequence, John Muir, the champion of a non-​anthropocentric vision
of nature, who believed that a human being is only one of the components in a
non-​hierarchical natural world, in which there is no distinction in importance
between living species, was certainly one of the first promoters of a biocen-
tric approach. The “trailblazer” of ecocentrism, rather, is Aldo Leopold, who
wrote that: “the land ethic simply enlarges the boundaries of the community to
include soils, waters, plants, and animals, or collectively: the land” (Leopold 1949,
204). Leopold’s fundamental point is that humans should remove the distinction
between people and nature and recognize that they are simply members of the
ecological community. On this basis, together with Thoreau and Muir, he is
considered “the third giant of wilderness philosophy” (Oelschlaeger 1991, 205).
He differs from them, however, because he attributes to human beings, whom
he defines as an element of nature, the duty to preserve the integrity, stability,
and beauty of natural systems. And he differs from utilitarian conservationists,
because he believes that efficiency and utility are important but secondary
aspects. He also differs profoundly from many supporters of contemporary
animal rights because he considers “game management” to be fundamental
in the ecological field, and “game management implies the associated activ-
ities of hunting and killing game animals for human recreation” (Oelschlaeger
1991, 218).
Still today, pro-​hunting rhetoric continues to use as arguments in its favor
the sustainability of the selection of game species and the protection of the
habitat from the risk of excessive numerical growth of a species not preyed
upon. The elements brought by Aldo Leopold to defend hunting were based
on these very points. Moreover, “according to those who knew him, Leopold
saw hunting as an expression of love for the natural world and, at the very least,
an excellent way to develop a personal connection with the land” (Simpson
and Cain 2000, 183). Of course, anti-​hunters “do not judge the correctness of
hunting by the hectares of protected game habit, the receipt totals of tourism
 What kind of discourse is that? 41
revenues, or even the health of animal population” (ibid., 182). They judge the
practice only “by the pain inflicted upon individual animals and the morality of
any human sport that causes such pain” (ibid.). From these different positions
arises the “animal rights/​environmental ethics debate” (see Hargrove 1992),
which focuses on the question of whether it is possible for an animal welfare
ethic to also provide an appropriate foundation for an environmental ethic
pertaining to wild animals, and not only to domestic animals exposed to factory
farming or experimentation.
Biocentrism and ecocentrism are “the ultimate norm” of deep ecology
(Devall 1991, 248), an environmental movement that wants to place itself
outside of mainstream environmentalism. The expression “deep ecology” is
connected with the work of Arne Naess, a Norwegian activist, who, in a 1973
article (Naess 1973, 97), defined as “shallow ecology” the “fight against pollution
and resource depletion,” whose “central objective” is “the health and affluence
of people in the developed countries.” On the other hand, “deep ecology” is
a normative, eco-​philosophical movement based on the idea of “ecocentric
identification.” According to Devall, “Humans are one of myriad self-​realizing
beings, and human maturity and self-​realization come from broader and wider
self-​identification. Out of identification with forests, rivers, deserts, or moun-
tains comes a kind of solidarity: ‘I am the rainforest’ or ‘I am speaking for this
mountain because it is a part of me’.” (Devall 1991, 248).
In the definition offered by the Encyclopedia of Environmental Ethics and
Philosophy, “deep ecology […] refers to an egalitarian and holistic environ-
mental philosophy founded on phenomenological methodology. By way of
direct experience of nonhuman nature, one recognizes the equal intrinsic
worth of all biota as well as one’s own ecological interconnectedness with the
lifeworld in all its plenitude” (Keller 2009, 206).
The basic principle of deep ecology is “the equal right to live and blossom”
for all living entities. It assumes that all forms of life have a non-​gradual inherent
value, and includes in the idea of life rivers, mountains, and landscapes. Because
of this broader definition of “living beings,” deep ecology refers preferably to
the concept of “ecosphere” instead of “biosphere.”
The positions of Naess were later enriched by the contribution of other
thinkers, such as Devall (1980, 1991), and Sessions (Devall and Sessions 1985),
and achieved a widespread popularity, which spanned “from headline grabbing
environmental activists dressed in coyote costumes to scholars of an astonishing
assortment of backgrounds and interests” (Keller 2009, 206). Moreover, if
the opposition to anthropocentrism is shared by all those who refer to this
approach, the alternatives to anthropocentrism vary, “depending on the non-​
domination-​of-​nature tradition(s) to which particular deep ecologists turn”
(Sessions 1991, 92), ranging from the thought of the philosopher Spinoza, to
that of Heidegger and Buddhism. So, deep ecology, more than a single the-
oretical position, is an “umbrella concept” used in different ways, but always
connected with the desire of opposing anthropocentrism with a biocentric
egalitarianism vision.
42 Theoretical framework
That has not prevented it from being subjected to major criticism, such as
Richard Sylvan (A Critique of Deep Ecology, 1985), which disputes the possibility
of applying egalitarian biocentrism in a proper sense, applying the same rights
in an undifferentiated manner to all species, including viruses and bacteria, or
to the physical components of the planet, such as rivers, mountains, waterfalls,
sunsets, and so on. Deep ecology was also accused of eco-​fascism. Specifically,
“Deep ecologists see this vague and undifferentiated humanity essentially as
an ugly ‘anthropocentric’ thing —​presumably a malignant product of natural
evolution —​that is ‘overpopulating’ the planet, ‘devouring’ its resources, and
destroying its wildlife and the biosphere —​as though some vague domain of
‘nature’ stands opposed to a constellation of nonnatural human beings, with
their technology, minds, society, etc. Deep ecology [has been] formulated largely
by privileged male white academics” (Bookchin 1987).3
So, deep ecology has been heavily criticized also by ecofeminists, because it
tackles anthropocentrism, but seems unable to overcome all other “-​centrisms,”
including those of gender.

2.6 Ecofeminism and posthumanism

A step forward in the discussion of the relationship between human beings
and “nature” is represented by the affirmation of ecofeminist thinking and the
posthumanist approach. From poststructuralism, in general, came first of all
the stimulus to deconstruct the concepts of wilderness and nature (the most
complex word in the English language, following Raymond Williams’ opinion)
(1983, 219) and the practice of nature writing.
Many authors suggest the “constructedness” of the idea of “wilderness” (Nash
1982; Callicott and Nelson 1998) as well as that of “nature,” often pointing out
“the implicit race, class, and gender connotations” (DeLuca and Demo 2001,
543) of the two concepts. As Giblett (2011, 27) underlines, nature writing is
connected with natural history, and both are (or have been) “an outdoor school
to which only men, especially the ‘coming man’ of settler modernity, were
admitted.” The concept of wilderness, in Giblett’s analysis, is not something
existing per se, “a pristine natural place largely free from human or industrial
modification,” but “a construct of settler societies that project a premodern past
onto the hypermodern present.”
“Wilderness […] like nature, is a polysemic sign in search of a referent
and […] entails a disjunction between subject and object” (Giblett 2011, 97).
Wilderness is what is not. “Remoteness from access and settlement defines wil-
derness largely in relation to what it is not rather than in terms of what it is.
Similar difficulties afflict definitions of wilderness in terms of absence of human
inhabitation, though historically for settler societies this has not troubled the
consciences of many” (Giblett 2011, 103).
Moreover,“the interest in wilderness lies somewhere between a western con-
servationist or tourist and land unmodified by modern industrial technology.”
The concept of wilderness, therefore, is strongly linked to a certain type of
 What kind of discourse is that? 43
culture (the Western culture of settlers), and consequently of gender and race.
About that, one can only agree with the statement that “The Achilles heel of
the environmental movement is its whiteness” (DeLuca and Demo 2001, 541).
Indeed, “With its focus on wilderness, the traditional environmental movement
[…] pretends there were no indigenous people in the North American plains
and forests” (ibid., 542).
Also “the concept/​referent of nature has a gender politics. Nature has been
feminized, and culture masculinized, in Western and other cultures. Culture has
been construed and troped in masculine terms and nature in feminine ones in
the Western patriarchal tradition” (Giblett 2011, 29).
The deconstruction of the concepts of nature and wilderness makes evi-
dent the tendency to create oppositions and dualisms (in terms of gender,
race, spatial articulation, etc.) typical of Western thought. So, particularly active
in the work of deconstructing the concept of nature have been scholars in
the field of cultural studies and feminism, and specifically Carolyn Merchant
(1980) and Donna Haraway (1991). Feminists, in particular, are responsible for
highlighting the parallelism between the domination of nature and the domin-
ation of women as resources (Merchant 1980), and also of the responsibility of
the anthropomorphic and stereotypic labels that contribute to the perpetuation
of a system repressive to both women and nature. Environmental movements
and movements for the liberation of women have some intentions in common,
so juxtaposing their goals “can suggest new values and social structures, based
[…] on the full expression of both male and female talent and on the mainten-
ance of environmental integrity” (Merchant 1980, 51).
The environmentalist philosophy that has developed within the feminist
milieu, however, takes positions stronger than deep ecology.While sharing with
it “the desire to supplant the predominant Western anthropocentric environ-
mental frameworks” (Sessions 1991, 90), ecofeminists accuse the ecological
movement in general of failing “to make the conceptual connections between
the oppression of women and the oppression of nature (and to link these
with other systems of oppression)” (Warren 1987, 8). So, “ecofeminism insists
that a proper analysis must also emphasize the intimate logical and historical
connections between the various forms of domination —​the same logic and
attitudes of superiority and practices of domination humans (men?) display in
their relations toward the nonhuman dimensions of the world are found in
men’s relations to women and in imperialistic, racist, and classist structures and
practices” (Sessions 1991, 95).
Specifically, injustices against human and nonhuman animals cannot be
addressed independently, because “they are rooted in hegemonic centrisms —​
widespread and often unquestioned cultural practices of understanding and
evaluating the world through the experiences and norms of an exclusive, elite
population” (Plumwood 2002, quoted by Weitzenfeld and Joy 2014, 9). In this
perspective, Cudworth (2005) coins the concept of “anthroparchy,” which iden-
tifies the system of power connecting anthropocentrism, patriarchate, animal
exploitations, and capitalist domination of nature.
44 Theoretical framework
Ecofeminist positions, such as those developed by D’Eaubonne (1974), and
later by Cudworth (2005) and Sturgeon (1997, 2009), questioning constructions
of class, race, gender, and nature and all the categories separating “men and
women, white people and people of color, humans and animals, mind and body,
rationality and emotion, straight people and queer people” (Sturgeon 2009, 9),
partly coincide with posthumanism, which “does not employ any frontal
dualism or antithesis, demystifying any ontological polarization through the
postmodern practice of deconstruction” (Ferrando 2013, 29).
At the root of these mechanisms of separation, differentiation, and dom-
inance, there are the “Western ideological frameworks [which] operate
dualistically” (Sturgeon 2009, 9). These borders not only differentiate, but also
create a hierarchy, defining who is hierarchically superior and who is below.
So, ecofeminism and posthumanism also share the desire to defy a system of
“unequal power relations which are part of a social structure which is also cap-
italist and patriarchal” (Carter and Charles 2011, 21). Instead, an environmental
activist positioned on ecocentrism can say: “Racism and Sexism for example
are social issues but they are not issues relevant to the survival of the biosphere
[…] I think that speciesism is a far more serious issue” (quoted by Kopnina
2012, 13).
Albeit with different emphasis on “who needs justice” (only less powerful
people, nonhumans, everyone?) (Kopnina 2018, 202), the efforts of all the
scholars who relate to these approaches are aimed at demonstrating how unsus-
tainable are both the idea of human exceptionality and the human-​animal
dichotomy. Indeed, the line that one wants to draw around the human being
is a “mobile border” (Agamben 2002), which “passes first of all within man
[sic]” (Agamben 2002, 2004, 16); that is, it is a line that risks becoming an
internal divide within humankind itself, which cuts off some of its elements,
and produces “an ethico-​politically privileged inside and sacrificial outside”
(Weitzenfeld and Joy 2014, 8).

2.7 Spatializing ecofeminism /​Posthumanizing geo-​g raphy

The same mechanisms of dualism and hierarchy separating “men and women,
white people and people of color, humans and animals, etc.” (Sturgeon 2009,
9) may act at the spatial level. Levels of environmental degradation, pollution
and other environmental risks may be unequally distributed by race and class
(Mohai, Pellow and Roberts 2009). Hence, the idea of the “production for
space” (Lefebvre 1974) becomes fundamental to approaching the concepts of
“environmental racism” (Bullard 1990) and “environmental justice”. Specifically,
“environmental justice” is set as the principle that “all people and communities
are entitled to equal protection of environmental and public health laws and
regulations” (Mohai, Pellow, and Roberts 2009).
The production of space does not act only in a material sense (Teelucksingh
2002). These dualisms, and these mechanism of “naturing” people, may also be
used to interpret spatial Otherness in form of “imaginative geographies,” as
 What kind of discourse is that? 45
suggested by Edward Said in Orientalism (1978). So, contexts too are “natured,”
and explained in essentializing terms, even though this “idealized” vision of
“places […] (supposedly) inhabited by coherent and homogeneous communi-
ties” (Massey 1994, 146), albeit deeply rooted in the Western imagination, does
not correspond to the reality.
Indeed, it is typical of the Western geopolitical imagination to spatialize
difference, imposing a “binary division of the world” where local differences
are “invariably assimilated into a global geographical taxonomy with its roots
in Europe” (Agnew 2003, 23). This has led to a “crystallization” of the idea of
“The West,” in a binary juxtaposition to the “less developed Rest” (Hall 1992),
producing a global imagination where “The West and the Rest are two sides of
a single coin” (Hall 1992, 278).
This process of crystallization follows four different discursive strat-
egies: “idealization; the projection of fantasies of desire and degradation; the
failure to recognize and respect difference; the tendency to impose European
categories and norms, to see difference through the modes of perception and
representation of the West” (Hall 1992, 308). The ensuing process of stereo-
typing tends to collapse the characteristics of the two sides, “splitting” the
stereotype “into two halves —​its ‘good’ and ‘bad’ sides; this is […] dualism”
(ibid.). It seems superfluous to add that “the West and the Rest” are “histor-
ical and linguistic constructs” (and so their “meanings change over time”)
(ibid., 279). They are also visually spatialized through the “cartographic reason”
(Pickles 2004).
On the basis of the same “geographical imagination,” and of the same dis-
cursive mechanisms, geographical dualisms differentiate between the world of
modernity/​culture and the world of premodernity/​nature, sometimes exalting
the presumed purity of the latter in opposition to the former, in other cases
dreaming that from the polluted, degraded, and dirty former, one can escape
into the latter (which acts as Planet B). Thus, spatial dualisms must be included
in the list of dualisms to be rethought within the ecofeminist /​posthumanist
theoretical umbrella. Indeed, when Rosi Braidotti says that “‘Man’ cannot
claim to represent all humanity because that ‘Man’ is a culture-​specific, gender-​
specific, race-​specific and class-​specific entity: it is a European, male, white,
intellectual ideal” (Braidotti and Veronese 2016, 339), she already says some-
thing very “geopolitical,” albeit perhaps in a manner that is not theoretically
explicit. At the same time, geography and geopolitics, beyond questioning
constructions of class, race, gender, and nature, should further articulate their
posthuman dimension and question the human-​nonhuman animal divide in
its spatial hues. Positive stimuli in this direction have not been lacking, starting
from those offered by Kropotkin (1902), who considered evolution a process of
“mutual aid” rather than competition, investigating the role of mutually bene-
ficial cooperation and reciprocity among human and nonhuman species. To
this effect are also Élisée Reclus’ “cosmological sense of nature” (Guest 2017,
88) and his writings in favor of vegetarianism (1901) (White 2015). Working
on the track laid out by Reclus, a small group of anarchist geographers are now
46 Theoretical framework
moving in this direction, offering a notable exception to the anthropocentric
stance of the discipline; among them, Richard White (2015), Simon Springer
(White, Springer, and Souza 2016), and the members of the Vegan Geographies
Collective (Ferretti 2019).
Inspirational in this direction can also be considered the work of Yi-​Fu
Tuan (Dominance and Affection: The Making of Pets, 1984), where Tuan traces the
inherently unequal and patriarchal power relations between human beings and
pets, stressing how the abuse of power also manifests itself in the treatment of
human members such as children, women, servants, who, at different times, may
be both highly valued and severely controlled and trained as mechanical toys.
Moreover, Raffestin (1983, 2012) has repeatedly addressed the different per-
ception of space by human and nonhuman animals and the biophilosophy of
Jakob von Uexküll. Indeed, as Raffestin writes “space, as a certain conception
of geography would have it, is a mental construction of the human species that
maintains relations both with what we can call exteriority and with alterity
for the satisfaction of its needs. Other animal species, of course, have their own
constructions, as developed by Jakob von Uexküll (1934). Nonhuman animal
species also have a representation of their surroundings, without which they
would not be able to satisfy their needs. They probably also have a representa-
tion of their ‘geography’, but in contradistinction to that of humans we cannot
access this except through experiences and programs that would allow us, in
whatever form, to make them explicit (see von Uexküll, 1934).”
However, “it is a peculiar fact that a discipline which, in part, defines itself as
the study of society-​environment relations has conspicuously failed to engage
with questions of the political status of the non-​human” (Castree 2003, 207).
The study of nonhuman animals and their spatial relations with humans is
restricted to a delimited, albeit growing, area of the discipline (animal geog-
raphies: see Philo 1995;Wolch and Emel 1995;Wolch and Emel 1998; Philo and
Wilbert 2000; Buller 2014; Buller 2015; Buller 2016; Wilcox and Rutherford
2018), while the attempt to develop a “hybrid” disciplinary approach, from
the point of view of a more-​than-​human geography, still remains linked to
the commitment of a small number of scholars (Whatmore 2002; Braun 2005;
Whatmore 2006; Shingne 2020).
Political geography substantially forgets that “animals are already subjects
of, and subject to, political practices,” while political ecology tends to assume
“nature” as a set of static resources (Hobson 2007). Geopolitics —​which
throughout the 20th century oscillated from the materialistic approach typical
of classical geopolitics to the approach focused on the analysis of representations
typical of critical geopolitics (Kelly 2006) —​has remained, in both cases, trad-
itionally anthropocentric, even when opening up its interests to environmental
security issues.
As Dalby writes (2014, 3) “One of the key dichotomies that structures modern
thinking, the division between human and nature, is no longer tenable” because
“we are part of a nature that the affluent urbanized fossil fueled part of humanity
is rapidly changing.” In this perspective, he suggests rethinking geopolitics “to
 What kind of discourse is that? 47
facilitate shifting analysis from focusing on questions of dominance on a divided
world to modes of sharing a crowded planet which is actively being transformed
by human action” (2014, 15). His idea of sharing, however, remains linked to the
fact that sharing involves humanity alone, while posthumanism states that the
biosphere/​ecosphere is “a system co-​constitutive,” not only with other humans,
but also with nonhuman systems (Cudworth & Hobden 2017). In International
Relations, IR, the idea that “the co-​evolution of human communities, non-​
human animals and the ‘natural environment’ can be understood as interpolated
through institutions and practices of biopower that give rise to patterns of
multiple complex inequalities” has promoted the making of a “Posthuman
International Relations” approach (Cudworth & Hobden 2011). An invitation
to a “posthuman turn in geopolitics, incorporating animals, ‘nature’, and other
objects into our understandings of the geopolitical” was also issued by Jason
Dittmer in 2014; however, while in IR the debate is lively (Eroukhmanoff and
Harker 2017), in geopolitics the challenge has yet to be met.

Notes
1 https://​www.fs.usda.gov/​features/​conservation-​versus-​preservation
2 https://​www.fs.usda.gov/​features/​conservation-​versus-​preservation
3 https://​libcom.org/​library/​social-​versus-​deep-​ecology-​bookchin/​

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3 
Assembling the toolkit

3.1 Making ecocritical geopolitics: research questions and

analytical tools
The questions asked by ecocritical geopolitics are quite clear: what kind of
understanding of the relationship between human and nonhuman is conveyed
by popular culture? What kind of “environmental discourse” underlies it?
And what categories of interpretation are used? Then there is the issue of
“meaning”: how, and where, is the meaning of a popular culture text produced/​
negotiated? To understand the real force of the discourse about the environ-
ment given in a text it is important not only to look at the author’s position,
but also at the genre of the text, the audience, and the circulation of the text.
The first step is to analyze the content, to understand whether there is a
direct message about the need to respect what surrounds us, with its different
components; and how the author’s taken-​for-​granted world influences the text,
that is, how the “geopolitical discourse” on which his/​her interpretation of
the world is reflected in the text. Next, it is important to take into account the
genre of the text, which places the text in relation to a wider cultural system.
Lastly, it must be remembered that both the author’s message and taken-​for-​
granted world can be grasped in different ways, depending on the audience and
their own taken-​for-​granted world (because, as remarked by Umberto Eco,“the
competence of the recipient is not necessarily that of the sender”) (Eco 1983,
93). For these reasons, it is said that the meaning is “negotiated” between the
production site (the author), the genre, and the receiving site (the audience).
Finally, the circulation of the text must also be taken into account (has it been
a success? Was it critically acclaimed?).
A good example of a single text whose meaning has been negotiated in
very diverse ways is the The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976, Clint Eastwood), a
film based on a novel by Forrest Carter (1972, The Rebel Outlaw: Josey Wales,
later titled Gone to Texas). The movie is a western and follows the canons of
the genre; it also makes use of some of the iconic actors of the genre in the
1970s, such as Clint Eastwood himself and Chief Dan George, made famous
by his role in Little Big Man (Coyne 1998). Still, it is an anomalous western,
because, instead of presenting (and glorifying) the westward march of a group
54 Theoretical framework
of pioneers, it “describes the persecution and violent pursuit from Missouri to
Texas of a gender and racially mixed band of the American oppressed” (Panay
2002, 32). Furthermore, in a speech that is “a filibuster by Eastwood’s standards,
and has strong political overtones: environmentalism, coexistence, distrust of
faceless power structures” (Coyne 1998, 176), Josey, the main character, tells a
Comanche leader called Ten Bears that his community will be able to coexist
in peace with the Comanches, just as the wolf, the bear, the antelope do. In this
way, the movie promotes an ecocentric message that stresses the importance of
peaceful coexistence not only between humans of different cultures but also
between humans and nonhuman animals.
For its ability to overturn the racial approach of the western genre and
its typical ideology of conquest, the movie may be interpreted as “a critique
of the frontier myth of American culture” (Panay 2002, 31) and be classified
in the subgenre of the “revisionist western.” Moreover, Josey is a rebel, fleeing
the impositions of state law. This second theme is also fundamental from the
director’s point of view. Eastwood “claimed [The Outlaw Josey Wales] to be
the most satisfying movie he ever made” and “always mentioned Vietnam and
Watergate, and the kind of profound distrust that had developed toward gov-
ernment at the time” (Lowndes 2002, 249). For this reason, “the new commu-
nity Josey and his friend forge in Texas” may be considered “emblematic of the
multicultural consensus steadily evolving in the United States in the wake of
Vietnam” (Coyne 1998, 178).
On the side of the viewer, however, interpretations can be conflicting: the
antigovernment rhetoric expressed by the movie can be interpreted as “the
representation through popular culture of an alternative American society”
(Panay 2002, 36) but also as an “increasing distrust of national government” that
may benefit the Right (Lowndes 2002, 237).
At the time of its release, the film was very successful, grossing $12,800,000;
conversely, critics expressed discordant opinions, criticizing the excessive vio-
lence or appreciating its formal elegance (Coyne 1998). It was later selected by
the National Film Preservation Board to be put in the National Film Registry
due to its “cultural significance,” and now, “Despite having been made after
the golden age of westerns had ended, it is considered to be one of the best
examples of the genre.”1
Seen today, the film remains appreciable in its ecocentric approach, but it
denounces the “geopolitical discourse” of its producers in terms of race and
gender. Josey’s community of oppressed people is made up of young and elderly
women, and people of multiracial backgrounds. Still, the protagonist-​leader is,
unavoidably, a white male. All the other members of the group (women, non-​
white men, children, a dog) follow him without question. At the time, such a
hierarchy of race and gender was part of the “taken-​for-​granted” world; now it
appears to be outdated and “patriarchal” (Lowndes 2002).
As is clearly demonstrated, a text’s meaning is negotiated in different sites
(Rose 2016; Dittmer and Bos 2019): the site of production (What was in the
 Assembling the toolkit 55
author’s mind when he/​she wrote/​composed that text? What discourse framed
his/​her way of understanding the world at that moment?); the content of the
text itself (What is represented? To which genre does the text belong? Are there
forms of intertextuality?); then there is the audience (Who is reading/​watching/​
listening to the text? How do they interact with it?); lastly, there is circulation,
which can be inhibited or promoted for different reasons and which certainly
affects the impact and influence of the text and its contents. As written by
Bryson (1991, quoted by Rose 2016, 56) “The power of the painting is there,
in the thousands of gazes caught by its surface, and the resultant turning, and
the shifting, the redirecting of the discursive flow.” This observation applies, of
course, to any kind of text.
Hence, even if the main theoretical reference point for ecocritical geopolitics
remains popular geopolitics, which is a research approach that focuses on “the
role of media and popular culture in shaping our understandings of the world
around us” (Bos 2019, xiii), trying to answer its research questions requires a
methodological “assemblage” that takes its instruments from different discip-
linary fields and research traditions.
In this book, “text” is used to refer to any cultural product whether written,
spoken, or visual. Even if the analytical tools used differ, the approach taken at
the appropriate stages of research is generally the same. First of all, the con-
tent of the text —​be it a single image, the lyrics of a song, a novel or a full
movie —​needs to be analyzed. For visual images, technical skills developed in
visual research and film studies are useful. For written texts, narratology, semi-
otics, and literary criticism can be helpful. The study of the author’s biography
may also prove informative, in combination with the analysis of the interviews
given at the time of the launch of the text, if the author is contemporary. In
addition, knowledge of the literary or cinematographic genre of reference is
indispensable to grasp intertextualities and recurring images and tropes, and
meanings attributed to them. Should one want to analyze a large body of text,
it is possible also to apply content analysis.
Then, since the specific interest of ecocritical geopolitics, as in popular geo-
politics, is the connection between knowledge and power, in Foucauldian terms,
the ultimate goal is discourse analysis. For discourse analysis, it is important
to identify the interpretative categories with which the understanding of the
world is built. In terms of relationship with the environment, it is necessary to
refer to the different approaches highlighted in section 3.2. (anthropocentrism,
biocentrism, etc.), and to some interpretative categories used by the geograph-
ical discourse, such as place, landscape, territory.
Lastly, audience studies should be made using tools typical of sociology and
ethnography, such as surveys, focus groups, and netnography.
In order to offer researchers a point of departure, the chapter introduces
some methodological notes. However, this book will mainly consider the first
two sites of meaning, production and content, and its main focus will remain
discourse analysis.
56 Theoretical framework

3.2 Analysis of the textual content: narrative structure,

genre and composition
Analysis of textual content covers an examination of its narrative structure, genre
and composition. Following Prince’s definitions, a “narrative is the represen-
tation of at least two real or fictive events or situations in a time sequence,
neither of which presupposes or entails the other” (Prince 1982, 4), regard-
less of the medium of representation. Narratology is the study of the form
and functioning of narrative. Studying narrative structure means identifying
the narrator (there is at least one narrator for each narrative), to see if he/​
she is an omniscient narrator, or is a character in the narrative (i.e. if he/​she is
extradiegetic, or diegetic), if he/​she is more or less intrusive and so on. Then
there are the “narratees,” that is the characters, usually defined by their actions
or words, and classified in accordance with generic categories of which their
actions, words or feelings are illustrations, and in terms of the functions they
fulfill (protagonists, heroes, villains and so on).The setting is the spatio-​temporal
complex where the narrative takes place. Altogether, a narrative has a “fabula”
that is a fundamental scheme, with all the events in chronological order, and
a plot. The plot is the story as it is in fact told, which may include time jumps
(such as flashbacks) and other narrative artifices.
Placing the text within a specific genre, cinematic or literary, is sometimes
immediate, sometimes less simple. It is based, in any case, on a generalization.The
concept of genre, writes Todorov (1975), is borrowed from the natural sciences;
and “scientific method proceeds […] by deduction.We actually deal with a rela-
tively limited number of cases, from them we deduce a general hypothesis, and
we verify this hypothesis by other cases, correcting (or rejecting) it as need be.
Whatever the number of phenomena (of literary works, in this case) studied, we
are never justified in extrapolating universal laws from them; it is not the quan-
tity of observations, but the logical coherence of a theory that finally matters”
(Todorov 1975, 4)
Then, he adds: “Genres are precisely those relay points by which the work
assumes a relation with the universe of literature.” Generally speaking, “The
genre system is a grid, and individual genres have boundaries, which are policed
by the stakeholders who draw or map them” (Fletcher 2016, 3). Genres can thus
be defined on the basis of many variables: the role of the hero (superior to the
reader, by nature, as in myths, or by degrees, as in fairy tales, or inferior to the
reader, as in irony), the verisimilitude, the spatio-​temporal organization (the
“chronotope”); for literary texts only, there is also the mode of fruition, which
distinguishes works to be performed (drama) from works to be read (prose).
Returning to the example of The Outlaw Josey Wales, the movie can be
defined as a western on the basis of the chronotope (it is set in the west of the
North American continent, in the second part of the nineteenth century) and
the qualities of the hero (a tall, slim American, skilled with a gun). However,
because it sides with the Native Americans, not the settlers, it belongs to the
subgenre of the “revisionist western.” Placing a text within the genre to which
 Assembling the toolkit 57
it belongs helps to identify intertextuality frames, that is existing recorded
narrative situations typical of the genre, which Umberto Eco (1983) calls
“inferential walks.”
On the basis of these “inferential walks,” it becomes possible to attribute a
recurring symbolic meaning to certain elements of the setting, or to the way
the landscape is described/​represented. “In broad terms, geography and genre
are mutually constitutive” (Fletcher 2016, 1). For instance, to remain in the
western genre, “The typical western film opens with the framing of a land-
scape” (Tompkins 1992, 69), from John Ford’s “classical” era, to contemporary
revisitations, such as The Revenant (2015, Alejandro González Iñárritu). It is a
harsh and hostile landscape that challenges the man (male) to make it the object
of conquest. It is a scarcely anthropized “big empty” (Engel 1994) that has yet
to be completed by the arrival of those who can dominate and transform it. It
invites the audience to admire the missionary task of the pioneers who strive
to impose their own culture on such an unassimilated expanse of otherness; it
is so unsuitable for whiteness that it becomes a monument to the narrative of
the expansion towards the West, of the myth of the “frontier,” of the founda-
tion of the nation. At the same time, it is a “gender allegory” (Tompkins 1992,
82): identifying with the landscape, and with its harshness, with its being made
of rock, allows one to express masculinity at the highest level.
Landscape, which is not an object, but the relation that is built in the text
between the setting and the protagonists of the narrative, can acquire a symbolic
dimension and even a capacity to act, becoming an “actant” (that is, an element
that is valid for the place it occupies in the narrative and for the contribution it
makes to carry that narrative forward). As such, it helps “to clarify the relation-
ship between humans and the natural environment” (Peraldo 2012). In Robinson
Crusoe, for instance, “The island, as seen through his eyes (eye-​land), becomes
a place where his [its] subjectivity and will are expressed (I-​land). Of the way
Crusoe reproduces his former spatial organization on the island, we might say
that he turns it into just another city in an attempt to extract order from the
apparent disorder of the natural world” (Peraldo 2012, 19).
In written texts, landscape can be described from the point of view of the
protagonist (who performs the act of looking), or the omniscient /​external
narrator, who describes the scene within which the action takes place. Then
come into play the richness of the description, the adjectives, the rhetorical
figures, the color. As far as visual research is concerned, the composition of the
image is engaged.
“Compositionality refers to the specific material qualities of an image or
visual object” (Rose 2016, 25). So, compositional interpretation refers first of all
to the content of the image (What does the image actually show?) and then to
technical aspects. It pertains to color, spatial organization, and perspective (the
mise-​en-​scène), focus, and point of view. With regard to the relationship between
human protagonists and their surroundings, the “shot distance,” which refers to
how much of a figure is shown by a particular shot, is important. A shot can be
an extreme long shot (where the figure is in the far distance), a long shot, or
58 Theoretical framework
a full, three-​quarter, medium, head-​and-​shoulders, or close-​up shot (Monaco
2009). The long shot shows the subject from a distance, emphasizing his/​her
place, the position, and the relationship to the environment. The extreme long
shot was introduced by the westerns of the 1950s and ̉’60s, “landscape movies”
in which the grandeur of the setting and the smallness of the human figure
highlight the challenge that the harshness of “nature” poses to the human being.
Then there is the “bird’s-​eye shot” (or aerial shot), similar to the extreme long
shot, but taken from above. In this case, the character still needs to be presented,
but importance is given to the scenery. In the drama television series True
Detectives (2014-2019, HBO), the show’s photographic director, Nigel Bluck,
“decided that, rather than a typical altitude of 200 to 500 feet, he would shoot
from 1,000 feet —​in part to amplify the abstract nature of the landscape, and
in part because ‘we wanted a point of view that belongs to something bigger
than us’” (Sternbergh 2015). For this reason, in True Detective the landscape may
be considered an “actant” (Amato 2015). Close-​up shots reveal the details of the
subject and highlight the emotions of a character. Medium shots emphasize the
subject, but still show him or her as part of the surrounding environment.Then
there is the “cowboy shot,” larger than a medium shot, and smaller than a full
shot. The character is seen from the hip up, in a superior position, exhibiting
a confident, sometimes heroic, attitude. The “cowboy shot” was introduced in
westerns to frame the gunslinger’s gun.
The use of color tones can also communicate something about the relation-
ship between human beings and the environment. In the TV series The Walking
Dead (2010–​, AMC), each season shows a greener setting, demonstrating how
“nature” is continuing its course, regardless of the near extinction of human
beings. Conversely, Furiosa, the female lead in Mad Max Fury Road (2015,
George Miller), crosses a monotonously yellow desert to indicate the impact of
desertification and climate change on the future world.
Instead of considering a single text, or a genre with a qualitative approach,
content analysis examines a large number of images or written texts using a
quantitative approach. It consists in encoding some elements present in the
texts and verifying their occurrence within a given textual corpus (a magazine,
a certain number of films shot within a given period of time, etc.). In analyzing
the setting of post-​apocalyptic films shot between 1950 and 2010, for example,
content analysis can be made by counting how many times an adverse cli-
matic event is represented, how it is represented and its nature (hurricane, flood,
drought, etc.) One of the merits of content analysis is its replicability, though it
is clearly necessary for the coding process to be carried out as precisely as pos-
sible for this to happen.

3.3 Territory, place, landscape: clarifying some

geographical notions
In the toolkit of ecocritical geopolitics, in addition to narratology, semiotics,
and visual research, there are a number of essential “tools” for geographical ana-
lysis, such as the notion of landscape, territory, and place.
 Assembling the toolkit 59
“Prevailing ideas about ‘nature’ have implications for the treatment of cer-
tain categories of humans who are ‘natured’ and have certainly impacted non-​
human species of animals, plants and their contexts” (Cudworth 2005, 43).
The portion of space, shared by different “living beings” (whatever definition,
more or less inclusive, is given to this expressions), that Cudworth calls “con-
text” is the object of transformation processes related to human activities.
Geographers call such human-​transformed context “territory.” More specif-
ically, following Raffestin (1980), territory is the result of an action carried
out by an actor on space. By appropriating a space, concretely or abstractly
(e.g. through representation), the actor territorializes this space, constantly
reorganizing its pre-​existing conditions. The process through which human
beings modify the surface of the Earth, turning physical space into a social
artefact (“territory”), is called “territorialization”. Territorialization follows
three different steps: denomination, that is the symbolic elaboration of space,
through its semiotic signification; reification, that is its physical transformation,
through activities such as agricultural production, water control, and setting;
and structuration, that is the control over the political, social, and administra-
tive organization of space (Turco 2010).
According to the Italian geographer Angelo Turco (2010), territoriality is
the “fundamental geographical quality of the world,” while environment, place,
and landscape are simply “configurations of territoriality.” Place is a device for
establishing a relationship with the space; it is a portion of space (of territory)
made meaningful to someone. Place is therefore a fundamental interpretative
category, constructed and reconstructed to give meaning to the space in which
one moves and acts; it is, in a certain sense, the symbolic context elaborated by
human beings to act in the world. Space perceived as a place may become an
affective object, a matter of love, of topophilia (Tuan 1974), or of fear or anxiety,
of topophobia (Relph 1996). Place is not just a structure of feeling. It is a portion
of space that someone may claim to belong to, and even to possess. Place, once
delimited, establishes who is inside and who is outside, and becomes a device
to define who lives on the outside as someone who is “different”: in this way,
place takes on a further meaning, that of an instrument of identity differenti-
ation and geographical dualism. People “make places” out of spaces, but they
may make them on the basis of conflicting interpretations and images.This also
has consequences in relation to environmental management, as is made clear,
for example, by the Muir-​Pinchot dispute over the O’Shaughnessy Dam in the
Hetch Hetchy Valley.
The concept of landscape is connected to the concept of place. Landscape
is a symbolic reinterpretation of the visual (but also olfactory and sensory)
relationship between human beings and their context (their territory, and
their place). Therefore, landscape, like place, has a subjective dimension. As
highlighted by Denis Cosgrove (1984), it is a way of seeing/​representing the
world that has its own history, and for this reason needs to be understood as
part of the broader history of the economy and society. As such, landscape is
the result of the sum of different interpretations and derives from an intri-
cate web of intertextual references. In literature, and in cinema, the landscape
60 Theoretical framework
differs from the setting in that it is not the site where the action takes place, but
a representation of that site, and of the perception of the relations between that
site and the human character (or nonhuman animal) of the action (dell’Agnese
2016). If popular culture constitutes “the vehicle of the representations that
a society gives of itself ” (Aumont, Bergala, and Vernet 1983), then landscape
becomes the representation of the relationship that society has, or thinks it
has, or would not like to have, with its own territorial context (with its envir-
onment, with its places). In its articulation, therefore, landscape makes it pos-
sible to convey environmental themes, or to enrich the text with a social/​
environmental warning that goes beyond the plot and can sometimes be read
independently of it.
Environment is the territorial shape of “nature,” the “natural” dimension of
the context (Turco 2010). Still, territory is “produced” by recursive processes
dependent on the relationship between nature and culture in different spatial
contexts (Raffestin, 2012). In this perspective, the opposition of nature and cul-
ture does not exist precisely because the “nature” that is transmitted from one
state of nature to another is strongly marked by earlier cultures (and vice versa).

3.4 Discourse analysis

Discourse analysis is a qualitative research approach, closely linked to the con-
cept of discourse introduced above and to Michel Foucault’s philosophy. It
is therefore based on the idea that the production of knowledge is a form of
power. As noted by Rose (2016, 189), “Discourse, Foucault says, is powerful,
but it is powerful in a particular way. It is powerful, says Foucault, because it
is productive. Discourse disciplines subjects into certain ways of thinking and
acting, but this is not simply repressive; it does not impose rules for thought
and behavior on a pre-​existing human agent. Instead, human subjects are
produced through discourses.” And then she adds “knowledge and power are
imbricated one in the other, not only because all knowledge is discursive and
all discourse is saturated with power, but because the most powerful discourses,
in terms of the productiveness of their social effects, depend on assumptions
and claims that their knowledge is true.The particular grounds on which truth
is claimed —​and these shift ― historically constitute what Foucault called a
regime of truth”.
Initially developed within linguistics, discourse analysis then saw the pos-
sibility of being applied also to visual research (Rose 2016), and to many
other forms of communication (and even to physical objects in everyday life)
(Dittmer and Bos 2019). So, beyond language and image, discourse analysis
can be applied also to “toys, monuments, films, sounds, etc.,” which together
may combine to make a meaning” (“multimodal analysis”) (Berger 2017, 9).
Following the example proposed by Dittmer and Bos (2019), for instance, it
is possible to analyze the discourse on race in popular culture for children,
focusing on Tarzan, and to this end examine old films, comics, and even toys.
When making discourse analysis, it is important to look not only at the plot, or
 Assembling the toolkit 61
the fabula, but also at the details, because “everything in a text such as a play, a
film, a commercial, or a photograph, is important” (Berger 2017, 81).
Discourse analysis starts with a research question and continues with the
choice of source: what to examine to answer that question? Returning to the
example of the discourse on race in popular culture for children, if Tarzan,
the story of a little white boy, raised by apes in Africa, is a pretty obvious choice,
a cartoon like Tom and Jerry (1940, William Hanna and Joseph Barbera), whose
protagonists are a cat called Tom and a mouse called Jerry, is not. Looking at
the details, however, one can notice that the only human being that appears
in the cartoon is a maid, and that that maid (of whom we just see her calves)
is black. This example also helps to explain how intertextuality, both within
and across genres, activates, as suggested by the Italian semiologist Umberto
Eco (1983) the “encyclopedic competence” of the audience, reinforcing and
validating the “interpretative repertoires” that are available in a particular cul-
tural setting, the discourse and its regime of truth. The (fat) calves of Tom and
Jerry’s maid are in fact an intertextual quotation from other female characters
from US popular culture, all dark-​skinned and overweight, serving the (white)
protagonists of the narrative. In this way, the so called “Mammy” stereotype
(Wallace-​Sanders 2008) and a given racial hierarchy as a regime of truth are
reinforced.
The texts examined need not necessarily be of the same type; as noted
by Rose (2016, 196), “Some of the most interesting discourse analyses are
interesting precisely because they bring together, in convincing ways, material
that had previously been seen as quite unrelated.” In fact, a novel like Uncle
Tom’s Cabin (1852, Harriet Beecher Stowe), a movie like Gone with the Wind
(1939,Victor Fleming), and a cartoon like Tom and Jerry seem to have very little
in common, but they are all texts that reinforce the same stereotype. Going
one step further, we may move on to the “popular geopolitics of the everyday”
(Dittmer and Bos 2019), and mention the Italian fast-​food chain called “Mama
Burger,” which has as its emblem the face of a Mammy.

3.5 What about the audience?

The role of the audience is important from different points of view.
First of all, it can influence the content of the text. Generally speaking, the
production can try to be more or less “commercial,” adapting the content to
the taste of the “general public.” More specifically, in the case of serial produc-
tion, the audience’s expectations can push the production to modify the plot
and the characters. This already happened in the late nineteenth century in
the case of the serial novel. The Mysteries of Paris (Eugène Sue) was published
serially in 90 parts from June 1842 until 15 October 1843, making it one of
the first serial novels published in France. As Eco (1983) points out, the novel
was initially written to entertain the cultured public with some spicy events of
picturesque misery, but it was instead welcomed by the proletarian public as a
description of their condition. Thus, the author, who noticed this reception,
62 Theoretical framework
continued to write it for the proletariat, filling it with social democratic moral-
ities to convince these “dangerous” classes to hold back their despair. In similar
fashion, contemporary television series and transmedia franchises often adapt
characters and plots to preferences expressed by the public. Thus, The Walking
Dead (2010–​) was initially accused of presenting a “regressive conception of
gender” and extending its stereotypes to promote “racial coding”(Sugg 2015);
“the entire narrative [was] framed by the white male supremacy of the main
character” while characters of color and women were cast in subordinate
positions (Baldwin and McCarthy 2013, 73). During the seasons that followed,
however, the production tried to remedy this by emphasizing female leadership
and increasing the presence of black characters.
Second, the public plays an important role from a quantitative point of
view: the greater the number of people who see or read a given text, the greater
its impact will be. In this case, sales figures, box office success, number of copies
sold, but also the circulation between different media (called transmediality),
and even the number of times a product has been illegally downloaded from
the web are useful.
Finally, and perhaps above all, it is important to understand how the audience
interprets the text, or rather, how viewers and readers, in different conditions,
endowed with different skills and competences, negotiate the meaning. It has
already been pointed out that the competence and interpretative categories
of those who read or look at the text can be very different from those who
produced it. As Umberto Eco writes (1983), the readers (or viewers) have
their own “encyclopedic competence” at their disposal, a “world of references”
through which to make sense of the content of the text. Since this world of
reference is a cultural product, just as the point of view of the production is
culturally produced, the meaning is the result of constant negotiation.
To investigate this last point, there are several research methods available,
qualitative and quantitative, which involve both direct contact with the reader/​
spectator and the investigation of opinions expressed on the web. Among the
more traditional methods, surveys (i.e. questionnaire surveys), interviews and
focus groups are all widely proven research methods in the sociological field.
Questionnaire research allows a good amount of data to be collected, but, in
order to be significant, it must be aimed at a representative sample. Interviews
can be based on structured questions or be unstructured. It also possible to
conduct photo-​ elicitation interviews, in order to investigate the reaction
caused by a single image, or by a group of images. In both cases, interviews
make it possible to collect detailed qualitative information. Eventually, to do
research with a focus group means to assemble a group of people and make
them discuss the meaning of the text or group of texts that are the subject of
the research.
Besides stimulating the expression of an opinion by the public, with
questionnaires, interviews, and focus groups, it is also possible to analyze
opinions already expressed on the web by investigating databases using spe-
cific research approaches, a technique called netnography and sentiment
 Assembling the toolkit 63
analysis. Netnography is ethnographic research through the internet (Kozinets
2002). Specifically, doing netnography means giving value to comments and
narratives left on the web, in social networks, forum discussion or blogs. These
new spaces of communication are rich in stories, relationships, opinions,
and comments. Netnography is a qualitative approach that can be used to
explore comments left by readers on social networks and on databases, such
as Community Reviews on Goodreads,2 or a movie’s user reviews on Rotten
Tomatoes3 and IMDb.4 Specifically, IMDb “is not only a database but also a
social network whose users share their opinions and knowledge, contributing
content to the largest digital collection of data not only on films but also on
television programs and video games” (Canet Centellas et al. 2016, 152). It is
possible to carry out “opinion mining” on the same sources, also with a quan-
titative research approach, called “sentiment analysis,” which can help in hand-
ling a “huge volume of opinionated data recorded in digital forms” (Liu 2012,
5). Sentiment analysis makes it possible to combine the analysis of comments
relevant to the research question with the influence of those who make them
(measured in terms of followers), and thus the potential ability to exert an
impact on other viewers/​readers.

Notes
1 https://​civilwar.vt.edu/​the-​outlaw-​josey-​wales-​1976/​
2 www.goodreads.com
3 www.rottentomatoes.com
4 www.imdb.com

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2

Landscapes and fears

Discourse about the environment (and
unavoidably also about race and gender)
in dystopian texts and post-​apocalyptic
narratives
4 
Re-​visioning the future

4.1 Popular culture and landscapes of fear

Landscapes of Fear is the title of a book by Yi-​Fu Tuan, published in 1979, in
which the Sino-​US geographer demonstrates how our fears are influenced
by the historical moment we inhabit and in which we socialize. Some fears
are subjective, others arise from a specific reason, but they are not permanent
moods linked to unalterable segments of tangible reality. We are “socialized” to
fear something because we receive threats and warnings about it, whether the
danger is real or presumed. So, while retaining our fears, we also adopt other,
socially formulated, ones (Claeys 2016, 16).
For this reason, to understand fears we must approach them from both the
individual and the group perspective and place them in a historical frame. The
need to contextualize fear is due to the changes in the social system, techno-
logical skills, and modes of relationship between human beings and the envir-
onment. In some cases, the dangers do not change; what changes is the way
they are perceived. So, even though “more Americans die from accidents in
the bathtubs than from attacks by terrorists,”1 nobody fears bathtubs, they fear
terrorists.
The perception of fear is linked to the representation of what constitutes
a danger: we learn to be afraid of something because it is described to us
as threatening. In this sense, the film The Village (2004, M. Night Shyamalan)
provides an excellent narrative about the making of fear (Sánchez-​Escalonilla
2010). In the village of the title, a small community lives surrounded by woods
and disconnected from the outside world. It is impossible to leave the village and
break the seclusion because ferocious creatures of superhuman nature are said
to live in the woods. In reality, there are no monstrous creatures. The wood is
built up as a “landscape of fear” by the village elders to prevent young people
from coming into contact with the threats posed by external contemporary
society. The movie places its viewers “in the position of citizens who have been
deceived by their leaders” (Collier 2008). At the same time, the film shows how
the elderly are afraid of something (in this case, the threats of contemporary
society) and use representation to teach young people how to avoid what they
fear. Studying the relationship between fear and representation, therefore, helps
70 Landscapes and fears
us to understand, on the one hand, what we are afraid of, and, on the other,
what we teach others to fear.
A tale about teaching young people what to be afraid of and how to behave
accordingly is not a Hollywood invention. Medieval fairy tales acted as “cau-
tionary tales,” making the wood or the castle a “landscape of fear” and teaching
children and adolescents not to stray too far from the family settlement. Certain
images and metaphors have been used regularly to “scare” people and thus
direct them towards “correct” behaviors. One of them is the apocalypse, which
does not necessarily mean (only) the physical destruction of the world; it refers
to a “discontinuity” and the subsequent destabilization of the ontological and
epistemological experience. Other narrative strategies, such as dystopian stories,
have become increasingly popular as a warning about the social and political
dangers that could cloud the future of the planet.
Dystopian and apocalyptic narratives serve as contemporary cautionary tales,
warning against what is perceived as a danger. In this perspective, they may
be considered “as a window” into the cultural anxieties of the time (Gergan,
Smith, and Vasudevan 2018, 2). They therefore express the prevailing fears at a
given historical time. They also show how popular culture communicates these
fears to people.
If we take the relationship between children and the forest as an example, we
see that at one time children were taught to fear its creatures. Little Red Riding
Hood warns children not to enter the wood so as not to meet the wolf. Today,
there are fears that the forest will disappear. By seeing, in a post-​apocalyptic
movie, a forest-​free future, children may learn how to behave so that their chil-
dren, and the children of their children, will have woods to walk in.Alternatively,
a dystopian future where only the rich can access that forest, while the poor live
in a devastated environment, may teach viewers how to promote environmental
justice. If wolves and deer live in that forest, children will need to ensure that
the animals have no reason to fear being hunted.

4.2 Dystopian texts and post-​apocalyptic stories

Setting clear boundaries on the dystopian narrative as a “narrative strategy”
and unambiguously distinguishing it from apocalyptic and post-​apocalyptic
narratives are not easy. Generally speaking, the term “utopia” and its various
derivatives (eutopia, dystopia, utopian satire, anti-​utopia) are defined as “a
species of prose fiction that describes in some detail a non-​existent society
located in time and space” (Tower Sargent 1976, 275). If the representation
of an ideal world, so perfect as not to exist, is defined as a utopia, a dystopia
is, in opposition, a bleak place where, due to an illiberal political system, or to
health, environmental or technological disasters, or to an environmental crisis,
human society has plunged into an undesirable state. A dystopia is usually
placed in a future world. It can be the consequence of a political regime, which
may appear utopian to those who impose it, but is unbearable to those who
suffer it. Alternatively, it depicts a place where some contemporary tendencies
 Re-visioning the future 71
have been taken to extreme consequences, leading to a highly unpleasant situ-
ation. In this form of classical dystopia, the author makes a point of describing
the horrors of life if current trends continue, “if This Goes On” (Ketterer
1989, 212).
A post-​ apocalyptic narrative, on the other hand, necessarily involves a
break-​up moment. It represents the post-​anthropic setting of the post-​disaster,
highlighting the transience of the forms of occupation of human space and the
precarious balance that binds contemporary societies to their environmental
context.The myth of the apocalypse, acting as a call to repentance and redemp-
tion (Yanarella 2001), is perfectly suitable to emphasize the potential risks posed
by the lack of respect towards the environment for the future of the planet and
humanity (Killingsworth and Palmer 1996). Moreover, it introduces the pos-
sibility of reflecting on the possible consequences that a breakdown in order
can exert on the relations between individuals, causing anarchy and a return to
barbarism, or, on the contrary, the loss of democracy and the establishment of an
intolerable political and social system. In this case, the post-​apocalyptic society
reproduces a world so negative as to be dystopian.
To some critics, the definition of dystopia should exclude texts that refer
to “impossible” events. In this perspective, a dystopia should represent only
“feasible negative visions of social and political development, cast principally in
fictional form” (Claeys 2010, 109). By “feasible,” the implication is that extra-
ordinary or utterly unrealistic elements should be excluded from the narrative.
Such a distinction makes it possible to draw a clear line between dystopia and
sci-​fi , but it also narrows the field of analysis considerably. For instance, if taken
to the letter, it excludes all the texts adopting the narrative stratagem of the
“long sleep,” from When the Sleeper Wakes (a serialized story by H.G. Wells
published first in The Graphic, then republished as a novel in 1899 and then, in
a new version, in 1910 with the title The Sleeper Awakes)2 to the movie Sleeper
(1973, Woody Allen), or Idiocracy (2006, Mike Judge). Moreover, some texts
represent a world made dystopian by the advent of a phenomenon that is not
“feasible” (in the television series Colony, 2016–​18 USA Network, for example,
the world is subject to totally illiberal —​and therefore dystopian —​forms of
government following the “arrival” of mysterious, and alien, “hosts”).
Kunkel (2008, 90) suggests a distinction between apocalyptic and post-​
apocalyptic texts and dystopias. In his opinion, these categories refer to different
and sometimes even opposite scenarios. The end of the world, or apocalypse,
brings the collapse of order as a typical consequence, while a dystopia often
prefigures a sinister perfection of order. A clear-​ cut distinction, however,
is problematic also in this case; post-​apocalyptic stories often present chaos,
because “without an orderly, strong, centralized authority, people are reduced
to base instincts and criminal behavior. People loot, murder, rape, and can-
nibalize” (Booth 2015, 18). After a few years, however, in response to the
instability of the “end of the world,” a despotic and unjust “dystopian” order
may be reconstituted, as in The Handmaid’s Tale (a novel by Margaret Atwood,
1985, adapted into a movie in 1990 by Volker Schlöndorff, and into a TV series,
72 Landscapes and fears
2017–​…), and in much of Young Adult Fiction, such as The Hunger Games
trilogy (2008-10, Suzanne Collins) and the Divergent saga (2011-13, Veronica
Roth). In a more inclusive definition, we can label the representation of a dark
future as dystopian, whatever its cause, and accept the fact that it often overlaps
with a post-​apocalyptic narrative, and sometimes with sci-​fi.
Three main forms of dystopian narratives can be identified, depending on
the anxieties highlighted by the plot: political dystopia, environmental dystopia,
and technological dystopia (Claeys 2016, 5).
All three were already formulated, albeit with different nuances, at the
turn of the nineteenth century, with the novels of H.G. Wells (Hillegas 1967).
However, they blossomed at different times during the twentieth century with
the rise of political and economic themes and the representation of oppressive
systems. Environmental and Malthusian themes, linked to the fear of excessive
population growth and lack of resources, then became relevant. Technological
dystopia, linked to the growing inability of human beings to control machines
or the digital universe, is currently very successful. Because it focuses on human
events, dystopia is usually anthropocentric, even though it may include con-
siderations on issues of environmental justice and may embrace an ecofeminist
discourse.
The apocalypse is a metaphor that dates back to ancient times, to the Bible
and the Epic of Gilgamesh. In popular culture, it has enjoyed several moments of
success, related first to the fear of plagues, then of nuclear disasters, and finally of
unstoppable climate change. More recently, the post-​apocalyptic/​horror theme
has become fashionable, where the human species undergoes alteration (often
due to human genetic manipulation) and is (almost totally) transformed into
something else (often zombies). With regard to environmental discourse, the
post-​apocalyptic narrative offers many intriguing elements for analysis: those
connected with the plot (the reason for the catastrophe) and those related to
the setting and landscape (the future of the planet).

4.3 Increasingly successful narratives

Even if they often overlap, dystopian and apocalyptic or post-​ apocalyptic
narratives have different origins. In Western literature, one of the first novels to
describe the events during a possible end of the world is probably Le Dernier
Homme (1805) by the French author Jean-​ Baptiste Cousin de Grainville
(published in England as The Last Man the following year). In 1816, Lord Byron
wrote a short poem called Darkness in which the world is a lifeless “void,” the
oceans and rivers stand still in the dark, and even the moon is dead. In the ten
years that followed, the topic became popular among Romantic authors, and
there was a small stream of publications on the subject, including Mary Shelley’s
novel also titled The Last Man (1826).
Apart from Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (1726), which is dystopian in
some parts, the first political and social dystopias date back to the early nine-
teenth century. Swift, in his most famous work, describes a series of strange, and
 Re-visioning the future 73
sometimes very unpleasant, places and peoples through the rhetorical stratagem
of travel in order to pillory some aspects of his contemporary British society.
A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation, in the Year of Our Lord, 19—​written by
Jerome B. Holgate and published in 1835 under the pseudonym of Oliver
Bolokitten, was an early dystopian novel. It represents a future city dominated
by “racial fusion,” with the consequent moral and economic degeneration of
society (Lemire 2002). Among the first significant dystopian satires, there is also
the French novel Le monde tel qu’il sera (1846, by Émile Souvestre, English title
The World As It Shall Be). The novel is about a French married couple who,
accompanied by a man called John Progress, arrive in the year 3000 to dis-
cover that the world has become hyper-​technological, but ruthless towards the
most vulnerable. Another novel, in some way a forerunner of contemporary
dystopias, is Erewhon (1872, by Samuel Butler). In a country called Erewhon (an
anagram of Nowhere), everything works in reverse, and there are no machines
because the inhabitants do not trust them and are afraid that they may develop
a consciousness. These first novels are all travelogues, in space or in time, and
their “narrative standpoint” is external to the dystopia.The protagonist visits the
dystopian place, is shocked by its characteristics, sometimes falls in love with a
local woman, and then succeeds in going away.
Toward the end of the nineteenth century, other novels and short stories with
post-​apocalyptic themes were published. After London (1885, Richard Jefferies),
for instance, portrays London’s renaturalization after an unspecified “eco-
logical” catastrophe (Claeys 2010). Then, the first H.G. Wells’ stories shuffled
the themes: they all offer appalling representations of the future (Hillegas 1967)
but some are “travelogues” in time, like The Time Machine (1895) and When The
Sleeper Wakes (1899); others, like The War of the Worlds (1897), mix sci-​fi and
dystopia.
Dystopia, as a literary genre, became fully established during the twentieth
century. During the first half, some novels were published that went on to
become classics of the genre (We, 1924, by the Russian Yevgeny Zamyatin; Brave
New World, 1932, by Aldous Huxley; Nineteen Eighty-​Four, by George Orwell,
1949; Fahrenheit 451, 1953, by Ray Bradbury). They all describe a future in
which an all-​encompassing regime erases the freedom and agency of the indi-
vidual. The plots no longer take the form of a travelogue, and the “narrative
standpoint” is internal: the (male) protagonist is often a member of the system
who, at a certain point, succeeds in regarding the situation with a critical eye.
Post-​apocalyptic fiction enjoyed a new phase of popularity in the second
half of the century, when a series of dramatic narratives expressed post-​nuclear
fears and environmental anxieties (Pebble in the Sky, 1950, by Isaac Asimov; Level
7, 1959, by Mordecai Roshwald; The Chrysalids, 1955, by John Wyndham, and
A Canticle for Leibowitz, 1959, by Walter Miller). Generally speaking, “prior to
the Second World War the most arresting film imagery depicting planetary dis-
aster was either cosmic or natural in origin” (Broderick 1993, 363), but now
“Hiroshima unleashed the possibility of man’s annihilation at the hands of
his own technology” (Brereton 2005, 143). This awareness provoked the first
74 Landscapes and fears
“green” apocalypses, in which the narrative becomes “one of human, not divine
history” (F. Buell 2003, 13).
Malthusian anxieties are merged with a shortage of resources against the
backdrop of the energy crisis. This is properly synthesized in Harry Harrison’s
novel, Make Room, Make Room! (1966, later adapted in the film Soylent Green,
1973, by Richard Fleischer).The story is about a near future marked by uncon-
trolled population growth and environmental devastation, when the rich still
have fresh food, while all the others eat tasteless artificial preparations distributed
by a single large corporation (Soylent). So, in addition to sounding a conser-
vationist alarm about the future of the planet, the text launches a message of
environmental justice, highlighting how the deterioration of the environment
risks hitting only the weakest, leaving the privileges of others unaltered.
With overpopulation, pollution, and scarcity, the climate issue is touched
upon by popular culture quite early, even if, at the time, the prospect of human-​
induced climate change was not evident. In 1941, George R. Stewart published
Storm.This novel follows the path of a cyclone that forms in Japan and arrives in
California, causing damage, floods, and deaths. In 1948, the sequel, Fire, tells the
drama of a massive forest fire in California, ignited by lightning but propagated
by drought, and the resulting environmental damages. In this regard, it is worth
mentioning also J.G. Ballard’s climate novels (Dini 2019) that each refer to a cli-
matic cataclysm: a steady wind (The Wind From Nowhere, 1961), the unstoppable
rise of the sea level (The Drowned World, 1962), and a terrible drought (The
Burning World, 1964, republished as The Drought, 1965). Later, sci-​fi movies
started to use “climate change” images to emphasize their dramatic setting and
increase the “cognitive estrangement” typical of the genre (Suvin 1977). Thus,
in Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott), the sky over Los Angeles is always dark
due to persistent rain, and in A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001, Steven Spielberg)
Manhattan has been submerged owing to the rise in sea level. Climate change
returns as a protagonist in two movies from the 1990s, Waterworld (1995, by
Kevin Reynolds) and Tank Girl (1995, by Rachel Talalay). In the first, the world
is covered with water, in the second it is a desert. In both cases, there is a
struggle for drinkable water. Tank Girl is noteworthy because the protagonist is
a teenager who somehow anticipates the Young Adult Fiction heroines and the
film is now considered a precursor of feminist themes (Zaslow 2009).
In the first two decades of the 2000s, climate change has become a tele-
genic phenomenon, and films on the subject have multiplied, giving rise to a
new subgenre (cli-​fi). This includes films in which the world of the future is
submerged (Lost City Raiders, 2008, Jean de Segonzac), lacking water (Interstellar,
2014, Christopher Nolan; Mad Max Fury Road (2015, George Miller) or frozen
(The Day After Tomorrow, 2004, Roland Emmerich; Snowpiercer, 2013, Bong
Joon-​ho). There are also many movies set in the present, where extreme wea-
ther events connected with climate change create catastrophic results, like
NYC: Tornado Terror (2008, Tibor Takacs), the TV-​movie The Christmas Twister
(2012, Peter Sullivan), and Geostorm (2017, Dean Devlin). In US popular culture,
the representation of extreme weather events is so clichéd that it also stimulates
 Re-visioning the future 75
parodies, such as the super-​trash film series (Sharknado, 2013-2018, Anthony C.
Ferrante), which “tells the story of a giant global warming-​induced tornado
supercluster that can lift sharks en masse” (Leikam 2017, 31). Marketed as a B-​
movie, Sharknado is, in Leikam’s opinion (2017, 31), a “self-​ironic rendering of
the staging of extreme weather as a media spectacle.”
Another very popular subject is technological dystopia. In the Terminator
franchise (first film, 1984, by James Cameron), the world is dominated by
machines. In Minority Report (2002, by Steven Spielberg, based on a short story
by Philip K. Dick, 1956), thanks to the predictive abilities of a small group of
mutants and the technological ability to read their predictions, it is possible to
prevent crime from happening. However, as the accuracy of the forecasts is not
infallible, preventive intervention can be mistaken. Some episodes of the British
television series Black Mirror (2011–2019) show the humanity of the future
entirely conditioned by the “likes” collected on social media. Parallels can be
found in the novel The Circle (2013) by Dave Eggers, whose theme is the power
wielded by the giants of the internet, in a world where, in the name of “trans-
parency,” privacy has become a crime.
Other fears, such as the fear of losing fertility, or of genetic modification, are
additions to the repertoire (plagues, totalitarianism, capitalism, invasions) for the
creation of story lines that are becoming increasingly widespread and popular.
Alongside texts aimed at young adults —​often mixing apocalypses, zombies,
and parodies —​the post-​apocalypse is also found in high-​level works like
Corman McCarthy’s award-​winning novel The Road (2006). In 2009, Kunkel
commented: “Every other month seems to bring the publication of at least one
new so-​called literary novel on dystopian or apocalyptic themes and the release
of at least one similarly themed movie” (Kunkel 2008, 89). The trend has not
stopped yet. Besides, there are not only novels and movies. Beyond the literary
form, dystopian and post-​apocalyptic storytelling have established themselves
as multimedia and trans-​media narrative strategies and are the basis of video
games, graphic novels, films, and television productions, sometimes connecting
a single brand within a big franchise. This trans-​mediality significantly increases
a brand’s chances of success. For instance, V for Vendetta is a British graphic novel
that was published in black and white between 1982 and 1985. It depicts a dys-
topian and post-​apocalyptic future in which the United Kingdom, following a
nuclear war, is dominated by a totalitarian and fascist regime. It inspired a movie
(V for Vendetta, 2005, James McTeigue), which later became a cult. A color
version of the graphic novel is now distributed in the United States.
This extraordinary success risks undermining the communicative power
of dystopian and post-​apocalyptic narration. In 1995, Lawrence Buell wrote
that the apocalypse is perhaps “the single most powerful metaphor that con-
temporary environmental imagery has at its disposal” (L. Buell 1995, 285).
Less than ten years later, Frederick Buell published From Apocalypse to Way of
Life: Environmental Crisis in the American Century (2004) in which he underlines
the risk of excessive recourse to the metaphor of the apocalypse, claiming that
it would suffer “normalization,” and accustom the public to a future when
76 Landscapes and fears
environmental disaster is the norm rather than an event to be feared. In this
future, apocalyptic scenarios and desolate landscapes risk being perceived as a
way of life, while representation of apocalypse is turned into “a source of excite-
ment, not dismay, a stimulus to thrilling new adventures and a path to hitherto
undreamt-​of new modes of being, not an account of doom and destruction” (F.
Buell 2004, 228).
It is worth wondering if post-​apocalyptic and dystopian scenarios still have
a warning capacity for the future. The fear of a nuclear conflagration capable
of sweeping away human life seems to be less acute, but a global epidemic is
always a possibility, as is a dictatorial regime, and the loss of freedom linked to
the spread of communication technologies. In tandem, the general conditions
of the planet have progressively deteriorated due to climate change, the accu-
mulation of waste, and the plastic in the oceans. These phenomena have an
incremental character; they do not cause sudden apocalypse on a global scale,
but a progression of adverse events on a local scale and severe forms of environ-
mental injustice. Perhaps it is better to represent them as such.

Notes
1 https://​edition.cnn.com/​2017/​05/​21/​opinions/​deadly-​bathtub-​compared-​to-​
terrorism-​opinion-​geltzer-​easterly/​index.html
2 In the preface of the new edition, Wells writes “When the Sleeper Wakes, whose title
I have now altered to The Sleeper Awakes, was first published as a book in 1899 after
a serial appearance in the Graphic and one or two American and colonial periodicals.
It is one of the most ambitious and least satisfactory of my books, and I have taken
the opportunity afforded by this reprinting to make a number of excisions and
alterations.”

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5 
Dystopian settings and
(post)human landscapes

5.1 Settings and landscapes

“The distinction between setting and landscape, one might say, is one of pic-
torial economy: as long as natural space in a work is subservient to characters,
events and action, as long as its function is to provide space for them, the work
is not properly speaking a landscape” (Lefebvre 2011, 64). A landscape is more
than just a setting; it is a complex idea, expressing the link between human
beings and their context, and has a cultural and subjective dimension. It is a
“view” that contains an interpretation, linked to a social and aesthetic education
(Guerin 1995). It is also a way of seeing/​representing through which the author
frames the protagonists and their relations with the Earth and other human
beings (Cosgrove 1984). A literary landscape is therefore not a simple descrip-
tion of the context, but a relational dimension between that context and the
character (Jakob 2005). Likewise, in cinema, a landscape is more than a location
or a setting. The distinction is essential, even if it does not envisage opposition
as much as continuity.
Even a setting can perform several functions linked to the narrative. It can
be “neutral,” i.e., not offer any element, it can be “informative,” or add “sympa-
thetic” elements, or even become, in some way, a “protagonist,” “that is, it may
enter integrally into the action of the story” (Freeburg 1918, 151). Dystopian
narratives are mostly focused on human events. The setting is just a device that
emphasizes the estrangement of the narrative or provides some informative or
sympathetic elements. Generally speaking, instead of offering the consolatory
image of pristine nature, used in other literary and cinematographic genres to
promote the diffusion of environmental instances in an elegiac-​preservationist
tone (Brereton 2005), dystopian settings are usually artificial and over-​urbanized.
Contrast is sometimes created between the oppressive setting and some images
of uncontaminated and joyful nature surfacing in the protagonist’s memories,
or using a language rich in metaphors and similes related to natural subjects to
describe life within a heavily artificial framework. Otherwise, there is a con-
trast between the dystopian space organized by power and the external, non-​
anthropized space which offers a place to escape or a last margin of freedom.
The hope that there is a different reality at the end of “the road” or beyond
 Dystopian settings, (post)human landscapes 79
“the border” that is not yet oppressed by totalitarian power or devastated by
humanity’s misconduct is a cliché, as is the final escape to the “green place.”
This contrast between nature and culture is typical of the persistence of a
vision marked by the dualism characteristic of the Western cultural tradition
and still anthropocentric. In apocalyptic and post-​apocalyptic representations, on
the other hand, the setting is often a fundamental element of the narrative, to
the point of becoming an “actant” or even an “intentional” landscape (Lefebvre
2011), i.e., a representation as important as the human protagonists and as sig-
nificant from a diegetic point of view. The post-​apocalyptic setting is often a
place known to have been very crowded (a city like London or New York), now
empty of people but littered with everyday objects that no longer have any use
there. Alternatively, it is a space characterized by a wild regrowth of vegetation.
When nature regains the upper hand, the ability of plants and animals to
take up with their apparent disorder any order imposed on them by human
transformation activities highlights the precariousness of the human condition
and recalls, in an ecocentric way, the Earth’s ability to move forward, inde-
pendent of human beings. Sometimes, the environment proves to be only par-
tially resilient, in a compromised and impure way; for instance, in The Drowned
World (Ballard), the rise in solar radiation causes an increase in mutations and
the appearance of “freak botanical forms.” In the Japanese anime, Kaze no tani
no Naushika (Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind, 1984, Miyazaki Hayao), the post-​
atomic forest grows luxuriant and full of color but has become a “toxic jungle.”
A context characterized by the slow reclamation of nature, albeit impure, is
not the only kind of setting of post-​apocalyptic narratives.Together with over-
grown or post-​natural ecology, we also have “wastelands.” That is, the world
may be represented as the object of total devastation, devoid of animals and
plants, blasted and gray (as in the novel The Road, in the movie The Book of Eli,
2010, The Hughes Brothers, or in the video game series Fallout, 1997–​2018).
In this case, human beings are given the extraordinary power to destroy life in
its totality.
These different types of setting and landscape correspond to different ways
of thinking about the relationship between humankind and nature. They will
be analyzed on that basis in the following paragraphs.

5.2 Green places: dreaming of “nature” in dystopian

settings
An open contrast between the oppressive space occupied by human societies
and “nature” is present in many dystopian classics. Jack London’s The Iron Heel
(1908) is an excellent example of this. The novel describes the advent of an
authoritarian political system in the United States and a subsequent revolu-
tion that attempts to overthrow it. Although it is mainly a political dystopia, it
also introduces environmental descriptions to recall the difference between the
beauty of what nature offers us and the ugliness of what we do (on the first
page, “the sleepy hum of bees” is contrasted with the “cries of the victims”).
80 Landscapes and fears
Sometimes, nature is gated beyond a border. In the novel We a gigantic
Green Wall separates One State’s political community from the forbidden and
untamed jungle, offering a contrast between the disorder/​freedom/​innocence
of “nature” and the imposed order of the humanized landscape. Likewise, in
Brave New World, a portion of the planet is kept as a “Savage Reservation,”
because, “owing to unfavorable climatic or geological conditions, or poverty of
natural resources, it has not been worth the expense of civilizing” (Brave New
World 1932, 177). It is delimited by an electric fence. It is inhabited by “savages,”
that is to say by people who live in accordance with tradition and follow the
rules of “nature” rather than those imposed by the World State. By contrast, the
World State is fully urbanized, because the love of nature, which keeps citizens
away from the factories, has been abolished by law (Rodríguez 2014).
Far from the oppressive modes of anthropic spaces, whose artificiality meta-
phorically alludes to the dire condition of the characters’ lives, natural spaces
present themselves as a shelter, whether real or just imaginary. Consequently,
places of outstanding natural beauty can become ideal refuges, as occurs in The
Iron Heel. Similarly, in Uglies (2005-18, Scott Westerfeld Often), those people
who rebel against the Surge, the operation destined to make them all beautiful,
but in reality aimed at making them less intelligent and more compliant with
the rules of the totalitarian state, take refuge in “the Smoke,” a space outside
the city, in the midst of the wilderness. In The Hunger Games, Katniss finds her
strength and ability to rebel against the system precisely because of her wilder-
ness skills. The members of the resistance in Colony, fleeing from a desolate Los
Angeles, find refuge in the pristine forests of California.
Sometimes, at the end of the story, the protagonist manages to escape.With a
transition from grayish atmospheres and artificial lights, the scenery is colored by
strong sunshine and the blue of the sky. Space “outside” apparently consists of a
sort of “Eden” that offers salvation and freedom. In Logan’s Run (1976, Michael
Anderson), the survivors of a nuclear catastrophe live inside a sort of bio-​dome,
which separates them from —​presumably —​the contaminated external envir-
onment. Inside the dome, population growth is strictly controlled: births occur
by cloning, and, at the age of 30 (though it is 21 in the novel of the same title
by William Francis Nolan and George Clayton Johnson), people are eliminated
through the so-​called Carousel, a regeneration ceremony, whose outcome the
participants are unaware of. The leading man is initially assigned to ensuring
the system is properly maintained. He then discovers the reality behind the
“regeneration” and flees, in the company of a young woman, triggering a series
of events that lead to the breakage of the bio-​dome and the discovery that full
and lush vegetation still exists outside it. Blade Runner’s setting is a city, where
the sky is perpetually dark and punctuated by gas flares (Hewitt and Graham
2015), but in the “happy ending” of the 1982 release,1 the protagonist and his
partner eventually leave it to drive towards a blue sky, mountains, and woods.
In the first episode of the Terminator saga, the final scene shows Sarah Connor,
who we know is pregnant with Michael Connor, the future hero of the fight
against machines, driving away into the desert in her red car, accompanied by
 Dystopian settings, (post)human landscapes 81
a German shepherd and armed with a rifle. In the distance, a storm comes,
framed by a romantic landscape of desert and mountains (Brereton 2005, 200).
The dream of a “green place” as the alternative to the dystopian reality is a
narrative element that now and then also appears in post-​apocalyptic narratives.
In The Book of Eli, the planet is covered with nuclear ash, and the colors are
dominated by shades of gray, except at the end when Eli (a man, accompanied
by a woman, Solara) arrives at Alcatraz, which is now an Edenic place where
a new civilization can be born. In Waterworld, water covers the entire planet
due to climate change but some of the characters dream about a mythical
“dryland” and the protagonist eventually finds an island where it will be pos-
sible to start a new “terrestrial” life. As far as the environmental message goes,
this cliché operates in a rather elegiac sense as part of the cautionary tale. It
assumes or at least indicates the hope of a future way for humanity to continue.
Unfortunately, this is not necessarily true, as is demonstrated by Furiosa and
her group of runaways in Mad Max Fury Road. In her flight from the barren
waterless land dominated by Immortan Joe, Furiosa heads for the place of her
origins. She calls it the “Green Place” because in her memory it is green and
full of trees. However, she discovers that the Green Place no longer exists; it has
turned into a swampland. In this way, not only “Fury Road’s narrative structure
refuses to root itself in environmental nostalgia” (Yates 2017, 359), but it clearly
shows us that there is only one planet, that there is no Planet B, except, perhaps,
in our memory.

5.3 Dystopian borderscapes

If it is true that dystopia emphasizes the excessive order imposed by human
beings on society (Kunkel 2008), borders transfer this order into space (Raffestin
2005). Therefore, in dystopian narratives, there is a multiplication of borders,
whereas in the representation of post-​apocalyptic/​post-​human/​post-​political
landscapes they usually disappear, together with the whole process of the sym-
bolic structuring of space.
Different motivations justify dystopian forms of segregation. The beautiful
is separated from the ugly, the rich from the poor, the genetically perfect from
the imperfect, the “normate” body from the mutant (“normate” refers to “the
constructed identity of those who, by way of the bodily configurations and
cultural capital they assume, can step into a position of authority and wield the
power it grants them”) (Garland Thompson 2017, xii). Boundaries can then be
imposed at all scales. Cities are divided vertically to separate social classes, or
into blocks to better control the population (as in the TV series Colony). States
are fragmented, national borders become insuperable, even the Earth may be
surrounded by a border, separating it from artificial, more pleasant, and less
polluted worlds (as in the movie Elysium, 2013, Neill Blomkamp).
Here again, different anxieties produce different borders. A classic dystopia
like the novel When The Sleeper Wakes reflects “the most obvious impact of
nineteenth-​century reality on literary imagery… the lesson of social division”
82 Landscapes and fears
(Stableford 2010, 263) and spatializes this division in the vertical dimension. In
the London of the future there will be the rich and powerful, who live up at
the top, and the poor and powerless, down at the bottom. A similar “stratified
urbanism” (Hewitt and Graham 2015) is also a feature of the entirely artificial
space in the film Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang). Here, for the first time on screen,
enormous skyscrapers are presented to emphasize social divisions in a hyper-​
classist society where the laborers live underground and do hard physical work,
while the “thinkers” live on the upper floors and are given the task of planning
the existence of the others. Wells did not like the movie. In The New York Times
(April 17, 1927) he wrote about Metropolis: “[It] is a city, we are told, of ‘about
one hundred years’ hence. It is represented as being enormously high; and all
the air and happiness are above, and the workers live, as the servile toilers in
the blue uniform in The Sleeper Awakes lived, down, down, down below. Now
far away in the dear old 1897 it may have been excusable to symbolize social
relations in this way, but that was thirty years ago, and a lot of thinking and some
experience intervene. That vertical city of the future we know now is, to put it
mildly, highly improbable.”
For urban developments, he was right. Still, “the use of the vertical axis
to explore social divisions” remains a sort of symbolic choice even many
years later, since, “in social terms, the vertical implies hierarchy” (Hewitt and
Graham 2015, 930). In another movie that was destined to enter the collective
imagination, Blade Runner, the connection between capitalism and verticalism
is still visually present. And in High Rise (1976) J.G. Ballard uses the skyscraper
to symbolize the malfunctioning of capitalist societies. In the sophisticated
luxury enclave represented by the skyscraper, everything is articulated on the
basis of social and economic boundaries. In the movie inspired by the novel
(High Rise, 2015, Ben Wheatley) the contrast is delivered visually. At the top,
there is the bright green hanging garden of the “creator” (the architect who
designed the building), so big that even a white horse can graze there freely,
while different shades of gray color the rest of the skyscraper (and the violent
lives of its inhabitants).
Spatial segregation based on class is also represented in Snowpiercer here, the
division is horizontal because the space available is a solar-​powered train, which
continues its run in a world made unlivable by a glaciation. The rich travel at
the front and the poor at the back. In this case, too, the contrast between the
two sections is pointed up by the use of color and lights, which are almost
absent where the poor are forced to live, while the front of the train is bright
and vivid.
Territorial segregation, also based on social class, is present in the novel The
Sea and Summer (1987, George Turner), where those who have jobs belong to
the privileged class of the Sweet, while those who don’t (the Swill, nine-​tenths
of the population) are forced to live in huge, run-​down skyscrapers (the novel,
which is about climate change, was published in the United States with the
title The Drowning Towers). In the movie In Time (2011, Andrew Niccol), urban
inhabited spaces are divided into “zones” to separate those living in the “center”
 Dystopian settings, (post)human landscapes 83
(once again, the rich and powerful) from the poor and powerless living in
the peripheral regions. In the Colony, there is a “Green Zone,” corresponding
to the richest L.A. neighborhoods, where the most powerful representatives
of the “collaborationists” live. In the Hunger Games franchise, spatial segrega-
tion is no longer urban but regional: the fictional State of Panem, located in
North America, is divided into districts, ranked according to degrees of wealth,
and characterized by severe class inequality and environmental injustice. In the
movie The Children of Men (2006, Alfonso Cuarón), the division is political, and
the border becomes national.Those who are on the right side of the UK border
enjoy the freedom of movement, while those born on the wrong side are kept
in large cages.
In addition to control and “security” issues, the border can also represent a
marked distinction in terms of environmental quality. Sometimes, the whole
planet is degraded, but only a few have the right to move off-​planet to an
artificial colony. In this regard, the border surrounds the entire planet: the
poor remain on Earth, unable to leave. A similar instance of environmental
injustice is advanced by the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968,
Philip Dick), in which, following nuclear war, only the less well-​off remain
on Earth while others are encouraged to migrate to the off-​ world col-
onies (the topic disappears from Blade Runner, the movie adapted from it).
The film Elysium highlights social contrast: Planet Earth is represented as an
overpopulated shantytown, filled with garbage and pollution, while the artifi-
cial planet Elysium, where only the rich are allowed to live, replicates the style
of upper-​class neighborhoods. What merits attention, in this regard, is that the
two spaces are not futuristic visions but extensions of realities present on the
planet today, like an African slum on the one hand, and a privileged neighbor-
hood of California on the other.
Generally speaking, the contrast between the freedom of movement of those
who are privileged enough to live on the desirable side of the human territorial
space and those who have the misfortune to be born on the other reflects the
injustice of the present-​day international system of border management. So, in
dystopian narratives, the inclusion of borders and borderscapes (dell’Agnese and
Amilhat Szary 2015), albeit on different scales, contributes to the representation
of an over-​territorialized world, and emphasizes issues of social segregation,
international inequalities, and environmental injustice.

5.4 Wastelands: capitalism, consumerism, garbage

Beyond spatial inequalities and social segregation, another way to stigmatize
the dangers of capitalism and the superpower of corporations is by including
symbolic elements, such as waste, in the setting. This device is relatively recent,
and, apart from Ballard’s works (prescient again), it only became a cliché in
the 2000s.
When the Sleeper Wakes is one of the first anti-​capitalist dystopias. It is about
a Londoner who falls asleep in 1897, wakes up in 2100, and discovers that
84 Landscapes and fears
in the meanwhile, a financial institution (the White Council) has “swallowed
up nearly all the great ownership of the world,” causing severe social conflict
and social destitution. In the future London, Wells describes the ruins of the
abandoned buildings of the suburbs but does not mention an accumulation
of waste along the streets. Likewise, the film Metropolis also shows the contrast
between the workers and the capital, with its skyscrapers and basements, but it
shows no trash.
The themes of consumerism and the power of corporations are addressed in
more depth in Brave New World. The novel is set in the year AF 632, where AF
stands for “after Ford,” because, given Ford’s divine role in this future society, the
numbering of years begins with the introduction of the assembly line. Political
and economic power coexist: the World State governs the planet. People are
conditioned, both prenatally and in early childhood, to enter a particular social
class and to perform the duties assigned to that class, thus they offer no objec-
tion to their position in life. Individual problems are solved by the taking of a
legalized drug called “soma.” Sex is practiced without love, and entertainment
is guaranteed by the “feelies,” i.e., movie theaters equipped with special seats,
with buttons that allow the audience to experience all the sensations felt by
the characters on-​screen. People are not supposed to read books so as not to
trigger the risky process of free-​thinking —​nobody wants “lower-​caste people
wasting the Community’s time over books.” Children of lower classes are also
conditioned to hate flowers because “primroses and landscapes […] have one
grave defect: they are gratuitous. A love of nature keeps no factories busy”
(Brave New World, 1932).
Conversely, consumption is encouraged at all costs. One of the slogans used
to push people to consume more and more is “Ending, not mending,” because,
in a system dominated by “God Ford,” items should not be repaired, but should
be thrown away so that new ones can be bought. However, there is no mention
of where all these objects, ended and not mended, are supposed to go.The only
reference to garbage is made in relation to the village in the “reserve.”The social
space organized by the World State is free of waste, thus demonstrating that in
the 1930s, the excesses generated by consumerism were already a source of anx-
iety, but garbage was not.
Capitalism, consumerism and the more or less hidden persuasion of con-
sumers by corporations are also at the heart of J.G. Ballard’s The Subliminal Man
(1963). The short story is set in an over-​capitalized industrial system, where the
dictates of corporations dominate the lives of all the citizens. Buying is com-
pulsive, as hinted by the slogans blazed by enormous advertising signs. In this
society of hyper-​consumption, those who spend more get a “moral reinforce-
ment” by the supermarkets, while cars and appliances are “traded in” for new
models once every few months, shops are open 24 hours a day, factories also
operate on Sundays and the working day lasts 12 hours (and may be extended
to 14). Even food is artificial and disproportionate, so that a chicken for two
may be “an economy twelve-​pounder, the size of a turkey, with stylized legs and
wings and an enormous breast, most of which would be discarded at the end of
 Dystopian settings, (post)human landscapes 85
the meal” (and there are no dogs and cats to eat the leftovers either). In Ballard’s
short story, not just food is wasted. The only beautiful things in the urban areas
are the big streets with their large junctions; but, behind the immense billboards,
from which subliminal messages are issued to entice passers-​by to buy more
objects, it is possible to spot: “continuous junkyards filled with cars and trucks,
washing machines and refrigerators, all perfectly workable but jettisoned by the
economic pressure of the succeeding waves of discount models” (The Subliminal
Man 1963, 569). The characters capable of unmasking the hidden dimension of
the advertising messages are two men; the protagonist’s wife is instead uncritic-
ally subjugated by it (thinking in critical terms about capitalism is simpler than
getting rid of gender bias).
Concern about waste often returns in Ballard’s writings (Dini 2016). It
becomes an actor, and not just an extra, perhaps for the first time within a
literary tradition, in one of his climate novels, The Burning World (republished
as The Drought). In this, a terrible drought is threatening the world, which,
“without rain, is drying up.” Burnt and desolate, the landscape is dotted with
rubbish. As early as the first page, in the drying up lake the “caking mudbank
was speckled with pieces of paper and driftwood.” In the cities, “Unwashed by
the rain, the streets were covered with dust and scraps of paper, the sidewalks
strewn with garbage.” The scattered garbage is not only a sign of the defeat of
the social system, it is the primary cause of the drought because industrial waste
“discharged into the ocean basins during the previous fifty years” has formed a
barrier over the water, preventing evaporation and disrupting the rainfall cycle.
Although critics tend to stress that, more than an accusation aimed at “industrial
modernity,” the waste is an element that allows Ballard to exploit “the narrative
potential of its deleterious effects” (Dini 2019, 2), the text resonates today as a
powerful environmental warning.
Waste also appears in the setting of many post-​apocalyptic films, from The
World, the Flesh and the Devil (1959, Ranald MacDougall) to 28 Days Later
(2002, Danny Boyle), The Road, and the TV series The Walking Dead (2010–​),
in which unused objects, abandoned cars, overturned supermarket trolleys, and
the everyday belongings of the non-​existent humanity, are a staple. In two films
from the early 2000s, garbage again plays a central role. The two films, Idiocracy
and Wall-​E, are similar in many ways, even if the first is a dystopia (it represents
the negative evolution of current behavior), the second a post-​apocalyptic story
(the degeneration has gone so far that the planet is uninhabitable).
Idiocracy is a comedy film that had a minimal distribution, and a domestic
opening of just $124,367,2 but, due to its diffusion on alternative distribution
channels, has since become a cult movie. Set in the United States of 2505, it
depicts a country covered by heaps of waste so large as to outline new mountain
ranges. It is this massive and continuous accumulation of garbage that sparks off
the story. When the nth truck dumps even more trash on one of these moun-
tains of rubbish, the excessive weight starts the “great garbage avalanche” that
unearths a capsule in which Private Joe has lain since 2005. The soldier, who
had been placed in hibernation as part of an experiment, was chosen because,
86 Landscapes and fears
in 2005, he was assessed as being a perfectly average human being. He was later
forgotten. When he wakes up, 500 years later, he discovers he is “the smartest
guy in the world.” While he was asleep, the population exploded numerically
but “intelligence continued to decline” because intelligent people, too busy
following their careers, did not have children, while the others proliferated.
So, in 2505, humanity is “incapable of solving even the most basic problems,
like garbage, which had been stacked for centuries, with no plans whatsoever.”
Since he is now the smartest man in the world, Joe is appointed as Secretary
of the Interior and therefore receives the task of solving a serious environ-
mental problem: the land has become dry and sterile. The problem has a spe-
cific cause. Subjugated by advertising, everybody now believes that water is
only for flushing toilets; they have replaced it virtually everywhere with an
electrolytic beverage, which they use even to irrigate fields. Though not a bot-
anist, Joe knows that plants require water to grow, while electrolyte drinks make
them scorch, and he solves the problem (Seymour 2014).
Much more mainstream is the computer-​ animated film Wall-​E (2008,
Pixar), distributed by Walt Disney Studios, which has grossed over $500 million
worldwide.3
Here a big corporation named “Buy n Large” feeds the world so opulently
as to kill the vitality of the planet, covering it with waste. Human beings now
live in a spaceship, where they are “coddled, fattened, and infantilized by an
automated consumerist society where all labor is provided by robots and even
movement of the human body is technologically mediated” (Booth 2015, 37).
Rescue from this situation is brought by a small robot (a “Waste Allocation
Load Lifter Earth-​Class” —​abbreviated to Wall-​E), powered by solar energy,
which finds a small plant alive on Earth, and with the help of a more advanced
robot, called Eve (“Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator”), succeeds in bringing
humans back to the planet.
Both films send a conservative environmentalist message marked by the
classic dualisms between man and woman, nature and culture.They both remain
anchored to the usual gender stereotypes (the main character is a young male
and the female character is only a supporting character). Moreover, they both
attribute to a male protagonist the task of saving the Earth (passive and female)
from an environmental disaster (Yates 2019). There is a difference, however,
because in Wall-​E, nature proves to have resilience in itself, albeit in posthuman
perspective. This is testified by the presence of Wall-​E’s cockroach-​pet, the only
living thing to have survived on the planet. As Whitley (2008, 144) points out,
“the cockroach is perhaps the ultimate symbol of survival through adaptation to
changed environments, having existed for over 300 million years on earth, 300
times longer than human beings.”
However, using waste as a metaphor and negotiating everyday life praxis,
both movies are expressions of a “culture of dissent” against consumerism and
corporate power. They both also make clear that “present-​day patterns of con-
sumption and wastefulness are suffocating the planet and making it uninhabit-
able” (Anderson 2012).
 Dystopian settings, (post)human landscapes 87

5.5 Post-​human landscapes in biocentric/​ecocentric

perspectives: The Last Man and Earth Abides
We have seen that dystopia tends to impose excessive order on space (an excess
of territorialization and artificiality). Post-​apocalyptic narratives instead leave
room for disorder. An Italian geographer, Aldo Sestini (1947), defined “space
transformed by human beings” (now, we call it “territory”) (Turco 2010) as
a balance between the modifying actions of human beings (which we define
as “territorialization”) and the entropic processes of “nature.” In dystopian
narratives, over-​territorialization erases nature, or locks it away outside a border.
Conversely, in post-​apocalyptic stories, the balance breaks up. Human action
is powerful enough to erase the biosphere; or else, the forces of nature pre-
vail, human constructions collapse, and skyscrapers are left empty and disused.
Nature tends to take over and erase the signs left by humans.
The process involves all aspects of territorialization: both material (“reifi-
cation”), organizational (“structuring”), and symbolic (“naming”). Rewilding,
therefore, does not only involve the material transformation of buildings,
animals, and vegetation; the political organization of the territory and top-
onymy also lose their meaning. Seen from this perspective, the representation
of a post-​apocalyptic landscape, marked by the return of wilderness, helps to
convey a biocentric/ecocentric discourse, reducing the presumed supremacy of
human beings on the planet.
Mary Shelley’s novel The Last Man provides an early example of this. The
narrative unfolds from the perspective of a young man named Lionel, who travels
with friends across Europe. A mysterious plague begins to kill his comrades and
the population at large while he inexplicably survives, until he finds himself
alone on the planet. The novel does not describe the survivor’s efforts after the
apocalypse. It is about the events leading to the disappearance of the human
race, and the last man’s reactions towards these progressive transformations.
The admiration expressed by Lionel for “exhilarating beauty” of nature turns
the scenery into a landscape, and continually reminds the reader of how beau-
tiful nature is. “There, fanned by vernal airs, the Spirit of Beauty sprung from
her cold repose; and, with winnowing wings and soft pacing feet, set a girdle
of verdure around the Earth, sporting among the violets, hiding within the
springing foliage of the trees, tripping lightly down the radiant streams into the
sunny deep” (The Last Man, 1826).
Rich and colorful descriptions of the natural environment are numerous
in the first part of the novel, when the young people are still “gay as summer
insects” and immersed in the tranquility of the “divine forest.”They continue to
be even as devastation advances, and human beings begin to die like flies.Towards
the end of the book, Lionel addresses his animal brothers, describing their simi-
larities: they are all made of flesh and blood. Together with descriptions of
natural elements, similes associating human characters with plants and animals
are found throughout the text; in this way, humans are presented as part of the
animal world, and likewise subject to the laws of nature.
88 Landscapes and fears
Mary Shelley’s “antianthropocentric” position (Moore 2017, 99) extends to
all life on the planet, which will go on without any human beings, and even-
tually to the Earth itself, which will continue undaunted to turn, like a “green
desert” (Morton 1996), impassive to human events. In this way, “the traditional
anthropocentric vision of the world is replaced by the realization that nature has
no need for humans” (Cameron 2012, 187). Seen from this perspective, extinc-
tion can come to the human species without the planet as a whole registering
a great change: “Yes, this is the Earth; there is no change —​no ruin —​no rent
made in her verdurous expanse; she continues to wheel round and round, with
alternate night and day, through the sky, though man is not her adorner or
inhabitant” (The Last Man, 1826).
Earth Abides (1949, George R. Stewart) is a post-​apocalyptic novel that starts,
more or less, where The Last Man ends, that is when the plague has run its
course and almost all of humanity has disappeared from the planet. The story is
set in California in the 1940s. The main character is a geographer who, while
carrying out his observations in a secluded place, is bitten by a snake, loses con-
sciousness and thus remains isolated in a lonely mountain cabin, unaware of
what is happening around him. When he regains consciousness and goes down
to the valley, he discovers that almost all of humanity has died, affected by “some
new and unknown disease of unparalleled rapidity of spread.” The origins of
the disease are unknown, albeit three possibilities are offered: “it might have
emerged from some animal reservoir of disease; it might be caused by some
new microorganism, most probably a virus, produced by mutation; it might be
an escape, possibly even a vindictive release, from some laboratory of bacterio-
logical warfare. The last [is] apparently the popular idea.” (Earth Abides, 1949).
In the first part of the novel, Ish is a “last man,” who wanders alone in the
desert lands of North America, from San Francisco to New York (which, with
its “utter uselessness,” epitomizes “the senselessness” of humans’ past civiliza-
tion) (Cummins Cogell 1978). Then, he becomes a “first man”: he meets a
woman, who becomes his wife, and together they start a new human commu-
nity. In the following years, life in the new community flows, many children are
born, then marry in turn. Initially, they live by scavenging in abandoned shops
and opening canned foods; then, they learn to hunt and fish. As they acquire
these “wilderness” skills, they lose those connected to civilization: they can
no longer read and write. In this new group of hunter-​gatherers (called The
Tribe), Ish returns to play the role of “the last man.” Not only is he the only
intellectual —​his descendants do not know how to spell or the meaning of the
word “Civ-​vil-​eye-​za-​shun” —​he is also the last to have seen it. He is the last
one to have lived in a world dominated by human beings. Now, with human
beings again cave-​dwellers, the balance between the species is restored, and
there are no more presumed rulers of the planet. In this way, the book makes
explicit the biocentric/ecocentric attitude suggested by the title: humans have
no privileged place in nature. If they go, “Earth abides.”
As in The Last Man, in Earth Abides the apocalypse has no ascertained
cause: it may have had an anthropogenic origin, but it may also be related to the
 Dystopian settings, (post)human landscapes 89
“biological law of flux and reflux,” since “the number of individuals in a species
never remains constant but always rises and falls” (Cummins Cogell 1978). In
this way, Stewart demonstrates that human beings follow the laws of nature;
they are a species like others, like ants, rats, and grasshoppers: they multiply, they
reach their maximum growth within a closed system and, when too numerous,
they suffer an abrupt reduction in number, or even disappear. He highlights the
animal nature of the human species, challenging the classical human ̶ nature
dichotomy, and employs “large-​scale disaster to emphasize our embeddedness
in non-​human nature and to highlight the ideological trends that make this
embeddedness dangerously invisible” (Otto 2012, 29).
In terms of gender and race, the text is deeply affected by the geopolit-
ical discourse of its time. Ish is an “Adamic Hero” (Wells 2007, 473), who
gives to Em, his female partner, no more than the role of “nurturer,” while he
cares about “the future of civilization.” Moreover, he entrusts all his hopes for
an intellectual revival of humankind in his male child, Joey, who can “keep
the light burning through these dark times,” not in his wife, least of all in his
daughters. Ish is white, while Em “passes” for “white,” but on the mother’s
side, she is not. She confesses in tears her “fault,” but he takes the issue with
humor because, after all, in times of apocalypse, one can no longer afford the
luxury of worrying about such things. So, the book clearly does not overcome
gender bias and reveals some racial anxieties (“it seems to be easier to imagine
an apocalypse than it is to imagine a racially just and equitable world”) (Booth
2015, 22). However, it tackles with critical awareness the human ̶ nature relation
by means of the “critique of the myth of human supremacy” (Otto 2012, 100),
refracted in the descriptions of the landscape.
In Earth Abides the post-​human world is “quiet.” Noises produced by human
beings in their daily activities have disappeared. The silence is interrupted only
by “the chirp of a bird or the faint humming of an insect.” Ish observes such
changes during his travels in the first part of the novel, where descriptions are
used to underline the discontinuity between the old world and the new. The
return of wildness is marked by “the struggle between the native plants …
moving back into the gardens, and the exotics which once had been planted
there and carefully tended” (Earth Abides, 1949).
In the countryside, the signs of human presence, such as ruins, accumulate,
while vegetation resumes its vigorous sprawl, and the land “gets to look more
and more like what it had been before the white men came.” In the cities,
all is covered by dust, and markets are strewn with litter. Even in New York,
useless and empty but for pigeons and stray dogs, “Fifth Avenue makes a beau-
tiful corpse.” In this post-​human world, after the loss of human control, non-
human animal species are “jostling for readjustment”; those genetically similar
to human beings (such as monkeys and apes), and dogs that are either too
domestic or closed in kennels die; conversely wild animals “take new freedoms.”
“In the times of civilization men had really felt themselves as the masters of
creation. Everything had been good or bad in relation to man. So you killed
rattlesnakes. But now nature had become so overwhelming that any attempt at
90 Landscapes and fears
its control was merely outside anyone’s circle of thought.You lived as part of it,
not as its dominating power” (Earth Abides, 1949).
Over the years, as the growth of shrubland continues, buildings are increas-
ingly submerged by vegetation, which rises to cover first-​floor windows, while
the asphalt of the roads, concealed by grass, is no longer visible.The geopolitical
effects on territorial order also disappear, making place names or boundaries
meaningless. What is Arizona now, and how to define a state, Ish wonders, after
he attempts to suggest to young Bob the right directions to reach New York.
“‘You may have some trouble in Arizona,’ he went on. ‘After you get to the
mountains, but then…’ ‘What’s Arry–​? What is it?–​Arry-​*zone*-​a?’ Bob was
asking, and it was a fair enough question. But Ish found himself stumped to
answer it. What Arizona once had been —​even that was a hard one. Had it
been a certain amount of territory, or had it been essentially a corporate entity,
an abstraction? Even so, how could he explain in a few words what a ‘state’ had
been? Much less, how could he explain what Arizona now was? ‘Oh,’ he said
finally, ‘Arizona —​that was just a name for that part over there beyond the
river.’Then he had an inspiration, ‘See, on the map it’s this part inside the yellow
line.’ ‘Yes,’ said Bob, ‘I suppose they had a fence around it?’” (Earth Abides, 1949).
While entropic processes take over the human reification and the naming
and structuring of the land, the ongoing transformation becomes a habit. Only
as an older man, Ish notices that the world is not only less noisy but has fewer
colors: “something caught Ish’s eye, and he reached out his hand and cried for
it, suddenly, as a child might… It was a scarlet flower —​a geranium, which had
adapted itself to the new life and lived through these years. It was not the flower
but the color, Ish realized, that had given him that sudden pang and made him
cry out. There was not enough red in the world anymore. Being old, he could
remember a world in which dyes and lights flamed with scarlet and vermilion.
But now the world had sunk back into a quiet harmony of blues and greens and
browns —​and reds no longer blazed everywhere” (Earth Abides, 1949).

5.6 The Drowned World and the landscape as

main character
The Drowned World is one of J.G. Ballard’s “climate novels.” Because of an
increase in temperatures linked to solar instability and the reduction of the
ionosphere, the polar ice caps have melted, and Planet Earth is now almost
entirely covered by water. The story is set about 70 years after the beginning
of the catastrophe. The main character, Robert Kerans, knows the world of the
past only through the pictures in his old schoolbooks. Even the few people old
enough remember the cities of the past just as “beleaguered citadels, hemmed
in by enormous dykes and disintegrated by panic and despair, reluctant Venices
to their marriage with the sea” (The Drowned World, 1962).
Meanwhile, humans have migrated to the polar zones from intermediate
latitudes made uninhabitable by high temperatures.“The ecological balance” has
reversed. Amphibians and reptilians, more adapted to the aquatic environment,
 Dystopian settings, (post)human landscapes 91
are becoming more and more numerous, while the mammals are disappearing.
Human beings, having their fertility reduced, have shrunk to a few million.
Kerans, a marine biologist, belongs to the first generation after the apocalypse
and grew up in the Polar Circle. With a group of other researchers and mili-
tary personnel, he is now in the south to work at a biological mapping of the
new flora, and to survey a city almost entirely submerged by water, of which
he does not even know the name (halfway through the novel it turns out to be
London).
As Amis (2014) writes: “Ballard gives The Drowned World the trappings of a
conventional novel (hero, heroine, authority figure, villain), and equips it with
a plot.” The classic stereotypes of gender and race are present (the protagonist
is a young man; the female character is inevitably beautiful, and there is even a
Black man with a deferential attitude). The main character of the novel, how-
ever, is the landscape. Its importance is underlined by the emphasis given to the
act of “looking,” which begins right at the start of the novel: “Soon it would be
too hot. Looking out from the hotel balcony, shortly after eight o’clock, Kerans
watched the sun rise behind the dense groves of giant gymnosperms crowding
over the roofs of the abandoned department stores four hundred yards on the
east side of the lagoon” (The Drowned World, 1962).
Kerans is fascinated by the strange beauty of this world, where the past and
the present collide. “In the early morning light a strange mournful beauty
hung over the lagoon; the somber green-​black fronds of the gymnosperms,
intruders from the Triassic past, and the half-​submerged white-​faced buildings
of the 20th century still reflected together in the dark mirror of the water, the
two interlocking worlds apparently suspended at some junction in time” (The
Drowned World, 1962). Although in fact, the remains of the previous civilization
are sometimes trash: “Beautiful and serene from his balcony a few minutes
earlier, Kerans realized that the lagoon was nothing more than a garbage-​filled
swamp” (The Drowned World, 1962).
Deterritorialization has made cities unrecognizable, or almost unrecog-
nizable, even if human beings try to give them order again (with cartog-
raphy). The landscape is thus a post-​human landscape, scarred by ruins. The
post-​apocalyptic dimension is achieved by comparing what is going to be
lost (music, elegance, the order imprinted by human activities on the land,
the luxury of the hotel where Kerans lives), and what will follow. “The for-
malization of space and time” (Taylor 2002) is broken and the author plays
with the idea of a recession of time. The ecological inversion brings back
species dating from the Triassic period. Kerans, like many of his colleagues,
starts dreaming about prehistoric times. For this reason, he feels part of a
process that involves the entire planet and decides not to oppose it. Not only
does Ballard blur the “the boundary between humankind and animal, but
[…] insists that a human is and remains an animal” (Tait 2014, 36). The land-
scape recedes from post-​human to pre-​human (Rossi 1994). Human beings
are not responsible for this disruption but cannot exclude themselves from
it. Kerans understands he is part of a whole: “The entire planet is rapidly
92 Landscapes and fears
returning to the Mesozoic Period… In so far as we are part of the planet,
a piece of the main, we too are returning…” In this way, Ballard’s radical
imagination “explores the deep implications of time, space, psychology, and
evolutionary biology to dismantle anthropocentric narratives” (Baker 2008,
13, quoted by Tait 2014, 38).

5.7 The Road and the landscape as a corpse

The Road, a novel by Cormac McCarthy (2006), has received numerous prizes
(including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 2007) and triggered “a tremendous
critical interest.” In 2009, it was adapted in a movie (John Hillcoat), which was
also well received by the critics, but was only given a lukewarm reception at the
box-​office ($27,639,579 worldwide).4
It is the story of an unnamed father and his son traveling in the American
wasteland a few years after a major catastrophe.The duo travels south in the dim
hope of finding a warmer climate, but the journey takes them through a desert
of torched woodland and decaying structures, because, together with most of
humanity, the catastrophe also wiped out the biosphere. Nature is no more, and
everything is gray, dried, ashes. This all-​encompassing devastation had occurred
when the child was too young to remember.
They walk, dragging a supermarket trolley with them, where they put what-
ever they can gather along the way. In a world where there are no more animals
or plants, only a few humans survive. Apart from gangs of thieves, all forms
of organized society have been lost or have turned into dangerous covens of
cannibals. Some of the survivors have descended into an abyss of degradation
and turned to eating their children after feeding on their pets; others, taking
control of weapons and means of transport, have organized themselves into
gangs which now plunder the few survivors. Encounters with other people,
therefore, along with cold and hunger, are a threat to survival. Faced with the
disappearance of all human values, father and son struggle to remain “good
guys,” or, in one of McCarthy’s metaphors, “to be the ones who carry the fire.”
In the end, laid low by fatigue, the father falls ill and dies. With an unexpect-
edly positive ending, the son joins a new family (a group of people who have
maintained ties and affections, and a little dog) and resumes the journey.
In both the novel and the film, the landscape plays a primary role, and the act
of looking is critical. As in The Drowned World, the novel opens with the main
character looking at the landscape: “When it was light enough to use the bin-
oculars he glassed the valley below. Everything paling away into the murk. The
soft ash blowing in loose swirls over the blacktop. He studied what he could see.
The segments of road down there among the dead trees. Looking for anything
of color” (The Road, 2006).5
Scattered with desiccated remains, the scorched landscape is described by
McCarthy as “so utterly defoliated and sterilized” that it represents “the greatest
corpse of all” (Chabon 2007). In the movie, to make it look even bleaker,
contrasts are made between the colors of the past, in the father’s memory,
 Dystopian settings, (post)human landscapes 93
and the gray vision of the present. Thus, although the landscape described by
Stewart in Earth Abides is lush, and Cormac McCarthy’s deserted and lifeless,
the lack of color unites them (here too there is, at a certain point, something
red that breaks the monotony, but it is not a geranium, it is a Coca-​Cola can).
The lack of colors is not the only point in common between the two
texts. In both cases, there are a father and a son (or one of the sons) who
qualify as bearers of human values (which for Stewart are represented by cul-
ture, “the light,” and for McCarthy by love and spirituality, “the fire”). All the
other survivors are cavemen or cannibals. In Earth Abides, cities are meaningless
concrete cathedrals. In The Road, the emphasis on the unnecessary accumu-
lation of goods seems even more pronounced. Moreover, the fact that father
and son move around, pushing a supermarket trolley, is almost a parody of
a world of consumers, at present in ashes (Moore 2017, 235). The symbolic
importance of map, also in literary terms (Rossetto 2014), comes back here
too. In The Road father and son look at a map, but while the father recognizes
signs and meanings, they escape the son: “We follow the road here along the
eastern slope of the mountains. These are our roads, the black lines on the map.
The state roads. Why are they the state roads? Because they used to belong to
the states.What used to be called the states. But there’s not any more states? No.
What happened to them? I don’t know exactly. That’s a good question. But the
roads are still there” (The Road, 2006).6
However, the map retains a symbolic value: looking at it is a constant habit
for the two protagonists, a sort of ritual that assigns a meaning to their journey.
The child knows the names on it by heart, and this cheers him: they are going
on, southwards, in the direction of the sea (even if the father cannot guarantee
that the sea is still blue, as it appears on the map). The map falling to pieces,
together with the objects of which it constitutes an evanescent representation, is
itself a symbol of the transience of the “territorialization” imposed on the Earth,
not only as regards reification, i.e., material transformation, but also as regards its
denomination, i.e., its symbolic structuring.
Despite sharing some features, the three texts have different attitudes towards
the environment. While The Drowned World and Earth Abides assign primacy to
“nature,” in The Road, the role of the human being is central.
In the latter, no mention is made about the reasons for the catastrophe. In
the novel, some clues suggest that it was a nuclear explosion; in the film, some
old news broadcast images hint at the same assumption (Ibarrola-​Armendáriz
2009, 10). McCarthy, in an interview, stated that the event is purposely left
unknown. “It could be anything —​volcanic activity, or it could be nuclear
war. It is not really important. The whole thing now is, what do you do?”7 The
interest is mostly focused on humans’ ability to keep their spirit alive, despite
everything. The role of the landscape, although central, is that of a dead world,
the landscape itself is a corpse. After the apocalypse, life on the planet does
not go forward (or back). It stops. The biosphere is gone. To human beings
is attributed the power to annihilate life on the planet (beware, we are in the
Anthropocene) (Moore 2017). It is a sin that all that beauty no longer exists (as
94 Landscapes and fears
the father’s colored memories suggest in an elegiac tone, in contrast to the gray
reality of the present). However, what counts is the lack of resources (and the
whole journey of father and son is a search of food and shelter, of resources to
survive). Thankfully, as suggested by the happy ending, some humans still know
how to “carry the fire.”

Notes
1 There are many versions of the film. In 1992, a Director’s Cut was released, where
the 1982 “happy ending”, and Harrison Ford’s voice-​over narration, are eliminated
(Begley 2004).
2 www.boxofficemojo.com/​release/​rl542868993/​
3 www.boxofficemojo.com/​release/​rl3615065601/​
4 www.boxofficemojo.com/​release/​rl1953269249/​
5 This excerpt, taken from page 4 of the novel The Road, is quoted with permission
from the publisher, Penguin RandomHouse, Request # 56125
6 This excerpt, taken from page 50 of the novel The Road, is quoted with permission
from the publisher, Penguin RandomHouse, Request # 56125
7 Jurgensen J., 2009. “Hollywood’s Favourite Cowboy,” The Wall Street Journal, 20
November.

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6 
Gulliver and beyond
Gender, race and “environmental” clichés

6.1 The “heroic male agent”: white, male, young,

heterosexual, and non-disabled
The protagonist of the first utopian tales is a traveler; he is a white male, in
his prime and in excellent health. We could call him Gulliver. In adventure
novels, the protagonist is a young (perhaps a little younger) white male, with a
“normate” body (Garland Thompson 2017). We could call him Robinson. The
protagonists of Julius Verne’s and Wells’ novels are also white males in the prime
of their lives. In post-​apocalyptic narrations, the hero may be a wanderer who
comes to a community, solves its problems and leaves. In this way, he appeals to
the old myth of “the Judeo-​Christian messianic hero who battles an antichrist
and his followers, liberating an oppressed community and thereby enabling
social rebirth” (Broderick and Ellis 2019, 82) but also to the classical western
plot structure (Wright 1977). We could call him Max. In dystopian narratives,
the main character is often an active part of the system (a policeman, an officer)
(Brave New World, 1932, Aldous Huxley; Fahrenheit 451, 1953, Ray Bradbury;
Soylent Green, 1973, Richard Fleischer; Logan’s Run, Blade Runner, 1982, Ridley
Scott; Blade Runner 2049, 2017, Denis Villeneuve). He notices that something
is wrong, he rebels, and escapes to the green place, in the company of a female
partner. We could call him Deckard. Both Max and Deckard are white males
and heterosexual. The “male heroic agent” is thus connoted by gender bias,
which also feeds on race and age discrimination. He also respects body stereo-
types, with few exceptions (Max, in the Mad Max franchise, transitions “from
able-​bodied masculinity in the first film to a limping, maddened road warrior
in The Road Warrior”) (Broderick and Ellis 2019).
In many eco-​disaster/​post-​apocalyptic films, the protective side of the male
hero is further accentuated by his role as a father (Brereton 2005; Sturgeon
2009), who “affirms the ultimate ‘masculine quest’ to save and protect his own
flesh and blood” (Brereton 2015). So, in Earth Abides (1949, George R. Stewart),
Ish is a father, playing Adam’s role with regard to the future of humanity. The
Road (2006, Cormac McCarthy) is the story of a father and his son.The climate
change movie par excellence, The Day After Tomorrow (2004, Roland Emmerich)
stars Dennis Quaid as a paleoclimatologist called Jack Hall, who, from
Washington, reaches New York on foot, in the middle of a sudden glaciation,
98 Landscapes and fears
to save his son. The figure of the father, played by Tom Cruise, becomes central
in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of War of the Worlds (2005), and in After Earth
(2013, M. Night Shyamalan), played by Will Smith. The TV drama The Walking
Dead (2010 -, AMC) shows a multifaceted trend in this direction. Rick Grimes,
the pseudo-​sheriff who leads the bunch of survivors, is a father; the narrative
focuses, season after season, first on the relationship between him and his son
Carl, who always wears Rick’s cowboy hat as proof of his future leadership, and
then with his daughter Judith, who at some point in the story inherits both the
hat and the role. Even the video game The Last of Us (2013) has a father as the
protagonist, first committed to protecting his daughter, then a girl immune to
the fungal infection that has exterminated a large part of humanity.
The “green father” trope highlights the masculine protective capacity
towards figures identifiable with an “authentic and primitive nature,” such as
representatives of tribal peoples, women, children, animals (Ingram 2000, 3).
Together with “nature,” they all may be victims and the object of concern
and care. The heroic male agent can also play the role of the “white savior”
(Hughey 2012). In this case, the encounter with a non-​white supporting char-
acter (a woman, a child, a friend) emphasizes his role. In Elysium (2013, Neill
Blomkamp), Max, the main character, is almost the only white man living
on Earth; he is also the one who saves all the others. In The Children of Men
(2006, Alfonso Cuarón), the “male heroic agent” is Theo Faron, played by Clive
Owen, who is “about as stereotypical a white guy as one can get: British, con-
fident, laconic, blue eyes, and unapologetic.” His essential task in the movie is
“to save Kee, the brown-​skinned and unconvincingly helpless female refugee”
(Hamner 2015, 1437–​38), who happens to be the first woman to become preg-
nant after 18 years. Likewise, in the film Snowpiercer (2013, Bong Joon-ho), the
heroic white male struggles to change the situation of the oppressed and ends
up defending a child of color and his mother (however, in the TV series of
the same title, 2020-​on, he is instead a Black man). Concerning race, a figure
similar, but opposite, to that of the white savior is that of the “magical negro”
(Hughey 2012); the white savior, however, is the protagonist, while he is only a
supporting figure. In addition to dealing with the problems of human “victims,”
the heroic male agent sometimes has the duty of saving the planet from a seem-
ingly irreversible environmental disaster (Idiocracy, 2006, Mike Judge; Wall-​E,
2008, Pixar). In this case, we are faced with what Carolyn Merchant (1996,
2003) calls an “Edenic recovery narrative.” The trope “focuses on heroic male
agents, traditionally white men, who function within the cinematic narrative
to imagine the restoration of both civilization and Edenic nature” (Yates 2017);
consequently, it tends to feminize nature and “(re)produce a binary dichotomy
of passive, female nature and active, male culture” (Yates 2017, 355).
Few exceptions occur in terms of race. The protagonist is almost always
white. If he is not, he cannot present himself as the new Adam, the founder
of humanity, nor can he pair up with white female figures. In one of the first
films focused on the theme of survival after a nuclear catastrophe (The World,
the Flesh and the Devil, 1959, Ranald MacDougall), the main character, Ralph, is
interpreted by the Afro-​American actor Harry Belafonte. One of the problems
 Gulliver and beyond 99
of the survivors is precisely the racial difference. Ralph survives a nuclear dis-
aster because, at the time, he was working in a mine. When he emerges from
underground, he finds an abandoned New York, and begins to wander, in a
scene that recalls the literary description of Earth Abides and is set to become
a sort of “visual standard” for the genre: the streets of the city are dotted with
abandoned objects, and his voice, which cries out for someone to answer,
echoes among the empty skyscrapers. After wandering for a while, he meets a
white woman and, while beginning to collaborate with her, rejects the hypoth-
esis of cohabitation. A Black man and a white woman cannot be the founders
of the new humanity. For this reason, when they finally meet another white
man, Ralph proposes to the two whites to “start again” as a couple, entrusting
them with the task of generating a new humanity, while he will continue to
look for other survivors.
In 2007, Will Smith played Robert Neville in the third cinematic version of
I Am Legend (2007, Francis Lawrence), taking the role that had previously been
played by Vincent Price (1964) and Charlton Heston (1971). The roles of Will
Smith and Denzel Washington, who plays Eli in The Book of Eli (2010, Albert
Hughes, Allen Hughes), show a decline in American racial stereotypes. Again,
The Walking Dead can serve as a parameter as the seasons unfold. “In the first
three seasons, non-​white characters largely play supporting, and usually dis-
posable, roles” (Sugg 2015, 795). Afterwards, some interesting Black characters
come into their own; the pseudo-​sheriff, after having lost his white wife, chooses
Michonne as his new partner, a powerful woman of Afro-​American origin who
later gets the leadership of her group.

6.2 What about the girls?

Like dystopian and post-​apocalyptic narratives, sci-​fi also traditionally presents
a white and masculinized arena. However, because of the need to create a cog-
nitive estrangement inherent to the genre, it sometimes attempts to challenge
racialized and patriarchal gender relations (Merrick 2003). The desire to
overturn the conventions typical of the “norm” in terms of race and gender
relations may lead to the introduction of Black heroes. Will Smith stars as
the salvific hero of humanity in sci-​fi blockbusters such as Independence Day
(1996, Emmerich), Men in Black (1997, Barry Sonnenfeld), Men in Black II
(2002, Barry Sonnenfeld), and I, Robot (2004, Alex Proyas). Sometimes, sci-​fi
also introduces women-​soldiers capable of taking a spaceship to safety alone,
for example, Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) in the first episode of the
Alien saga (1979, Ridley Scott). Alternatively, it may show planets dominated by
women, who hold all the positions of power, while men have subordinate tasks,
as in Ghosts from Mars (2001, John Carpenter). Videogames and video games-​
inspired franchises, like Tomb Raider or Resident Evil, may also present “Amazon-​
like heroines” (Merrick 2003). They are generally very tough and aggressive,
and sexy and commanding enough to be able to oscillate between transgres-
sion of traditional gender roles and sexual fetishization (Lara Croft, from Tomb
Raider, has been visually associated with a “dominatrix”) (Herbst 2004).
100 Landscapes and fears
In male-​centered dystopian and post-​apocalyptic narratives, the “protagonists
are men, women’s concerns are left unmentioned, and women characters
are either trivial or vague” (Tan 2017, 32). Women are generally supporting
characters, trophies to conquer or victims to protect; they are “acted upon,”
and their presence “is solely for the feelings and emotions […] [they] can incite
in the male” (Broderick and Ellis 2019, 55). Sometimes, they accompany the
leading male characters on their adventure; in that case, they risk becoming
“action chicks” (Inness 2004), sharing the “hegemonically masculine behavior”
of their partners (Leikam 2017, 33), such as Carol and Michonne in the first
seasons of The Walking Dead and Nova in Sharknado (2013, Anthony Ferrante).
Even when they assume a warrior role, women usually lack real leadership skills
and make fatal mistakes (again, Carol in The Walking Dead). At the most, in post-​
apocalyptic action movies, they play the role of an antagonist, like Aunty Entity
in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985, George Miller and George Ogilvie).
If so, they may be not humans, but androids with a feminine appearance, as in
Blade Runner 2049: here the main character is surrounded by female figures,
mostly clones, AI or replicants obeying orders of the real (male) adversary.
Since Metropolis (1927, Fritz Lang), feminized androids, cyborgs, and artificial
intelligence are often present. They may be antagonists but also sexual partners,
or, at least, sexualized partners and objects of the male protagonist’s desire: for
example, Blade Runner, with Rachael the young and beautiful replicant; Her
(2012, Spike Jonze), with Samantha, a virtual voice who knows the desires of the
main character so well as to make him fall in love with her; and Blade Runner
2049, with the lovely holographic figure of Joi, acting as a partner of K, the pro-
tagonist, who is himself a replicant. Being artificial makes all these female figures
passive, generally obedient, and ready to indulge, verbally, or even physically.
As remarked by Christy Tidwell (2019, 22), “these films are […] obviously
ripe for discussion of gender representation. They also —​less obviously —​
raise significant questions regarding representations of the environment, the
connections between gender and environment, and the place of technology in
this nexus.” The critique, from the point of gender construction, is explicit: Her
has the ultra-​sexy voice of Scarlett Johansson, while Joi is beautiful and always
available, a “virtual projection girlfriend” that “becomes a more dependable,
more attractive decoration that satisfies the expectation of male audiences”
(Tang 2019, 15). Less explicit is the connection with nature. In Her, nature is
only evoked, via a small and incredibly sad urban park, and by some images on
the walls, but it is, apparently, under control; therefore, it is, like femininity, not
a problem. What is at stake is technology (and the male protagonist’s ability to
control it). In Blade Runner 2049, there are more scenes shot outdoors, in which
the settings show a world ravaged by climate change. Still, the sad state of the
environment appears to be a given, a taken-​for-​granted aspect of the future, not
an issue (it is “a way of life,” F. Buell 2003). If trees are dead and rural landscapes
devastated, it matters little; at stake is the replicants’ ability to reproduce. Again,
the central theme is control over technology, not the environmental disaster
(Hamblin and O’Connell 2020).
 Gulliver and beyond 101
Not all dystopian and post-​apocalyptic texts are so androcentric, in fact, there
is a growing number of notable exceptions. An essential input to the discussion
on gender issues, and the women ̶ nature connection in dystopian narratives, is
provided in Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), highly celebrated for
its ecofeminist approach. The novel was first adapted into a film (1990, Volker
Schlöndorff), into an opera (2000, Poul Ruders), and then into a television series
(2017–​) that won the 2017 Emmy Award for Outstanding Series. A first-​person
narrative, the novel is set in the future totalitarian State of Gilead, located where
New England is now. Gilead is a kind of militarized theocracy, whose regime
exercises strict control over the life of its population in all aspects, including the
most intimate. Pollution and radiation have heavily affected human fertility so the
few fertile women are offered as “handmaids” to regime members (the so-​called
Commanders), with whom they must bear children. To this end, Commanders
rape them each month in a particular “Ceremony” also attended by their wives.
While men are all dressed in black, the colors of women’s clothes distinguish their
wearer’s duties: the wives of the Commanders are dressed in blue; the handmaids
in red; the Marthas, responsible for household services, in “dull green.”
The protagonist, a handmaid, is called Offred because she belongs to a
Commander called Fred, not because that is her real name. In this regime of
total patriarchy, where women are not allowed to write or read, “flowers are
still allowed” (as Offred says at the beginning of the story). Flowers often return
in the narrative; there are paper flowers, flowers painted on the walls, flowers
in the garden of Serena, the Commander’s wife, images of flowers that can be
envisaged in the bodies of people hanged for crimes against the State (whose red
reminds Offred of the tulips in Serena’s garden). “Flowers, in fact, pervade the
novel, signifying resistance to Gilead’s agenda but also providing a backdrop for
many of the novel’s most explicit scenes of sexual exploitation” (Hooker 2006,
287). They thus serve as metaphors for the female body. With this continuous
pairing, the novel highlights the role of the woman as a mere “resource,” relevant
only in relation to her body, as long as she has “viable ovaries” (in that case, she
is essential and scarce, says Offred, as a real “national resource”) or she can pro-
vide services as a “Martha.” From an ecofeminist perspective (Kapoor 2018), the
novel associates the passive roles of woman and nature in the patriarchal system
to indicate that ecological imbalance and gender oppression go hand in hand.
A similar perspective also characterizes the sequel, titled The Testaments
(2019). Here, the association between the female body and nature is made even
more explicit. The idea that the girls are “precious flowers” is reiterated in the
novel in different contexts, to emphasize how they cannot rebel against their
fate: “We were custodians of an invaluable treasure that existed, unseen, inside
us; we were precious flowers that had to be kept safely inside glass houses,” and
later in the book: “we were precious flowers, and who ever heard of a rebellious
flower? […] No rebellious flowers here!” (The Testaments, 2019).1
Atwood’s texts primarily highlight the oppressive regime to which many
women are subjected, using nature as a metaphor. More recent texts high-
light women’s ability to rebel and assume control, including in the relationship
102 Landscapes and fears
between human beings and the environment. In Mad Max Fury Road (2015,
George Miller), Furiosa, the female lead, is a central figure alongside the char-
acter in the title. She is a senior member of Immortan Joe’s regime, a power
system in which the dictatorial leader exerts strict control over access to water
in an extremely dry setting called the Citadel. Furiosa rebels and runs away,
taking the “breeders,” the old dictator’s young wives, with her. She tries to lead
her group of fugitives to the place of her childhood, which she remembers
as the Green Place. However, she discovers that it is no longer green and has
become as bad for human life as the Citadel (where at least there is a water
source, even if Immortan Joe controls it). She returns and conquers the city,
giving back the water, and thus life, to the people and the land.
Furiosa is a person with disabilty; she is not the only one with a body that
is not “normate” in the movie, as Immortan Joe’s army, his people, and his son,
are all persons with disabilities. Many of them live thanks to machines (or con-
tinuous transfusions), and their damaged bodies are somehow emblematic of the
Citadel’s desolate setting. Furiosa is also a cyborg, tapping “the liberatory poten-
tial of cyborg imagery and identity for feminism” (Soles 2019). Immortan Joe
is a cyborg, too, because he survives thanks to an elaborate suit of armor whose
forms enhance his masculinity. Unlike Immortan Joe, Furiosa can live without
a prosthesis, and, when she takes power, she does so just as a woman with a dis-
ability. In this way, she not only claims her own ability to act as a “powerful and
agentive” person (Yates 2017), but also that of the team of women she leads,
who are capable of acting together and jointly defeating patriarchy (Broderick
and Ellis 2019). She also links women and nature, “not to serve capitalist patri-
archy, but rather […] to re-​cast nature as feminist space” (Yates 2017, 369).
However, beyond the ecofeminist message in the film, some elements deserve
further reflection. In the former Green Place, for instance, the environment is
too degraded for human beings to tolerate, but for a vast flock of crows it is
perfectly acceptable. In this way, the environmental problem risks being seen
only through anthropocentric eyes. Besides, as remarked by Carter Soles (2019),
in the film great use is made of fossil-​fueled transportation, which in some way
provides an “implicit endorsement of a laissez-​faire petroleum-​based economy.”
Several other strong and rebellious heroines populate Young Adult Fiction
and its film adaptations. The most famous are Katniss in the Hunger Games
trilogy (2008-10, Suzanne Collins), Tally in Uglies (2005-07, Scott Westerfeld),
and Tris in the Divergent series (Divergent, Insurgent, Allegiant, and Ascendant)
(2011-13, Veronica Roth). In all these cases, the heroine, besides being rebel-
lious, is also very young; this not only places her in opposition to the system
(whose structural flaws in terms of class and gender relations are invariably
highlighted), but also to adult generations. In some cases, these heroines bring
an environmentalist discourse into play, even if they often do so only by placing
the action in a degraded and over-​urbanized future (Rodríguez 2017) marked
by the over-​exploitation of resources, in a conservationist perspective or using
the traditional cliché of nature as a refuge and place of peace as opposed to the
city (McDonough and Wagner 2014, 158).
 Gulliver and beyond 103
In the film version, of these sagas the rebel heroine is always beautiful,
respecting Hollywood clichés. She is almost always white, so much so that
the failure to address the race issue has been widely raised (Couzelis, 2013;
Dubrofsky and Ryalls 2014; Burke and Kelly 2015).
As with the issues of fatherhood and race, The Walking Dead, an audience-​
friendly television series, shows an interesting evolution. Season after season,
many female leaders emerge and many female villains too (like Alpha, the
Whisperers’ leader). Even the legacy of the former leader, symbolized by
the cowboy hat, has passed from the son Carl to the daughter Judith, a pre-​
adolescent (white) girl who exerts a great influence on the other community
members.

6.3 Indigenous and settlers: “invasion fiction” and the

apocalypse as historical experience
H.G. Wells’ most famous work, The War of the Worlds (1897), is generally
considered one of the foundational texts of sci-​fi as a literary genre.The novel is
an example of “invasion fiction.” It narrates the cruel fate of Earthlings after the
planet has been invaded by Martians, who are superior to them in both intelli-
gence and technology. The novel can also be defined as a post-​apocalyptic dys-
topia because, for the Earthlings, an event occurs that brings about a change of
state (a catastrophe), following which their living conditions worsen appallingly.
Invasion fiction has become a staple of later sci-​fi works, usually attributing
a metaphorical sense to the trespasser. There have been countless invasions of
aliens, body snatchers, giant ants, and huge apes coming out of the sea.The alien
invasion trope has often been used to highlight the superiority of humans (or,
in a more targeted way, Americans) over the enemy threat (Roberts 2000). The
various adaptations of Wells’ text aptly illustrate this point. The radio version,
produced by Orson Welles in 1938, expressed the fear of a war against the Nazis;
the first film adaptation, directed in 1953 by Byron Askins, reflected nuclear
anxieties. The second cinematic version, directed by Steven Spielberg in 2005,
turned the “plot of invasion” into the “alien terrorist” metaphor, and was expli-
citly marketed as a post-​9/​11 movie (Frank 2011).
Wells’ novel, however, is much more imaginative than the later adaptations.
It inverts the viewpoint, proposing to a people of invaders (the British) the pro-
spect of being invaded and then colonized. In the preamble to the novel, Wells
writes, with an admirable attack on the dominant anthropocentric vision of the
late 19th century: “We men, the creatures who inhabit this earth, must be to
them [the Martians] at least as alien and lowly as are the monkeys and lemurs
to us.” And then he adds, underlining the parallelism between British and
Martian colonialism: “And before we judge of them [the Martians] too harshly,
we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has
wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and dodo, but upon
its own inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were
entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European
104 Landscapes and fears
immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to com-
plain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?” (The War of the Worlds, 1897).
The War of the Worlds can, therefore, be considered an allegory of British coloni-
alism (Rieder 2012), which refers to the British invasion of Tasmania and creates
empathy with those who suffered under colonialism. As remarked by Berlatsky
(2014), the book suggests that the survival of the fittest is natural and unstop-
pable, thus introducing a Darwinian perspective to encounters between species.
It also shows the transience of what is generally assumed to be permanent, such
as “our” civilization, and how the “ruin of one civilization would pile up on the
ruin of another” (Moore 2017, 216).The same idea of the “Course of Empire” is
picked up in Earth Abides when Ish explains: “The world of those Indians passed
away… And now our world that followed theirs has passed too.”
In the opinion of some authors, all post-​apocalyptic literature should be read
in this way. The central role attributed to Americans in it is what Hsu and Yazel
(2019, 347) call “structural appropriation”: “a process in which the world-​
threatening structural violence that has already been experienced by colonized
and postcolonial populations is projected onto American (and predominantly
white) characters and readers.” As remarked by Gergan, Smith, and Vasudevan
(2018), with the tropes of apocalyptic narratives, “Hollywood enacts a darkly
ironic reversal of the history of genocide and pestilence in the Americas. This
apocalypse, which already happened, is temporally displaced into the present or
future when Hollywood imagines global tragedy. Brad Pitt facing off against
zombies in World War Z (2013, Marc Forster) folds time to give us a white
protagonist fighting extinction on a continent that already witnessed a vicious
effort by settler colonists to eliminate native populations.”
The indigenous peoples of North America, who were probably more than
20 million at the time of Columbus’ landing, and who in the twenty-​first cen-
tury number less than three million in the United States, have survived an
apocalyptic event. “For indigenous peoples of the United States and globally,
Europeans and their invasive descendants are the walking deaths they must con-
tinually evade, accommodate or fight against” (Gurr 2015, 7).
To take this point of view, the work of indigenous writers must be
considered. In the collection of short stories The Lone Ranger and Tonto
Fistfight in Heaven (1993), Sherman Alexie makes a specific reference to the
cancellation of the native population following the arrival of white settlers. In
particular, in the short story “A Drug Called Tradition,” one of the characters
says: “They’re all gone, my tribe is gone. Those blankets they gave us, infected
with smallpox, have killed us. I’m the last, the very last, and I’m sick, too. So
very sick. Hot. My fever burning so hot” (The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight
in Heaven, 1993).2
In this way, Alexie refers obliquely to the smallpox epidemic of 1862 caused
by the landing of a sick passenger at Victoria on Vancouver Island (Fraser 2015).
This epidemic in 1862 was not a global catastrophe, but it was an apocalyptic
event on a local scale. In addition to the events directly related to the invasion,
 Gulliver and beyond 105
other phenomena that are part of the Western dystopian and post-​apocalyptic
imaginary have already occurred to indigenous peoples as a result of various
forms of colonialism: ecosystem collapse and loss of biodiversity, destruc-
tion of the traditional economic system, population resettlement and cultural
decay (Whyte 2018, 226). For this reason, post-​apocalyptic and indigenous sci-​
fi literature tends to convey a sense of ongoing rather than imminent crisis
(Scott 2016).
In this regard, it is worth taking into account Moon of the Crusted Snow
(2018), a post-​apocalyptic novel by the Anishinaabe writer Waubgeshig Rice.
At first, the novel appears as a compilation of post-​apocalyptic clichés. An
unspecified catastrophic event blocks communications and supplies, resulting
in a breakdown of urban order and some people consider turning to canni-
balism. The lead character is a young father named Evan who must protect
his wife Nicole, and their children Maiingan and Nanghohns. However, there
is an element of difference: the apocalyptic event does not occur in the First
Nation Reserve where the novel is set, but in an unspecified elsewhere. In the
Reserve, the electricity goes out, computers and mobile phones no longer
work, and the supply truck does not arrive, but nothing happens. An echo of
the post-​apocalyptic chaos is heard in the Reserve’s isolation only through
the experiences of two students who have fled the city. Then, a non-​native
called Scott arrives. Armed with weapons and liquor, he sows disorder and
division. Post-​apocalyptic clichés are used to inform readers that the current
“apocalyptic imagination” typical of mainstream popular culture pertains to
the narrative of “the white man’s system,” not to the protagonists of this story.
They have already lived through their apocalypse and somehow overcome it.
As the village’s oldest person, old Allen, says: “Apocalypse! What a silly word.
I can tell you there’s no word like that in Ojibwe. Well, I never heard a word
like that from my elders anyway… The world isn’t ending … Our world isn’t
ending. It already ended. It ended when the Zhaagnaash came into our ori-
ginal home down south on that bay and took it from us. That was our world”
(Moon of the Crusted Snow, 2018).3
The ancestors of the band “were displaced from their original homeland
in the South” and relocated to the north of Canada, in a harsh environment
where winters are freezing, because “the white people who forced them here
had never intended them to survive.” They survived, nonetheless, but have seen
their own culture progressively erased, their traditional ways of being almost
obliterated, and now they live, depending on the outside world for energy, food,
and communications. Those who still know how to hunt are few, and even the
traditional language has been almost lost to English, while grandparents teach a
few words to the children (the only ones who have names linked to the native
tradition). Evan can still hunt, and he has a cabin in the forest. Getting out of
the apocalypse perhaps means leaving the modern houses, whose appliances are
of no use without energy, and instead taking refuge “in the heart of Anishinaabe
territory” to recover the traditions of their own people.
106 Landscapes and fears
Notes
1 These excerpts, taken from pages 36 and 66 of the novel The Testaments, are quoted
with permission from the publisher, Penguin RandomHouse, Request # 56132
2 These excerpts, from The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight In Heaven, copyright © 1993,
2005 by Sherman Alexie, are quoted with permission from the publisher G ROV E/​
AT L A N T I C, I N C.
3 This excerpt, from the novel Moon of the Crusted Snow, Waubgeshig Rice, published
by ECW Press Ltd., 2018, 9781770414006, is quoted with permission from the pub-
lisher ECW Press Ltd.

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3

Posthuman worlds
7 
Post-​human/​transhuman/​
posthuman

7.1 (Post)human wor(l)ds?

“Posthuman is a seductive term, being both nebulous and popular” (Gray 2017,
148). Posthumanism is a seductive term too. Both are often used as umbrella
terms (Ferrando 2013) to cover a wide range of meanings in philosophical
studies and the fields of science, literary criticism, cultural studies, and more.The
nebulosity manifests itself through the lack of a univocal spelling. “Posthuman”
and “posthumanism” as compound words prevail in research; “post-​human” is
more widespread in everyday language. Confusion increases since, though they
are often used synonymously, the two expressions may mean very different
things.
With regard to the word “posthuman,” Cary Wolfe writes: “The first time
I used it (hyphenated, no less) was in an essay written in 1995, called ‘In Search
of Post-​Humanist Theory’” (2010, xii). The phrase in brackets (“hyphenated,
no less”) is critical. The hyphenated form suggests a separation, and the prefix
“post-​” implies a temporality (subsequent to). The compound word, on the
other hand, suggests a concurrence and a merging.Thus “post-​human” is some-
thing that comes after the human, a “break with humanism” (Ranisch and
Sorgner 2015), while “posthuman” suggests the need to overcome the binary
distinction between the human and the “other,” whatever the other may be (and
then, metaphorically, to overcome all boundaries between binary oppositions).
Another pair of words, “transhuman” and “transhumanism,” also contributes
to confusion, because, even if they are not synonymous with the first two (or
rather, they are, in a scientific sense, very different “beasts”) (Lemmens 2015),
they are at times used in this sense.
As for “post-​human,” namely “that which comes after the human,” it should
be noted that, following Carl Linnaeus’ nomenclature, the contemporary human
being belongs to the species Homo sapiens. Homo sapiens is the only human species
surviving out of the more than 20 species of “archaic humans” that existed
in prehistory (the most famous of which are probably the Neanderthals and
Denisovans). From this perspective, speaking about “post-​humans” may refer to
“post-​human speciation, as the next iteration of the human, after H. sapiens”
(Gray 2017, 139). Therefore, the term “post-​human” has to do with evolution,
112 Posthuman worlds
or preferably with the possible future evolution of Homo sapiens in other species.
For this, Gray (2017) suggests replacing the term “post-​human” with the more
clear-​cut term “post-​sapiens” (even if it must be added that the same Linnaeus
definition may be criticized as being gendered and speciesist, from a posthuman
point of view) (Ferrando 2015).
Otherwise, “transhumanism is the project of modifying the human species
via any kind of emerging science, including genetic engineering, digital tech-
nology, and bioengineering” (LaGrandeur 2015, 112). It advocates the techno-
logical enhancement of humans, or, better, the transition of humans “into other
creatures that live longer (someday perhaps forever), can live in space, and gen-
erally are engineered to be significantly different from homo sapiens” (Gray
2017, 140).
Both issues relate to the evolution of the human being (post-​human), or
its technological improvement (transhuman). However, transhumanism results
may be referred to as “the posthuman” (LaGrandeur 2015; Ranisch and Sorgner
2015), while posthumanism goes further than that. It considers the posthuman
product of transhumanism (the cyborg) as a metaphor (Haraway 1985), and
“the increasing technologization of the human as a reason to question trad-
itional humanist conceptions of the human being” (Lemmens 2015, 432).
Posthumanism calls into question humanism as a “Eurocentric paradigm”
(Braidotti 2013, 13) and the “allegedly abstract ideal of Man as a symbol of
classical Humanity,” not only a male of the species but also “white, European,
handsome and able-​bodied” (Braidotti 2013, 24). Moreover, posthumanism
underlines that there is never a neutral subject, even if “traditionally, scientific
observations have been elaborated from a specific standpoint… white, Western,
economically privileged, heterosexual, and male” (Ferrando 2015, 218).
Defined as “a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as
well as a creature of fiction” (Haraway 1985; 2016, 5), the “cyborg” emphasizes
the necessity of doing away with three “crucial boundaries”: those between
nonhuman, human and animal, organism and machine, and physical and non-
physical.The cyborg is “a creature of a postgender world” (Haraway 1985, 2016,
8), a metaphor of the need and ability to overcome the binary oppositions
typical of Western society, such as male/​female, nature/​culture, human/​animal.
Posthumanism represents an attempt to avoid the affirmation of all categor-
ical dualities (because “sexism is not separated from speciesism, biocentrism
and so on”) (Ferrando 2014, 170). As such, posthumanism may be conceived
as a “theoretical frame, as well as an empirical one, which can apply to any
field of enquiry, starting from our location as a species, to the individual gaze”
(Ferrando 2014, 168).
“Any form of discrimination is a potential carrier for any other forms of
discrimination, and it is related to all forms of discrimination” (Ferrando 2014,
170). In this perspective, posthumanism helps us to revisit also the binary geog-
raphies produced by the modern geopolitical vision (Agnew 2003). In geo-
political terms, the posthuman approach identifies (and overcomes) processes
of construction of the self and the Other, and consequently, the dynamics of
the identification of social and racial categories in a hierarchical sense and the
 Post-human/transhuman/posthuman 113
identification of the enemy. If differences are not to be essentialized, spatial
identities too are relational and not fixed; consequently, being a friend or an
enemy does not depend on where one lives, but on the practices of interactions.
Even boundaries blur, while “State territory” is no more to be conceived as a
rigid container of sovereignty, limited by equally rigid borders, but as a bounded
portion of relational space (dell’Agnese 2013, 122).
Therefore, if these words were assigned meanings to help make distinctions
of a theoretical nature, it would be possible to say that the post-​human comes
after the human (for the better, or maybe for the worse); transhumanism
foresees an improvement of the human being’s potentialities, through tech-
nology; posthumanism starts from the product of the transhumanism (the
cyborg) and metaphorically uses it, to emphasize the need to overcome all
binary categories of differentiation. The image of the cyborg as a being cap-
able of straddling many different binary systems gives it a considerable “meta-
phorical resonance” (Surkan 2004, 114) not only in critical studies but also in
popular culture.
Sci-​fi likes to imagine how human beings can evolve, for better or for worse,
so much so that it is one of the main narrative strategies to visualize the post-​
human and transhuman (Gray 2017). Dystopian and post-​apocalyptic narratives
like to reason about the possible modifications to humankind. The factors that
can trigger change are many and different.They vary from evolutionary factors,
modifying the species in a post-​sapiens sense, to mysterious epidemics and
the transformation of humans into undead monsters devoid of agency. They
may also include utopian genetic selection, with the aim of modifying human
appearance and intelligence, and technological implants to expand human pos-
sibilities in many artificial ways. Other film and literary fields can be used to
explore “crucial notions” like speciesism and nonhuman agency (Ferrando
2014, 169) through a posthumanist lens. These will be discussed in Chapters
8 and 9.

7.2 The Time Machine and the post-​sapiens future

Many apocalyptic and post-​ apocalyptic texts represent a future without
humanity. Sometimes, humans are just wiped out by a mysterious epidemic
or environmental catastrophe. The few survivors risk losing the qualities that
(supposedly) make them stand out as human. They may become dramatically
ignorant, like the survivors of Earth Abides (1949, George R. Stewart) or the
children of Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985, George Miller), who do not
know what a city is, or the adolescents in the next episode of the saga (Mad
Max Fury Road, 2015, George Miller), who do not know what a tree is. They
may lose their moral values or agency, as many characters in The Road and all
the human survivors in Wall-E. They may even lose the position of hierarchical
superiority over the species they presume to dominate and see their condi-
tion reversed (as in the novel La Planète des singes, 1963, by Pierre Boulle, and
the many films inspired by it). Alternatively, they can evolve into post-​human
species.
114 Posthuman worlds
This last scenario is at the center of The Time Machine (1895, by H.G. Wells).
It is the story of an unnamed man, called the Time Traveler, who, thanks to a
machine he has invented, travels through time and discovers a future in which
different beings have replaced humans. At his first stop in the future, the Time
Traveler arrives at the year 802,701. He gets to the site where London used to
be, but instead of the city, he finds a decaying place inhabited by a new kind of
beings, the Eloi. The Eloi look like humans, are good-​looking, albeit childlike,
and of limited intellect. They do not need to work. As if they were in a Golden
Age, they spend their time playing, relaxing, bathing in the river.Thus, the Time
Traveler initially ascribes the beauty, mild character, and minute dimensions
of the Eloi to natural evolution: the ultimate victory of human beings in the
struggle with “nature” must have led them to lose their strength, transforming
them into childish and asexual beings. This “evolutionary” hypothesis does not
last long.The Eloi live on the surface but a different and much less friendly kind
of beings, the Morlocks, live beneath the ground. While the Eloi are pleasant
and agreeable, the Morlocks are ugly, slimy, and white, due to their under-
ground existence. On account of a supposedly old practice, the Morlocks pro-
vide for the Eloi’s clothing and necessities, but also feed on them because they
are cannibals. The Time Traveler theorizes the two peoples’ roles: the Eloi are
“mere fatted farm animals” for the Morlocks. Conversely, the Morlocks are, in
Wells’ definition, “inhuman sons of humans.” They are not humans anymore,
but, at the same time, they are disturbingly similar to human beings.
In the novel, post-​ sapiens evolution continues beyond Eloi and
Morlocks: after the Traveler’s first stop in time, he goes further in the future to
find himself at a beach, where he is attacked by giant crabs amid “abominable
desolation.” Later, he arrives at another moment in time when there are no
signs of life left on Earth except for a mysterious black being with enormous
tentacles. In this way, Wells presents to readers different mechanisms of par-
allel, or different, evolution (Parrinder 2015). In his vision, human beings may
not remain “one species” but degenerate at least “into two distinct animals”
and turn into two different post-​human species, and even disappear, being
substituted by other beings.
In the late nineteenth century, Wells was not alone in this fear. Concern
about a negative evolution, and thus a degeneration of the human species, was
common among the intellectuals of the time, in connection with the spread
of Darwinian thought and, more generally, with the idea that “the evolu-
tionary process might be reversible” (Scherr 2019). Wells does not offer many
explanations to justify the negative evolution of the human species. However,
the division into two different species seems to suggest the fear that humanity
will degenerate, exaggerating two potential trends: on the one hand, the loss
of “manliness,” and, on the other, the excess of aggressiveness. When the Time
Traveler returns to Victorian London and says, “I’m starving for a bit of meat,”
this desire brings him closer, albeit metaphorically, to the cannibals of the future
(Scherr 2019).
 Post-human/transhuman/posthuman 115

7.3 Transmogrifying epidemics and new world orders

In addition to evolution, other causes may transform humans into some-
thing different. For example, the hypothesis that mysterious diseases, or gen-
etic manipulations, can spread in pandemic form, and transform humans into
“walking dead” is the basis of a very successful narrative trope, the zombie
apocalypse. In this case, the plot typically involves that the recently dead return
to life to feed on the living, who in turn die and return to feed on others
who are alive. The mechanism quickly turns almost all humans into uncon-
scionable, voracious beings. Meanwhile, the narrative portrays a small group
of people who have met by chance after the catastrophe. They develop into a
social nucleus that fights the multitudes of aggressive “undead” while also trying
to reorganize the disrupted social order.
This kind of narrative finds its forerunner in Richard Matheson’s novel I
Am Legend (1954). In this, due to an inexplicable disease, all human beings
have been transformed into blood-​sucking beings that only move at night,
like vampires. Only one man, called Richard Neville, survives; he tries to carry
on his life in a very “human” way, listening to music, cooking, decorating his
house, but, at the same time, he is a fierce vampire fighter. After a few years,
he discovers that, due to some mutations, there are two kinds of “vampires.”
Besides the ones that move like “robots,” whom he kills without mercy, there
are the “post-​humans,” who are infected but have overcome their disease and are
trying to build a new society. Even if they do not attack him to eat him, as
the former do, infected mutants also pose a threat. They hate him because
they accuse him of being a vampire exterminator. In the new post-​human
order, Neville is therefore the “abnormal” one, the feared villain. Consequently,
the post-​human mutants first send Ruth, a good-​looking mutant, to seduce
and capture him, whereupon they sentence him to death. Before dying, he
understands that post-​human society members will remember him as an old
“superstition,” a “legend” from the past. “Robert Neville is not legend because
he represents human society, nor because he somehow saves humanity; Robert
Neville is a legend because he is the single largest threat to a new society,
one that has superseded humanity” (Christie 2011, 68). In this way, the novel
addresses an important issue: is humanity meant to survive, or is its destiny to
give way to other species of post-​human beings? (Koenig-​Woodyard 2017).
Matheson calls Nelville’s opponents “vampires,” not zombies; the protag-
onist of the narrative is an individual, not a group, and the future of humanity
is utterly without hope. Nevertheless, the novel and the first film adapted from
it (The Last Man on Earth, 1964, Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow) are gen-
erally regarded as the inspiration for the subsequent horde of zombie texts
(Christie 2011), starting with the cult movie Night of the Living Dead (1968,
George H. Romero). Due to the ensuing proliferation of films, video games,
novels, graphic novels, television series and even zombie parodies (Platts 2013),
the zombie apocalypse trope is now so popular as to be “a tenacious part of
mainstream American culture” (Bishop 2010, 12).
116 Posthuman worlds
Its enormous success is linked to many factors. The greed of the zombies,
whose only impulse is to eat, can be considered a metaphor for contem-
porary consumerism (Harper 2002), as in George H. Romero’s Dawn of the
Dead (1978). Then, there is the fear of invasion (Saunders 2012). In particular,
in the post-​September-​11 United States, zombies have been a metaphor for
Islamic terrorists, undocumented migrants, and all those who can bring con-
tagious diseases from the outside. In that regard, an invasion of zombies lends
itself to exploration of the relationship between “us” and “them,” and the con-
struction of “otherness” (Lauro 2017), not only for international relations but
also concerning home policy, the political and social reorganization of human
survivors, and the various modes of managing power.
Post-​apocalyptic social relations usually set the main characters, their fam-
ilies and friends in opposition to “bad” humans, greedy and ruthless, with the
“walking dead” caught between them. In the television series The Walking Dead
(2010–​, AMC), the survivors are, or risk being, just as greedy as the zombies,
and even the main characters are just as aggressive (for this reason, at the
end of the second season, Rick, the protagonist, says: “We are all infected”)
(dell’Agnese 2014a). They fight only for themselves, their families, and friends.
The value attributed to interpersonal ties (family, friendship) is contrasted with
that associated with external ones, in a metaphor of the neoliberalist belief that
benevolence can blossom in private life, but the outside world remains a place
of fierce competition (Kunkel 2008).
In addition to political considerations, zombie apocalypses may allow
some environmental observations in relation to the epidemic’s causes and the
post-​apocalyptic setting. Sometimes, the epidemic remains unexplained, as in
Matheson’s novel, in the first film adapted from it (The Last Man on Earth), and
in The Walking Dead. Often, it has an anthropic reason (which can generally be
related to the anxieties of the moment). The second movie derived from I Am
Legend (The Omega Man, 1971, Boris Sagal) attributes the plague to a bacterio-
logical war, and the third (I Am Legend, 2007, Francis Lawrence) to the genetic
manipulations of the measles virus. In 28 Days Later (2002, Danny Boyle) and
its sequel 28 Weeks Later (2007, Juan Carlos Fresnadillo), genetic manipulation
is implicated again, while in World War Z (2013, Marc Foster) the cause of the
epidemic is not known; however, the novel from which the movie is adapted
(World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, 2006, Max Brooks) points to
possible experiments made in China. Anthropogenic involvement characterizes
many of the productions between the 1970s and the early 2000s. Later, the
human factor is again questioned. From this point of view, the post-​apocalyptic
game The Last of Us (2011) takes the process of human re-​dimensioning further.
The end of human civilization is not brought about by an unknown cause, nor
is it the consequence of human action; it is the result of the biological affirm-
ation of a more vigorous species, the parasitic fungus Cordyceps (which exists),
which takes possession of human beings and makes them its carrier.
Generally speaking, in zombie apocalypses, the environment remains substan-
tially unchanged or blooms again thanks to the planet’s ability to reconstitute
 Post-human/transhuman/posthuman 117
life. In each season of The Walking Dead television drama, the context becomes
ever greener (dell’Agnese 2014b); in the videogame The Last of Us, the setting
is marked not only by a progressive resurgence of vegetation, but also by the
contrast between the quietness of the renaturalized areas and the threat posed
by dilapidated human constructions (Green 2016; Fraser 2016). In this manner,
the two productions convey a biocentric approach.

7.4 Improving humanity? The (anti)utopian dream of

perfection
The transformation of human beings is not always bound to degenerate the
species, resulting in pleasant but weak-​minded creatures, monsters, or zombies.
It may also be that human societies of the future improve (or try to improve)
the human species, making post-​human beings healthier, more beautiful, and
even more long-​lived. The idea is taken up critically by anti-​utopian litera-
ture, which in various ways expresses concern about the progressive control of
human bodies and minds.
In Brave New World (1932, Aldous Huxley), giving birth naturally is
considered highly uncivilized. People are no longer born from a mother into a
family but produced in laboratories through artificial insemination and raised
in hatcheries. They are medically conditioned to have the appropriate physical
and mental qualities to occupy a given social and economic position. When
they are born, they are already separated into categories (Alpha, Beta, Gamma,
Delta, Epsilon) so that they might be conditioned to fit the role they will have
in life.The future of each individual is planned on the basis of the characteristics
attributed to him or her during artificial gestation. Only Alphas and Betas are
unique individuals, created by selecting biologically superior ova and fertilizing
them with biologically superior sperm. Gamma, Delta, and Epsilon classes are
instead produced en masse through a cloning process (called the Bokanovsky
Process). Alphas and Beta are destined to perform skilled and intellectual jobs,
while Gamma, Delta, and Epsilons will perform menial jobs for which a lower
intelligence is sufficient.
“Obsession with body perfection” (Gallardo Torrano 2007) lies at the heart
of the movie Gattaca (1997, Andrew Niccol).The film is set in a “not too distant
future,” when there will no longer be a place for individuals who are not gen-
etically programmed as “perfect” beings. As in Brave New World, human beings
are produced through the selection of physical and intellectual characteristics,
but a child’s physical appearance is chosen by his or her prospective parents,
not by the system. Genetic manipulation permits the elimination of all nega-
tive characteristics so that everyone will be a “valid,” that is to say a genetically
modified and supposedly perfect individual. There are still people from older
generations and a few children who are traditionally conceived, and thus not
perfect, so they are called the “in-​valids.” According to a class division based
on genetic castes (Gallardo Torrano 2007), the “valids” are selected for better
professions, while the “in-​valids” can perform only menial jobs. However, not
118 Posthuman worlds
even the “valids” are always perfect, or rather, not unalterably perfect. The film
tells of the friendship and solidarity between Vincent, a young man who was
traditionally conceived but has the ambition to be an astronaut, and Jerome, a
young man who was genetically conceived, but who had an accident and is
now a person who uses a wheelchair.
Genetic engineering is associated with power in another dystopian film by
the same director: In Time (2011, Andrew Niccol). In the year 2169, together
with discrimination and beauty, a third determinant is “age.” To avoid over-
population, people are genetically programmed to stop aging at 25, whereupon
they die. To prolong their lives, they need to in some way obtain time. Time is
a currency and can be earned by working but it can also be stolen or traded. As
it is a currency, time is used to buy goods and even to cross the border of a dis-
trict of residence. Consequently, just as in a classic capitalist system, some people
accumulate time so that they can remain perpetually young and beautiful, while
others die young, because “for a few to be immortal, all the others must die.”
When seen from this viewpoint, Gattaca is considered a “good example of
criticism against transhumanism” (Adorno 2010, 348), while In Time not only
provides a glimpse of “the ethical debate of human enhancement” (Roduit,
Eichinger, & Glannon 2018), it also raises issues about class division and spatial
segregation (Gomez Munoz 2016).
The control of bodies is associated with mind control in Uglies, a series of
young adults novels (by Scott Westerfeld Often, 2005–​18). Here too, the society
of the future is stratified in accordance with bodily perfection, thus, at the age
of 16, everyone undergoes an obligatory operation called The Surge to make
them “beautiful.” Unfortunately, together with ugliness, the operation also takes
away their ability to think independently.
The theme of genetic engineering, aimed at creating post-​human beings
that surpass the human species, is central to Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam
post-​apocalyptic trilogy (Oryx and Crake, 2003; The Year of the Flood, 2009;
MaddAddam, 2013). In this world, the Crakers, the “children” produced by the
genetic engineer Crake, are like the Eloi in Wells’ novel The Time Machine, who
were good-​looking but not very bright.The Crakers are the result of “Paradice,”
the name of one of Crake’s projects.They are supposed to be the prototypes for
the children produced to be sold to parents willing to pay for faultless progeny.
They are instead a “para-​human population” with which Crake plans to substi-
tute humanity (Mosca 2013). They are beautiful and beardless with green eyes
and a beautiful skin that does not burn in the sun (unlike Snowman, the human
protagonist of the novel).They live on kudzu, an invasive species of vine, do not
need animal proteins (they are “monstrous vegans,” as Quinn 2018 calls them),
and have sex only to reproduce. They are, therefore, “sustainable” yet devoid of
passion: they must not have feelings, greed, religion or curiosity (even though
they ask Snowman a lot of questions as from the start of the first novel in the
trilogy, and, at the end of the third, they even learn how to read and write,
becoming in this way more “human”) (Mosca 2013).
 Post-human/transhuman/posthuman 119

7.5 “I’m not machine, not man. I’m more”: Terminator and
the other transhumans
The dream of improving humanity is also typical of transhumanism. In this case,
however, the hope is to enhance human capacities with technology rather than
with genetics. Technology also makes it possible to imitate or transform the
human body. Producing a machine that looks and acts like a human means cre-
ating an android, while enhancing human bodies with technology means cre-
ating a cybernetic organism (cyb-​org) (van Riper and Bowdoin 2002). In the
first case, the goal is to produce artificial beings that imitate humans to a greater
or lesser degree; in the second, the human body is enriched with artificial or
mechanical parts to enhance its capacities. Any organism can be transformed
into a cyborg, not only a human being; still, we generally refer to humans when
we talk about cyborgs. Similarly, it can be assumed that any living thing can be
artificially created (see the owl in Blade Runner, 1982, Ridley Scott). However,
the term android refers to a robot designed to look and act like a human.
Despite this difference, literature often uses the two terms synonymously
(Laughlin 1997, 144). So, for instance, Rhys Owain Thomas writes that: “Cyborgs
are created either through the (often brutal) insertion of machine components
into a previously wholly organic entity, as in the case of the Star Trek franchise’s
horrific Borg, or are designed from the outset as a synthesis of the organic and
the artificial, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger’s quintessential cyborg villain/​
hero in the Terminator movies” (Thomas 2015, 57). Nevertheless, if the previous
distinction is to be maintained, Terminator is an android, and also “the remark-
able movie Blade Runner, frequently mentioned in reference to cyborgs, really
involves androids” (Laughlin 1997, 157).
Human-​like machines in science fiction and dystopic literature are recur-
rent, both in the form of automata (like the one in Metropolis, 1927, Firtz Lang)
and androids (as in the collection of short stories I, Robot, written by Isaac
Asimov and published in 1950, or in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, 1968,
by Philip K. Dick). Some literary characters, dating back to the end of the nine-
teenth century, are the result of a combination of a machine and a body. For
instance, in The Ablest Man in the World, a short story by Edward Page Mitchell
(1879), the character behind the title is Baron Savitch, a man with a mental
disability, whose brain has been replaced by a machine, making him infallible.
In contrast, The Clockwork Man (1923), a novel by Edwin Vincent Odle, depicts
a future world in which the brains of human beings receive special clocks that
allow them to travel through time and space, and thus it is considered the first
sci-​fi text featuring a cyborg.
However, the term cyborg was only coined in the 1960s, and with specific
reference to space exploration. The inventors of the concept, Clynes and Kline
(1960, 26) affirmed that, while in the past, “evolution brought about the altering
of bodily functions to suit different environments … starting as of now, it will be
possible to achieve this to some degree without alteration of heredity by suitable
120 Posthuman worlds
biochemical, physiological, and electronic modifications.” The idea was to adapt
an individual to a new context (space) rather than create an environmental
bubble around him or her, enhancing the individual’s body with technological
aids to allow survival in the new environment.The replacement of human body
parts (such as dentures and heart valves) has existed for a long time, but a cyborg
is much more complicated. The cyborg idea does not envisage that the mind-​
body separation is maintained, i.e., that a human mind can be installed in an
artificial and mechanical body and thus continue to function. It recognizes that
“human consciousness and culture are functions of the human nervous system”
(Laughlin 1997, 149), and that there is a reciprocal influence.
In fiction, the first literary appearance of the term is in the novel Cyborg
(1972, by Martin Caidin), on which the American television series The Six
Million Dollar Man (1974–​78, ABC) was based. In this case, the protagonist, Steve
Austin, suffers a severe accident in which he loses an eye, an arm, and both legs.
The replacement of the lost limbs with bionic parts gives him extraordinary
powers. Since then, cyborgs have multiplied.The most famous and celebrated are
perhaps Darth Vader, from the Star Wars franchise (1977–​), RoboCop, a fictional
policeman created for the movie of the same name (1987, PaulVerhoeven), which
then generated a multimedia franchise of a television series, graphic novels, cine-
matic sequels, and video games, and the most recent characters of Immortan Joe
and Furiosa in Mad Max Fury Road (2015, George Miller).
Cyborgs can be “monsters” (Haraway 1985), that is, humans not conforming
to the “bodily norms” (Shildrick 2002, 2), as the addition of any parts to the
human body may alter its external appearance. Prosthetic devices can help
develop basic skills essential to a cyborg’s existence, or that in some way exceed
human capabilities. In Western popular culture and the Hollywood film trad-
ition, a character with a disability is generally attributed a humorous, path-
etic, frightening, or antagonistic function (Safran 1998; dell’Agnese 2011). It is,
therefore, not surprising that cyborgs often play the role of the villain. “In fact,
cyborg characters in science fiction usually have been objects of fear (e.g., the
Borg in Star Trek: The Next Generation [1987–​94], or Damon Knight’s Jim in
Masks [1968]) and are often the bad guys in the tale” (Laughlin 1997, 155). The
same is true of Darth Vader and Immortan Joe. However, not all cyborgs are bad
(see RoboCop), and as will be seen in relation to the Terminator franchise, the
figure of the cyborg has undergone a positive evolution.
Androids are usually “normate,” in line with contemporary visual culture
and Hollywood aesthetics (Garland Thompson 2017). Being created as “arti-
ficial slaves” (LaGrandeur 2015) to meet human ― including sexual ― needs,
they are sometimes also physically attractive, creating greater ambiguity. They
have been portrayed as villains, especially by the cinematography of the 1970s
and 1980s, as a metaphor for the technological threat and humans’ inability
to control it (see for instance Ash in Alien, [1979, Ridley Scott], or T-​800
in the first episode of the Terminator saga). As they can be good-​looking, as
well as capable of cognitive thinking and even love, androids can also become
 Post-human/transhuman/posthuman 121
“unconventional protagonists” for whom the audience feel sympathy (Surkan
2004, 115), for example, as represented by David, the childlike android in A.I.
(2001, Steven Spielberg). This pattern can be seen in the passage from the
Gunslinger in Westworld (1973, Michael Crichton) to the androids in the first
season of the Westworld television series produced about 50 years later (2016–​).
The two scripts share the same location and the same basic concept: androids
are the attraction of an amusement park on the theme of the Far West where
they play the part of frontier characters, and human tourists can treat them
in any way they choose. They may have sex with them, or make friends with
them, or even kill them. For each new group of tourists, the damaged or “dead”
androids are repaired and returned to service. If the basic concept is the same,
the perspective is different, since in the first version of Westworld, the androids
rebel and thus play the part of the villains, while in the second version, although
the androids rebel, the villains of the story are the tourists and the creators of
the androids: the former because they enjoy seeing the death and blood of the
androids, and the latter because they continually allow the androids to suffer,
even though they know that the androids have sensitivity.
Either good or bad, cyborgs and androids are “monsters,” if not for their
physical appearance, for their hybrid quality. So, as pointed out by Haraway
(1985), they “throw new light on the relation between the feminine and the
monstrous, where both are other to the masculine subject of modernity”
(Shildrick 2002, 123). Thus, popular fiction often assigns them the function of
“crossing borders,” that is, of questioning the boundaries of the human being,
and the possibility of establishing distinctions between individuals and species,
nature and culture, natural and artificial, organic and machinic.
The question of what it means to be human in Blade Runner does not find
an answer. Here, the replicants are bioengineered beings, “more human than
humans” as suggested by the advertisement, who work as slaves in off-​world
colonies. They have a lifespan of four years. When they mutiny and escape, they
must be “retired” (to use the euphemistic expression of the movie). Nevertheless,
some of them return to Los Angeles, to ask Tyrell, their “creator,” to extend their
lifetime. Their elimination constitutes the core of the plot; distinguishing a rep-
licant from a human being is, in fact, increasingly tricky. Replicants should not
have emotions, but they have developed consciousness. Deckard, the protag-
onist, is a blade runner, i.e., an android hunter and must “retire” the rebellious
replicants. He breaks the rules when he falls in love with Rachael, who is herself
a replicant without knowing it. Later, the movie casts doubt on whether or not
Deckard himself is also a replicant. A crucial point in the film is his confronta-
tion with Roy, the leader of the replicants. Aware that his life is coming to an
end, Roy expresses a very human fear of death and the regret that his memories
will fade away like “tears in rain.”
The relationship between organic and machinic is also central to the
Terminator cinematic saga: The Terminator (1984, James Cameron); Terminator
2. Judgment Day (1991, James Cameron); Terminator 3. Rise of the Machines
122 Posthuman worlds
(2003, Jonathan Mostow); Terminator Salvation (2009, McG); Terminator Genisys
(2015, Alan Taylor); Terminator: Dark Fate (2019, Tim Miller). Here, the core
of the story is the clash between humans and the machines, dominated by
Skynet, a network of computers that have become so intelligent that they
have taken control of the world. Through the episodes of the saga, a tran-
sition occurs from the classic human ̶ machine confrontation, in which the
machine is the villain, to an investigative perspective on the complicated rela-
tionship between the two sides. The first film is set in Los Angeles in 2029 and
sees the machines send a T-​800 terminator (a war robot with human features)
back in time to eliminate Sarah Connor, the future mother of John Connor,
who in turn is the future leader of the Human Resistance. T-​800, played by
Arnold Schwarzenegger, looks human but is indeed an android powered by
electronic circuits. The plot, therefore, still revolves around the absolute other-
ness of machines, and this otherness allows the humans to assume “any eth-
ical responsibility for future catastrophe” in “a modernist critical perspective”
(Brereton 2005, 199–​203). In the second episode of the saga, having failed
to kill Connor’s mother, the machines send a more sophisticated robot (T-​
1000) back in time to kill John Connor as a teenager, while the humans send
a second T-​800 Terminator, which looks the same as the first, but has been
modified in order to protect Connor. Here, the situation is more nuanced,
since T-​800 is a “technically outdated,” though good robot (a role it maintains
also in Terminator 3), while T-​1000 is a machine totally devoid of feelings. The
boundary between good and bad, human and artificial, is blurred in the fourth
film (Terminator Salvation), where the character of Marcus Wright is included
alongside John Connor. Marcus was a man, but after being sentenced to death,
was turned into a “Terminator Human Hybrid,” a cyborg with a human brain,
but a much stronger and faster body. “It’s real flesh and blood… the heart is
human and very powerful, the brain too, but with a chip interface; it has a
hybrid nervous system. One human cortex, one machine,” as explained to
John Connor. Marcus, who is still convinced he is human, breaks the rules
imposed by Skynet when he takes the side of the resistance and sacrifices
himself to save Connor’s life. Like Rachael in Blade Runner, he is somehow
anti-​Cartesian (Roden 2015), which means that he thinks, but that this alone
does not make him human (“What it is that makes us human?” a voice-​over
explains at the end of the movie “It’s not something you can program. You
can’t put it into a chip. It’s the strength of the human heart. The difference
between us and machines.”). In the fifth episode, a variant of John Connor is
infected by Skynet with nanotechnology, becoming a cyborg; in the trailer of
the movie, he declares “I’m not machine, not man. I’m more,” making a clear
reference to the transhuman perspective. In the fifth sequel, which does not
follow the plot of the previous episodes, Sarah Connor is joined as the main
character by Grace, a cybernetically enhanced woman-​soldier. The transition
of the transhuman character (android or cyborg), from the villain of the origins
to the main character and hero, is here completed (Hauskeller, Philbeck, &
Carbonell 2015, 4).
 Post-human/transhuman/posthuman 123
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8 
Viewing dogs with
(post)human lenses

8.1 “Dogs are my story here, but they are only one player in
the large world of companion species” (Haraway 2003, 25)
Cyborgs and dogs, according to Donna Haraway (2003), have something in
common. “Each brings together the human and non-​human, the organic
and technological, carbon and silicon, freedom and structure, history and
myth, the rich and the poor, the state and the subject, diversity and depletion,
modernity and postmodernity, and nature and culture in unexpected ways”
(Haraway 2003, 4; 2016, 96).
Sci-​fi and dystopian narratives provide an excellent stage to investigate post-​
human and transhuman perspectives in popular culture, and to see how they
try to answer the question about what it means to be human. From a different
point of view, the posthuman approach rejects “the humanist belief that ‘man
is the measure of all things’ ” (Ranisch and Sorgner 2015, 16). So, it raises
other crucial issues about the position of humans in their relationship with
nature within an array of narratives, to understand whether the nature ̶ culture
dualism is undone, or whether, on the contrary, humans are still “exceeding
other creatures in their control over nature” (Fuller 2015, 204). Therefore,
the analysis is extended to other literary fields while keeping one subject, the
dog. Dogs and humans are bonded in “significant otherness” (Haraway 2003,
2016), and have a “cohistory” with humans as “companion species.” For this
reason, to quote Haraway again (2003, 25), they are “my story here, but they are
only one player in the large world of companion species.” Studying how dogs
are represented in popular culture is only one way to see if animal represen-
tation is “something which encourages engagement with the experiences of
animals,” or instead makes them merely “representational resources that can be
employed for the purposes of rendering legitimate human–​animal hierarchies”
(Mills 2017, 71).
In real life praxis, speciesism and anthropocentrism are still the dominating
discourse. Most of the time, dogs are victims, subjugated to the power of their
master. The brutality of the power exercised by the human being over the dog
is already highlighted by the German philosopher Schopenhauer, in the mid-​
nineteenth century: “man’s most loyal friend, the very intelligent dog, he puts
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 127
upon a chain! I can never look at such a dog without heartfelt compassion for
it and deep indignation for its master, and with gratification I think of the case
reported a few years ago by The Times, of a certain Lord who kept a large dog
on a chain. Once, strolling through his yard, he could not resist the urge to
pet the dog, whereupon it immediately tore open his arm from top to bottom
– justifiably! It was trying to say: ‘You are not my master, but my devil, who
makes my brief existence into a hell.’ May this happen to all who keep dogs on
a chain” (Parerga and Paralipomena: short philosophicalessays, 1851).
The dog’s place is at the service of the human being, and success depends on
the ability to play by the rules and the benevolence of the human master. As the
feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman wrote in 1911, “no creature has been more
constantly under man’s [sic] hand than the dog.” Then she goes on: “A slave
without any industry to justify his slavery; a prisoner, for no fault to warrant his
imprisonment; a captive, led in chains and manacled in his one point of contact
with life, his means of inquiry, of expression, of defense, of eating, breathing
and panting—​his poor muzzle—​this is the animal we say we love!” (Perkins
Gilman 1911, 180–​182). Indeed, the relationship human ̶ dog, far from being
equal, may mix in different doses “dominance and affection” (Tuan 1984), but it
always assigns power to one side only, inside an inherently unequal and “patri-
archal” relations.
Pedigree dogs, though usually privileged, are in no better position. As
remarked by Tuan (1984), breeding animals for aesthetic purposes is an example
of how humans enjoy manipulating animals’ life. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, in a
similar vein, but with more crude language, speaks of “the little deformities so
carefully developed to please our refined tastes,” and adds: “There will come a
time when a cultivated civilized human being will feel only pain and horror at
the distortion of a live animal, either by the simple savagery of mutilation or the
more refined, insinuating cruelty of artificial breeding” (1911, 206–​209). H.G.
Wells (1928) expresses a similar attitude when speaking about “fancy” dogs as
“invalid and grotesque deformations of the canine type,” and of dog breeds as
an “ugly trade in animal deformity.”
These accusations are, though, isolated voices within a vision that instead
tends to present a submission to the master (symbolized by leash and collar) as
the only positive outcome of canine life.The dog’s position, vacillating between
an object of power and an object of love, is typically present in popular cul-
ture, although, in general, dominance prevails over affection. As a result of their
“cohistory” with humans, dogs are ever-​present in Western popular culture
(McHugh 2004), starting perhaps with The Odyssey, where the old hunting dog
Argos is the only one who recognizes the Homeric hero on his return home
and promptly dies after it. Dogs are the subjects of poems, novels, movies, tele-
vision series, and even video games (Dog’s Life, 2003, Frontier Developments;
Nintendogs, 2005, Nintendo). Sometimes dogs are just mentioned as extras, and
sometimes they play the role of the main character. They are supporting actors
in detective stories, standing beside the (male) main to symbolize loyalty (like
128 Posthuman worlds
Alfie, the Old English Sheepdog in Serpico, 1973, Sidney Lumet; Tequila, in
the Tequila and Bonetti television series, 1992, CBS; Jerry Lee in the movie
K-​9, 1989, Rod Daniel and sequels; Hooch in Turner and Hooch, 1989, Roger
Spottiswoode; Rex, in the Austrian television series Kommissar Rex, 1994–​2004).
Alternatively, they play a symbolic role (again standing alongside the male pro-
tagonist). In dystopian/​post-​apocalyptic narratives, to have a dog means having
emotional ties, as in Earth Abides (1949, George R. Stewart), Mad Max 2: The
Road Warrior (1981, George Miller), I Am Legend (1954, Richard Matheson),
and the television series The Walking Dead (2010-on, AMC). They may appear
on the screen for only a few seconds but still work as a cultural signal; in The
Road (2006, Cormac McCarthy), having a dog means to have family values,
and so only the family met by the Son at the end of the narrative, which has
a dog, qualifies in this way. There are no dogs in Blade Runner (1982, Ridley
Scott), but the idea of the dog still resonates symbolically as an ethnic boundary
(Barth 1969). When Deckard, the replicant hunter, submits Rachael to the
Voigt-​Kampf test to understand if she is a replicant, he understands that she is an
android because she fails to react with the expected emotion to the image of an
entrée consisting of a boiled dog, thereby revealing her essence (Molloy 2011).
Whether they are at the center of the scene or just extras, dogs may be
portrayed in many different ways. They can be heroes, like Rin Tin Tin, the
famous German shepherd brought to the US from Germany after the First
World War, which featured in 29 films and was turned, after his death, into
a brand for dozens of films and television series with his name; or Balto, the
Siberian Husky celebrated by an animated film in 1995, that dragged a sled
load of dysentery medicines in a race against time in Alaska in 1925. Dogs may
also be “good girls,” always coming home, like Lassie, the Rough Collie from
Eric Knight’s novel of 1938, which was later celebrated in about ten movies,
a television series (1954–​73), and even a radio show (1947–​50). They can be
adventurous seducers (like the Tramp, in Lady and the Tramp, 1955,Walt Disney),
disastrous troublemakers (like Beethoven, the Saint Bernard in the film series of
the same name, 1992–​2014), or even terrible dogs like Cujo from the horror
novel by Steven King, 1981, though he only turns murderous because he is
infected with rabies.
Sometimes a dog breed is promoted as a fashion (Rough Collies after Lassie;
Dalmatian dogs after One Hundred and One Dalmatians, 1961, Walt Disney;
Old English Sheepdogs after Serpico, Chihuahuas after Beverly Hills Chihuahua,
2008, Walt Disney). The legitimate existence of breeds, conversely, is hardly
ever called into question by popular culture. Some ironic hints can be found
in Virginia Woolf ’s novel, Flush: a Biography (1933); when the cocker spaniel
Flush arrives in Italy, he notes that it is hard to see purebred dogs around, only
crossbreeds. Feeling himself “the sole aristocrat among a crowd of canaille,” he
wonders: “Had the Kennel Club,1 then, no jurisdiction in Italy? Was the Spaniel
Club unknown? Was there no law which decreed death to the topknot, which
cherished the curled ear, protected the feathered foot, and insisted absolutely
that the brow must be domed but not pointed? Apparently not” (Flush, 1933).
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 129
A critical attitude towards canine breeds is also evident in another story by
Woolf, Gypsy, the Mongrel (1940), where the comparison between the two dogs
of the story, Gypsy, the little crossbreed full of personality, and the dull setter
Hector, makes the author’s attitude clear (Reynier 2009). Gypsy, the mon-
grel, has no patience with rich and spoiled dogs, such as pugs and other fancy
breeds. As a symbol of the spoiled dog, the pug returns in the animated movie
Pocahontas (1995, Walt Disney). In this case, the comparison between Percy, the
pug belonging to Governor Ratcliffe, and the little wild animals surrounding
the Native American girl, highlights the “artificiality” of the purebred dog
versus the naturalness of the other animals.
Other dog breeds too are often associated with clichés, such as the centuries-​
old one that links Pekinese, Maltese, and small dogs in general with affluent
people, especially women (McHugh 2004). For example, “lap” or “toy” dogs
have become an elitist sign of nobility or a living ornament that adorns the
aristocratic lady. Such symbolism may be used to make social criticism, again
using dogs as a metaphor. The satirical poem Il giorno, written by Giuseppe
Parini in 1763, describes a dialogue at an aristocratic lunch where a young and
elegant lady of high society cries as she listens to the invective of a vegetarian
against the cruelty of those who kill oxen and lambs for their meat. She has
just fired her servant for kicking her little dog (the Virgin Cuccia) after being
bitten (Parini’s implication is that she cries for the lambs but does not mind
having thrown the servant’s family into misery). Other breeds, such as hunting
dogs and greyhounds, are associated with aristocrats (males), while pit bulls are
often identified “with urban, poor and specifically black people” (McHugh
2004). The mutt, on the other hand, represents the frontier character, especially
in North American literature, that must be brought back under the control of a
master and put on a leash (i.e., learn to respect the laws).
These many fictional dogs, on paper and screen, usually do not honor real
dogs. They are anthropomorphized, gendered, stereotyped, and portrayed in an
unbalanced power relationship. At times, they are used for purposes of sym-
bolism. Very rarely are they represented as the “significant other” of humans.
On a few occasions only have some authors tried to take their point of view
and penetrate their Umwelt, their way of perceiving space and their animal
uniqueness. After considering in broad outline how the vast majority of texts
represent dogs and their relationship with human beings, we will examine the
texts themselves.

8.2 Dogs on the leash: “the law of the stronger over the
weaker”
Far from being a form of companionship, the dog ̶ human rapport risks being
naturalized as a servant ̶ master relationship by its representation in popular cul-
ture. In addition, in this relationship of control and domination, the dog, who
is always subject to the conditions imposed by human beings, risks becoming
the metaphor of “nature” as if to demonstrate the full control exercised over it
130 Posthuman worlds
by culture, and confirming how anthropocentrism and speciesism are pervasive
when it comes to talking about animals.
As underlined by Karla Armbruster (2002), there is a classic narrative for-
mula in many American stories that have a dog as a protagonist: though at the
beginning he is a bit reluctant to learn good manners, the dog accepts losing his
“wild” side and becomes a “good dog,” that is to say a faithful dog who respects
the rules and is perfectly adapted to life in human society. “In this classic for-
mula, a dog joins a human family or community and must be socialized to
behave appropriately. In other words, some of its natural impulses and instincts
must give way to the demands of human culture” (Armbruster 2002, 353). To
demonstrate her thesis, Armbruster quotes Old Yeller, a novel by Fred Gipson
(1956) that was adapted into a film by Walt Disney in 1957. OldYeller is the story
of a big dog who wins the affection of a family of pioneers, defending them
from bears and raccoons, and even from a wolf, but the wolf has rabies, and poor
Old Yeller must be put down because he is infected.
To this narrative structure, it must usually be added that the dog is male and
a mutt.The fact that the dog is not a purebred animal is fundamental because, as
a mutt, he acquires a figurative image that represents the “hybrid identities” typ-
ical of “Anglo-​American masculinity during the closing of the western fron-
tier” (McHugh 2004). John Muir’s celebrated short story Stickeen. An Adventure
with a Dog and a Glacier (1897, 1909) falls in the same narrative formula, even
though it appears to overturn it. In this story, the dog does not obey orders (so
much so that “none of us was able to make out what Stickeen was really good
for”) and is described as “odd, concealed, independent.” There is no request for
sacrifice, abnegation, or loyalty from the dog, not an anthropomorphic reading
of the character, just the attempt by Muir to understand how the dog reacts, or
at least to acknowledge in him a capacity for choice and independent action.
Stickeen is a dog who never complains and who, despite being small enough
to resemble a toy dog, enthusiastically puts up with any weather condition and
tackles any outdoor adventure. Muir recognizes him as “a true child of the
wilderness” and so, he “calls into question one of the most deeply seated ideas
in Western culture, namely that there is an unbridgeable chasm of difference
between human and animal consciousness” (Morris 1996, 140). The tale has
been described as “a challenge to the entire humanist perspective on conscious-
ness” (Morris 1996, 140). Karla Armbruster (2002, 364) defines the tale as an
inversion of the classic formula of the “good dog,” because for Muir a “good
dog” is “one at home in wild nature.” Still, even if in an inversion of the classical
narrative structure of the “good dog,” the story somehow recreates the same
nature ̶ culture tension. The dog, a male mutt, belonging to another member
of the expedition to Alaska described in the tale, is initially distracted, not very
affectionate, and reluctant to obey commands. After having shared a moment
of great emotional tension (the dangerous crossing of a crevasse) with Muir,
he becomes extraordinarily fond of him (“instead of holding aloof, he always
lay by my side, tried to keep me constantly in sight, and would hardly accept
a morsel of food, however tempting, from any hand but mine”). At the end of
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 131
the story, Stickeen does not learn to make himself useful like other “good dogs,”
but he has become “a changed dog,” in the sense of being much more attached
to a human.
In Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography (1894, Margaret Marshall Saunders), the
main character is Joe, a “cur,” as he repeats several times at the beginning of
his story. Joe is a male dog who is already quite ugly, but made even uglier by
the mutilations inflicted on his ears by his first master, and for that reason is
given the nickname Beautiful Joe. He is rescued from this cruelty by a family of
animal-​lovers to whom he shows courage and faithfulness, and becomes a very
“good dog,” so good as to be described as such about 20 times in the novel. He
craves long races, “the delicious air, and the lovely smell of flowers and grass,”
yet he is happy to remain at heel, like the family’s other dogs. The most wel-
come gift is a collar, with his name on it: “Beautiful Joe.”
Both The Call of the Wild (1903) and White Fang (1906), Jack London’s
two famous novels, both of which were later adapted into a multitude of
film versions, revolve around the “nature vs. civilization” conflict, and again,
the main character in both novels is a male mutt. Both books “flirt with the
dog ̶ wolf boundary” (Onion 2009). In the first case, the dog chooses to live
with wolves; in the second, the dog-​wolf chooses to live with humans.The plot
of The Call of the Wild is well known: a large dog named Buck, a cross between
a Saint Bernard and a Scotch Shepherd, is stolen from his master’s garden in
California and sold to be used in the Klondike as a sled dog. He is passed from
hand to hand, learns “the law of the club” and to assert himself over rival dogs
to the point of killing one of them, finally finds a master who loves him, and
when this one dies, he regains his savagery and becomes the leader of a pack
of wolves on the loose. So Buck, the good family dog, undergoes a coming-​
of-​age journey in the frozen wilds of the Klondike and eventually returns to
the wilderness, though only after his beloved master has left him forever. White
Fang is a wolfdog born wild in the Yukon Territory, but he is tamed and, after a
thousand vicissitudes, ends up as a “good dog” (with puppies) on a sunny porch
in California.
Where the North Begins (1923, Chester M. Franklin and Millard Webb) was
the first starring role for the German Shepherd dog Rin Tin Tin, the canine star
of the Twenties. The film tells the story of a puppy lost in frozen Alaska, raised
by wolves, and then domesticated by a fur hunter. While the dog understands
during their first encounter that “man is not his enemy, but his master and
friend,” later on he fully performs the part of the “good dog” by repeatedly
saving his master’s life (as written in one of the silent film’s captions). Again, the
happy ending requires that the wild dog, who has become a good dog, finds a
partner and has a litter in his new home.
The process of denaturalizing the dog and imposing rules, to turn him into
a “good dog” deserving of love, does not stop at stories set in the Old West.
Popular culture also endorses the “bourgeoisification” (Howell 2000, 48) of
city dogs, which must have a leash and, above all, a master. In this “domestic
ideology,” dogs must have a “space,” a kennel, in the countryside, or a house
132 Posthuman worlds
in the city, while “canine strays, like indigent humans … [are] identified as
symptoms of social problems” (McHugh 2004).The restriction of dogs “to par-
ticular spaces and places, under specific restraints and categories of existence,” is
significant as “symptomatic of the modern, Western culture of nature” (Howell
2012, 222). Stray dogs are not admitted; they end up at the pound and, if no
one claims them, they must be eliminated. On this last point, popular culture
disagrees. In the animated film Lady and the Tramp, the sad scene of the poor
dog Nutsy, taking the “long walk” to be put to sleep in the gloomy context of
the pound, communicates a clear anti-​euthanasia message. Similarly, in A Dog’s
Purpose (2017, Lasse Hallström), the initial scene of the crossbred puppy, who,
while playing with his siblings and wondering about the meaning of a dog’s life,
is captured by the animal control officers to be euthanized, cannot but draw
disagreement towards the procedure.
Lady and the Tramp provides several more reasons for analysis. First of all,
Tramp, the male protagonist, is a stray mutt, while the female is domestic and a
homebody. Then, the movie proposes, with some variation, the classic narrative
structure of the “good dog” (even if it endorses the leash but not the muzzle).
Tramp is a stray with “a talent for survival” (Goldmark and McKnight 2008,
110). At the beginning of the story, he lives by exploiting the benevolence
of different humans, who all call him by different names and feed him on
different days of the week: thus, he is portrayed as a dog who does not comply
with the rules. One day, Tramp meets Lady, a purebred spaniel who has run
away from her family after someone tried to make her wear a muzzle. The pair
fall in love, then return to Lady’s house, where the Tramp too is well received.
In the happy ending, he is finally “placed,” as is appropriate, in the family of
his beloved Lady and, as a sign of belonging, is given a collar. At the end of
the film, they have a mixed-​breed litter, three of whom look like her, one like
him. The 2019 live-​action adaptation of the movie (Lady and the Tramp, Charlie
Bean) eliminated the scenes considered unsuitable for the audience’s new sen-
sitivity. Alterations were made to the scene when Lady has to be defended by
Tramp against a bunch of aggressive dogs: in order to eliminate the possibility
of macho gender constructions, Lady defends herself. Her mistress does not hit
her anymore when she behaves improperly, she simply says “Bad Dog.” Nor
do Tramp and Lady have puppies as the idea of uncontrolled dog breeding is
no longer appropriate. However, the gist of the story remains the same: Tramp
must be integrated into a family to be a “good dog,” and must be leashed in the
same way that Lady is. In this way, “the classic formula tells us not just a great
deal about dominant cultural expectations for dogs, but also about how we
envision our own relationship to the natural world. Nature is seen as powerful,
but fundamentally as an opponent, as something to be conquered and bent to
our own uses” (Armbruster 2002, 360).
The English writer Ouida (the pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé) bucks
the trend with her “canine autobiography” of about 600 pages, which also has
a long title: Puck: his Vicissitudes, Adventures, Observations, Conclusions, Friendships,
and Philosophies (1870). The novel tells the story of a “thoro-​bred” Maltese dog
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 133
(so the dog defines himself), who faces many adventures and misadventures,
is sold and stolen, and in the meanwhile finds a way to denounce all the har-
assment of animals by human beings. Then, he speaks about the unfair destiny
of the ox, who is mutilated and then taken to slaughter, of sheep, who are
tortured and bruised, of the racehorse, “caressed by princes” at the hour of
victory, and then “cast off to street hire” when old, and underlines that all of
them are subject to “the law of the stronger over the weaker.” What matters
most is that the pedigree dog overturns the issue: “One day I got out ‘on the
loose,’ as your slang phrases it; a reprehensible practice, no doubt, but one dear
to dogs as to men, for better is a bare bone in the gutter, with the sweetness of
free-​will, than are fatted meats eaten within the curb and the gall of a chain”
(Puck, 1870).

8.3 Tray and Trixy: vivisection and the antivivisectionist

debate
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, a debate on vivisection
flared up on both sides of the Atlantic. It can be said, perhaps in an exaggerated
way, as Wells (1928) pointed out, that “it is about the dog that the controversy
centers,” which led to the publication of many literary works on dogs.
Vivisection is, of course, a practice based on strongly speciesist positions;
indeed, Ryder developed the very idea of speciesism with relation to the use
of animals in the laboratory (Ryder 2006). The voices opposing vivisection
had more articulate positions, that were sometimes anthropocentric (doctors
performing vivisection can become insensitive; dogs owned as pets cannot be
used for vivisection; like women, dogs too are victims of men), and at others
motivated by more deeply animalistic reasons (dogs have a consciousness; there
is an atrocious disparity of power between those who practice the experiment
and those who undergo it).
The debate ignited the minds of intellectuals and writers, many of whom
used literature to send a message, with a clear awareness of the power of
representation.To this end, alongside poetry and novels written in conventional
literary forms, original literary forms (such as dog autobiography) were also
experimented with.
Tray and Trixy are two of these literary dogs. They are separated by an
ocean (Tray is English, Trixy American), but they both risk a similar fate, the
vivisectionist’s table. Tray is a mongrel, the protagonist of a poem (Tray, 1879,
in the collection Dramatic Idylls) by the English poet Robert Browning. He is a
“good dog” who saves a child in danger of drowning and then even draws her
doll from the water. For this action, he attracts the attention of a vivisector who
wants to see “how brain secretes dog’s soul.” Trixy is a poodle and the protag-
onist of a novel (Trixy, 1904) by the American author and feminist Elizabeth
Stuart Phelps. Like Buck in The Call of The Wild,Trixy is a stolen dog. She is not
stolen for a ransom, as many dogs were in Victorian London (Howell 2000 and
2015), but to be the subject of an experiment by vivisectors. Like many other
134 Posthuman worlds
literary dogs of the time, Tray and Trixy became the banner of the fight against
vivisection.
In 1824, a first Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) had
already been founded in London. Even if at that time vivisection in England
was quite rare (Bates 2017), in its Founding Statement the SPCA condemned
“the practice of dissecting animals alive, or lacerating, mutilating, and inflicting
torture upon them in various modes, to satisfy an unprofitable curiosity” (Kean
1998, 36). As the century continued, animals became the focus of a growing
awareness. A positive attitude towards animals and their welfare was accentuated
by Darwin’s theories, which, demonstrating the continuity between human
beings and nonhuman animals, offered a rationale for greater empathy with
animal suffering. However, Darwin’s theories also provided an argument that
invigorated the practice of vivisection: “the real growth of vivisection in Britain
dated from Darwin’s arguing for an understanding of the commonality between
species” (Kean 1998, 97). “The effect of Darwin’s ideas was both to make the
human more animal and the animal more human, destabilizing boundaries in
both directions” (Morse and Danahay 2017, 1).
During the second half of the nineteenth century, in the field of animal
welfare a growing focus was placed on dogs, albeit not always in their favor. At
the time, city streets were full of dogs; some were pets, often clearly purebred,
while the rest were strays. Those that were pets lived in their owners’ home.
When they were outside, they wore a collar and were taken for walks on a
leash. Strays were progressively excluded from the public space (Howell 2015).
Purebred dogs were portrayed in paintings and carved in statues (Kean 2003),
exhibited in dog shows (the first was held in 1859), and more rigorously tailored
to breed standards. In 1873 the Kennel Club was created to set the rules for dog
shows, determine breeds, and list pedigrees.
As the popularity of purebred dogs as pets increased, so did the theft of
dogs for ransom, which rapidly became “professional” and properly organized
(Howell 2000 and 2012). For the strays, the first shelter in London (Battersea
Dogs’ Home) was established in 1860. Initially, it was a place where stray or lost
dogs could be looked after and cared for while waiting to be returned to their
owners. Then, a Dogs Act was issued (July 1871) which stated that “Stray dogs
may be detained and sold or destroyed.” Battersea Dogs’ Home was endowed
with a death chamber.
Vivisection became increasingly practiced, especially on dogs picked up
from the streets, or stolen and sold. The increase in the number of animal
experiments, linked to the professionalization of medicine and the spread
of physiology laboratories using live animals, triggered public attention, and
encouraged the formation of the first abolitionist movements. Some doctors
were reluctant to practice vivisection and objected to it from a moral view-
point (Bates 2017). Beyond the mere rejection of an exercise of cruelty
towards sentient beings, the antivivisectionist principles were essentially based
on three elements (Farmer 1996). First, vivisection had the effect of making
the practitioner morally insensitive, since “Were the feelings of experimental
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 135
physiologists not blunted, they could not long continue the practice of vivisec-
tion” (Hoggan, 1875). Then, the motivations behind the practice of vivisection
were often linked to “the lust for scientific knowledge,” as Lewis Carroll noted
in 1875, rather than to obtain useful scientific results. Finally, human beings had
no right to assume superiority over the “inferior animals” that could fall prey
to vivisection. Within this strand of thought, there were those like Vernon Lee
(1882), who, overcoming the sentimental attitude shared by the large majority
towards the “faithful dog” subjected to unjust cruelty, emphasized the extreme
difference in power between the animal victim, totally deprived of agency, and
the human executioner (Pireddu 2014).
Vivisectionists praised the arguments of positive scientific knowledge and
the utilitarianism that benefited human beings. Some also claimed that animals
subjected to vivisection were a small fraction of all the animals killed or exploited
for less noble reasons, highlighting the inconsistencies of those who claimed to
be antivivisectionists and then ate meat or went hunting. Even Darwin refused
to support the antivivisectionist cause, saying that it was unfair to demonize
vivisectionists and not to blame those who shot birds for pleasure (Bianchi
2013). Others believed that pain could be inflicted to a greater or lesser extent,
based on the scale of proximity to the human being of the different types of
living beings (as theorized by the Italian Paolo Mantegazza, in his La fisiologia
del dolore, 1880) (Pireddu 2014).
Complaints against vivisection were raised also in Italy, in Florence,
by members of the local community and the English colony living there,
condemning the experiments carried out by Moritz Schiff and Alexander
Herzen at the newly founded Istituto di Studi Superiori (French 2019). Several
articles were published in local newspapers as early as 1863. The first Italian
society for the protection of animals2 was created in Turin in 1871 by Giuseppe
Garibaldi, “the hero of the Italian Risorgimento,” together with Anna Winter
and Timoteo Riboli, while enthusiastic physiologists like Paolo Mantegazza
accused “England’s bigots” of semi-​religious hysteria (Pireddu 2014). In 1873
Schiff was taken to court. Herzen involved himself in the controversy with a
booklet titled Gli animali martiri, i loro protettori e la fisiologia (1874), in which he
wrote: “The martyred animals of physiological experiments are few compared
to the martyred animals of other human activities (sustenance, comfort, luxury,
‘gluttony’, ignorance, whimsy, ferocity and vainglory, fun).”
In London, in 1875, the feminist, social reformer, and animal activist
Frances Power Cobbe, with Anthony Ashley-​Cooper, George Hoggan, and the
Archbishop of York, William Thomson, formed the Society for the Protection
of Animals Liable to Vivisection, better known as the Victoria Street Society
(VSS). Among the members (and later both with the role of vice-​president),
were the poets Alfred Tennyson and Robert Browning. Then the Society split,
and other antivivisection societies founded, so that by the end of the decade,
there were at least a dozen of them only in Great Britain (Farmer 1996).
Legislation to regulate vivisection was introduced by Parliament in 1876. It was
not considered adequate by those opposing the practice, because animals could
136 Posthuman worlds
still be used, but they had to be anesthetized unless anesthesia interfered with
the purpose of the experiment.
A heated debate on vivisection was triggered, to which some of the greatest
scientific and literary figures of the time contributed. The matter came up in
courtrooms and even caused demonstrations in public squares. A large number
of texts on the subject circulated. As early as 1866, Charles Dickens had
published an article titled Inhumane Humanity about vivisection in his journal,
All Year Round, in which he wrote that “Man may be justified—​though I doubt
it—​in torturing the beasts, that he himself may escape pain; but he certainly
has no right to gratify an idle and purposeless curiosity through the prac-
tice of cruelty” (Dickens 1866, 240). In 1875, Lewis Carroll sent a letter to
the Pall Mall Gazette, with the title Vivisection as a Sign of the Times. Here he
stressed that science, demonstrating the closeness between humans and animals,
required a renewed examination of human responsibilities towards nonhumans;
in the same year, he also wrote an essay on the same subject, titled Some Popular
Fallacies about Vivisection. In 1875 a former vivisector, George Hoggan, wrote
a letter to the Morning Post denouncing the abuses committed in laboratories.
The letter was later reprinted in The Spectator and sparked weeks of debate
in the “Letters to the Editor” section (Farmer 1996). In 1885, John Ruskin
resigned his Chair at Oxford, following a vote that permitted vivisection to be
practiced in that University.
In England, the conflict reached its peak with the affair of the Brown Dog,
a poor animal subjected to several demonstrations in the University of London,
even if the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act forbade the use of the same animal
in more than one experiment. Two Swedish students, who had infiltrated
the laboratory, exposed the case in a book entitled The Shambles of Science
(Lind-​af-​Hageby and Schartau 1903). This led to a string of court cases and
demonstrations. A monument dedicated to the Brown Dog was inaugurated in
1906 with a great event. George Bernard Shaw also participated as a speaker.
Then pro-​vivisection riots followed, and the statue was eventually removed in
1910 (a new statue was erected in 1985).
The debate echoed on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, where the con-
flict was lively. In 1866 Henry Bergh had founded the American Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), while the American Anti-​
Vivisection Society (AAVS) was created in 1883. Even more so than in England,
the antivivisectionist movement in the United States was marked by a large
female presence and partly shared with feminism the fight against objectifica-
tion, body control, and male domination.
Popular culture gave a vital contribution to the debate; in fact, literature
was “mobilized” in this regard (Li 2006). Dogs played a leading role. Those
in favor of vivisection tended to represent (and use) dogs as mere research
tools. Antivivisectionists sought instead to stimulate the public’s sensibility,
highlighting not only that dogs were capable of suffering, but also that they
had consciousness and sensitivity. In 1872, Frances Power Cobbe wrote two
articles, The Consciousness of Dogs and Dogs Whom I Have Met, where both the
intellectual and emotional capacities of the dogs were described, as well as their
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 137
individuality: “There are few things more irritating to one who consistently
honors dogs, than to hear superficial and indiscriminate people talk of those
animals as if they were all alike in their mental and moral qualities, and only
differed from each other by being white or black, rough-​haired or silkycoated”
(Dogs Whom I Have Met, 1872, 662).
Darwin also believed that dogs had a conscious life: “But can we feel sure
that an old dog with an excellent memory and some power of imagination, as
shown by his dreams, never reflects on his past pleasures in the chase? And this
would be a form of self-​consciousness” (1871, 83, ed. 1889). For this reason,
after reading The Consciousness of Dogs, he sent a letter to Frances Power Cobbe
(reprinted in Hill and Deegan 2016, 33–​34), where, although criticizing some
of her more daring statements, he wrote: “I agree with you on most points.”
There was also a proliferation of short stories, poems, and novels. New forms
of narrative were experimented with (Mayer 2009) to highlight the emotional
subjectivity of animals, and to offer “a word for the dumb” (as suggested by
the title of a poem by Christina Rossetti, 1896). In particular, several authors
explored the path of “animal autobiography,” a narrative strategy destined to
achieve enormous success at the turn of the century with novels such as Black
Beauty: The Autobiography of a Horse (1877 Anne Sewell) and Beautiful Joe. The
experiment of narrating “beyond the human” (Herman 2016a, 1) represents
an attempt to show solidarity with the way that nonhumans live in and see
the world, and was “designed to promote more humane treatment of com-
panion animals,” even if “human frames of reference preponderate” (Herman
2016b, 11).
In 1867, Frances Power Cobbe published The Confessions of a Lost Dog, a
novel narrated as the “canine autobiography” of a family dog, who was lost
and then rescued. Ouida followed with her canine autobiography Puck (1870).
Other canine autobiographies, often marked by extreme anthropomorphism,
were published in their wake: Sable and White: The Autobiography of a Show
Collie, by William Gordon Stables (1893); Three of Us. Barney. Cossack. Rex, by
Izora C. Chandler (1895); Hector, My Dog.An Autobiography, by Egerton Ryerson
Young (1905); and Mark Twain’s short story A Dog’s Tale (1903). Some of them
were directly related to vivisection.
In North America, Mark Twain’s story had a great effect. Like Tray, Twain’s
dog (named Aileen Mavourneen) saves a child, in this case from the flames.
However, the gratitude of her owner, a scientist, cannot prevent Aileen’s
beloved puppy from being sacrificed for a vivisection experiment. Albeit
similar in plot to Browning’s poem, the different narrative format allows
Twain, who writes from Aileen’s point of view, to add elements to the analysis
of the relationship between human beings and dogs. The distance between
the good disposition of the dog, who accepts reproaches even if she does not
understand the reason for them, and the authoritarian attitude of the human
being is highlighted. This leads to the story’s central point. Aileen does not
understand what happened to her puppy, which is buried in the garden after
the experiment. She hopes that he has been “planted” like a tree and waits for
him to grow back.
138 Posthuman worlds
Other works follow a more traditional form, like Heart and Science: A Story
of the Present Time, by Wilkie Collins (1883), and Trixy. The latter work is not a
canine autobiography, it has a more complex plot, including several characters, a
court case, and even a love story. In the book, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps “engages
the nuances of animal welfare campaigns during her own time, while presci-
ently envisioning affiliation across the species divide as the basis for human
compassion for animals” (VanDette 2019). Trixy is the trained poodle of a
little orphan called Dan, who earns a little money thanks to her performances.
Besides being his financial support, the poodle is also his emotional point of ref-
erence. Like Trixy, Miriam’s beloved cocker spaniel Caro is also stolen. Miriam
is Dan’s landlady and, having recovered the two dogs, engages a lawsuit to prove
that they are owned dogs, which she wins. The physiologist who performed
his experiments on Caro is none other than Miriam’s suitor Dr. Steele, a once
gentle and sensitive doctor, but now heartless. Of course, he is unsuccessful as a
suitor and dies alone amid the terrible memories of all the dogs he has dissected
in his life. The novel touches on some specific points of the vivisection discus-
sion, from a strongly anthropocentric perspective, such as the fear that doctors
who practice vivisection become insensitive human beings or that the two
dogs are precious pets owned by someone, not as sentient beings. However, the
intensity of the connection between Dan and Trixy, and between Miriam and
Caro, highlights the construction of interspecies families (Walker 2013) and the
kinship between the two companion species reaches such an intensity as to pre-
figure a form of “early posthumanism” (Harde 2015).
Other important exponents of the culture of the time expressed themselves
on the subject, some in favor of vivisection, some against. One remark made as a
criticism towards many exponents of the movement was the lack of consistency.
George Bernard Shaw, a long-​standing opponent of vivisection, also pointed
this out in the preface of his play The Doctor’s Dilemma (1911, XLV):
“On one occasion I was invited to speak at a large Anti-​Vivisection meeting
in the Queen’s Hall in London. I found myself on the platform with fox hunters,
tame stag hunters, men and women whose calendar was divided, not by pay days
and quarter days, but by seasons for killing animals for sport: the fox, the hare,
the otter, the partridge and the rest having each its appointed date for slaughter.
The ladies among us wore hats and cloaks and head-​dresses obtained by whole-
sale massacres, ruthless trappings, callous extermination of our fellow creatures.
We insisted on our butchers supplying us with white veal and were large and
constant consumers of pate de foie gras; both comestibles being obtained by
revolting methods. We sent our sons to public schools where indecent flogging
is a recognized method of taming the young human animal.Yet we were all in
hysterics of indignation at the cruelties of the vivisectors. These, if any were
present, must have smiled sardonically at such inhuman humanitarians, whose
daily habits and fashionable amusements cause more suffering in England in
a week than all the vivisectors of Europe do in a year. I made a very effective
speech, not exclusively against vivisection, but against cruelty…” (The Doctor’s
Dilemma, 1911).
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 139
Shaw thus condenses, in a few lines, the need for an ethical approach not
only to vivisection but also to what one eats and what one wears (Preece 2009).
Moreover, with the hint at the “domestication of the young human animal,”
he places himself firmly on the side of posthuman thought. H.G. Wells (1828)
similarly accuses the antivivisectionists of inconsistency. He affirms that the pain
inflicted in the scientific experiments is “an amount of suffering infinitesimal
compared with the gross aggregate of pain inflicted day by day upon sentient
creatures by mankind.” Though, on this basis, he declares himself in favor of
vivisection.

8.4 “Like a lady’s ringlets brown”: exploring the dog’s

Umwelt in Flush
Flush is the main character of a novel, today a little underrated, by Virginia
Woolf (Flush: a Biography, 1933). The story is told from the point of view of
the dog.The search for a narrative method capable of probing “not only poten-
tial heterogeneities but also potential areas of commonality in the structure of
experience across the species boundary” (Herman 2016b, 54) had been success-
fully explored before, with the “canine autobiography.”Woolf chooses a different
strategy and introduces an extradiegetic narrator, the omniscient “biographer.”
Without pretending that the dog can talk, relevant information and comments
are taken from the dog’s owner’s letters, introduced in the narrative by Woolf
in a diegetic way. Still, not only is the story narrated from the dog’s point of
view, but the setting is seen (or better, smelled) from the dog’s perspective (so,
it becomes a “smellscape”).
Unlike other literary dogs, Flush is a dog that really existed, having belonged
to the poet Elizabeth Barrett. The quotation “Like a lady’s ringlets brown” is
from a poem that she dedicated to him. The novel is not as adventurous as
London’s The Call of the Wild or Phelps’ Trixy, but it involves the “stolen-​pet
plot” (Walker 2013). Flush was indeed stolen, like many others in the second
half of the nineteenth century, for a ransom (Howell 2000). Elizabeth Barrett
was already known as a poet but still living with her parents, where she spent
most of her time in her bedroom, due to her poor health. She had to oppose
her father to pay the ransom and leave her parents’ home, secretly and without
their consent, to get the precious pet back.
Woolf builds Elizabeth’s and Flush’s stories along a parallel path. In the first
part of the novel, they are both “captive” in Elizabeth’s spacious family home in
Wimpole Street. She is captive because of her poor health and paternal impos-
ition; Flush because he is with Elizabeth. Out of love for her, he does not even
have too much nostalgia for running free in the meadows. In London, Flush
is partly protected by the Victorian rule of the chain, but at the same time the
chain prevents him from moving freely. The turning point of the story is the
kidnapping of Flush when he is not on a leash. To get her dog back, Elizabeth
rebels, leaves the house, and goes in search of the thief herself. The success of
this first insurrection opens the way to a much bigger rebellion: against her
140 Posthuman worlds
father’s wishes, Elizabeth wants to marry the poet Robert Browning and to do
so she runs away from home.The second part of the novel is a story of freedom
for both Elizabeth and Flush. Elizabeth, now Mrs. Browning, moves to Italy,
first to Pisa, and then to Florence, where she also has a baby. Flush discovers
that in Pisa and Florence the rule of the chain is not applied.Thanks to his new
freedom, he gets intoxicated by the smells and his unrestricted exploration of
the city. In the final chapter, Elizabeth is getting older, but so is Flush. He dies,
in silence, under her very eyes.
In Woolf ’s time, Flush was a successful novel, but it has since been judged a
minor work (Johnson 2013). It has at most received consideration for the use
of a dog as a metaphor for a woman, with Flush’s confinement depicting the
treatment of women in Victorian times. In this critical approach, with a strong
anthropocentric bias, the dog has no relevance as an animal, merely as a metaphor
(Smith 2002). However, other studies (Smith 2002; Johnson 2013; Feuerstein
2013) highlight the novel’s value within a posthuman theoretical framework. As
remarked by Feuerstein (2013, 32), “though Flush’s canine epistemology allows
us to move beyond observable aspects of Victorian patriarchy, this does not
reduce Flush to the role of symbol or ‘literary device,’ as the novel’s engagement
with patriarchy simultaneously portrays the troublesome power relationships
associated with pet keeping.” Indeed, the two figures of Elizabeth and Flush are
similar but different in their subordination, close but separate: “Between them
lay the widest gulf that can separate one being from another. She spoke. He was
dumb. She was woman; he was dog” (Flush: a Biography, 1933).
In the narrative, they undergo a parallel journey. The lack of freedom of
one reflects the lack of freedom of the other, but not only in a metaphorical
sense. The constant reference to the chain, and the contrast with the freedom
of Italian dogs, speak directly about the canine condition.The division between
the canine and human world in Flush remains open. At the same time, Elizabeth
and Flush are “companion species” (Haraway 2003) not only for the content of
the narrative but also for its construction.The extradiegetic narrator uses Flush’s
point of view as a reference point. Woolf may try to depict the world, using
modes of perception of physical reality that are different from those usually
employed for the description of the spatial context. In this way, the canine pro-
tagonist is endowed with a non-​anthropomorphic perspective, demonstrating
that Woolf “…ever attuned to the fluidities, volatilities, and disruptions that are
a part of human relationships, was also sensitive to the ebbs and flows of the
patterns of interactions among nonhuman—​and human—​animals” (Dubino
2012, 156).
Obviously, “attempts to articulate the inner lives of animals take place in
unequal power relationships where humans ultimately have the power to
describe and articulate animal subjectivity” (Feuerstein 2015, 151), as even
the most imaginative authors cannot get out of their subjectivity. Animals are
both producers and holders of knowledge, acquired through specific sensory
apparatuses, even if space is usually qualified only by the human dimension
(Raffestin 1986, 133–​134). Specifically, as Raffestin points out, Jakob Johann
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 141
von Uexküll demonstrated how the subject creates space and time (von
Uexküll (1934)). For the German biologist, every animal has its own “phenom-
enal world” (Umwelt). Penetrating an animal’s Umwelt —​that is entering the
subjective space and time of animals —​is impossible. “There simply is no way
to truly know the consciousness of a dog” (Johnson 2013, 35). Thus, to pose
oneself from the point of view of a nonhuman animal requires an excellent
imagination. Woolf herself confesses a human’s “inadequacy” to describe the
world through smells; nevertheless, she carefully points out that for Flush, the
landscape is a landscape of odors.
Attempting to filter the world through a dog’s point of view might open
a perspective that somehow allows us to look at our world and the lives of
other animals through different lenses. Indeed, “the extreme phenomenological
bracketing required to ‘understand’ what it might be like to ‘think like a dog’
helps us to reframe our conceptions of ‘the other’ in dramatic and instructive
ways” (Hill and Deegan 2016, 1). In the case of Flush, “canine epistemology,
which functions primarily by way of scent, challenges the empirical belief
in the authority of vision and the ability to know and understand simply by
looking” (Feuerstein 2013, 32).
In Woolf ’s descriptions, the reader is introduced to Flush’s spatial experiences
through smells: the smell of cologne when the dog enters the room of Elizabeth
for the first time, the smell of earth and grass when he goes to the park, the
change of smell when, finally free from the “captivity” of Wimpole Street, they
arrive in Italy. “There was none of that heady confusion of smells that made a
walk down Wimpole Street or Oxford Street so distracting. On the other hand,
the strange new smells that came from sharp stone corners, from dry yellow
walls, were extraordinarily pungent and queer… .” (Flush: a Biography, 1933).
The need to embrace a change of perspective returns in another text by
Virginia Woolf, Gypsy, the Mongrel (1940), where the author formulates the
question directly: “Do dogs see what we see or is it something different?”

8.5 “Friends in a friendship closer than brotherhood”:

Ouida and A Dog of Flanders in posthuman perspective
The same question, or at least the attempt to answer it, is present in Ouida’s
novel A Dog of Flanders (1872).Written by an English novelist, famous while she
was alive but since forgotten (King 2015), the book was a great success when it
came out. Then it and its author fell into oblivion in her homeland, though it
became a classic of children’s literature in Japan. It inspired a cult animé capable
of attracting Japanese tourists to the city where it is set, Antwerp, and of stimu-
lating the transformation of the urban iconography to satisfy those tourists.
A Dog of Flanders is about a friendship between a dog called Patrasche and
a boy named Nello. Nello is a little orphan, living with his grandfather, who is
very poor and very old. To scrape together a few coins, the grandfather delivers
milk to the city, carrying it with an old cart from the village. Nello goes with
him. One day, they find a big dog abandoned half-​dead by the side of the road,
142 Posthuman worlds
after being brutally beaten. They decide to take him home and try to save his
life. After a few days, the dog recovers and, being a dog trained to pull a cart (as
was the custom in Flanders at the time), he shows his gratitude pulling the cart
with the milk to the city. In this way, Patrasche becomes the “bread-​winner and
minister” for the grandfather and the child. He is also “their only friend and
comforter.”
As the grandfather gets older, the child grows up. He cannot go to school
because he is penniless, but learns to draw by himself, and he draws very well.
Apart from his dog, he has no friends except for a little girl named Alois, the
mill-​owner’s daughter. For some years, the lives of Nello and Patrasche flow
smoothly, despite their poverty. Growing up, Nello is too poor to be Alois’
friend: her father, worried that their friendship will turn into love, forbids the
two children from continuing to see one another. Nello dreams of seeing the
great paintings by Rubens in the Cathedral but he is too poor also for this; to
see them, he would have to pay for a ticket, and he has no money. The only
worry that Patrasche suffers is to see Nello worried.
At a certain point, things fall apart: the grandfather dies, Nello is wrong-
fully accused of arson and loses his customers and the solidarity of his fellow
villagers. He has no money for rent and so gets evicted from the hut he lives in.
His last hopes lie in a drawing contest, which he expects to win, but he loses.
On Christmas Eve, having left Patrasche in the care of Alois’ family, he seeks
refuge in the cathedral in Antwerp, where the Rubens paintings are. Patrasche
runs away from Alois to find his friend. The next morning, they are found dead
from hunger and the cold but in each other’s embrace in front of Rubens’ trip-
tych. Together, they will be buried in the same grave.
According to some critics, A Dog of Flanders is a children’s story (Pollock
2005). Others consider it on several levels (King 2016) and as a text on animal
rights (Pollock 2005). From this point of view, the extraordinary friendship
between the dog and the child seems to be a bond that transcends the differences
between human and nonhuman species, overcoming the animal/​human dis-
tinction from a posthuman perspective. And, as such, the text appears to corres-
pond to the interpretative approach offered by Donna Haraway (2003).
At the beginning of her writing career, Ouida had become famous for
writing “sensation novels,” such as Held in Bondage (1863), Strathmore (1865)
and Under Two Flags (1867) (Jordan 2011), which feature a mixture of adventure,
intrigue, and romance that was well suited to Victorian popular literary tastes
(Gilbert 1997). The characters were somewhat unlikely aristocrats, often sexu-
ally promiscuous (a trait that was also typical of her female characters, as long as
they were villains). Her later novels spoke instead of the destitute (Pollock 2005)
and were tinged with a touch of political criticism (Gilbert 1997). Several of
her female characters were unconventional, refusing gender roles, questioning
marriage, and living a life of activity and self-​determination (Jordan 2011). A
Dog of Flanders belongs to this second phase. The characters are humble, they
work to subsist until their situation changes, and when they lose the oppor-
tunity to work, they starve to death. Nello is a boy who cannot go to school.
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 143
The dog comes from “a race which had toiled hard and cruelly from sire to
son in Flanders many a century—​slaves of slaves, dogs of the people, beasts of
the shafts and the harness, creatures that lived straining their sinews in the gall
of the cart, and died breaking their hearts on the flints of the streets” (A Dog of
Flanders, 1872).
Alois’ mother, the only female character apart from little Alois herself, is the
only person who sees that love can bring happiness, even without money. She
is also the only one who always takes Nello’s side. Of course, her husband does
not listen to her; instead, he says: “You are a woman, and therefore a fool” and
forbids the children from seeing each other. Even if the subordinate condition
of women or of the poor —​exploited and deprived of the possibility of put-
ting their talents to good use —​is not the central theme of the novel, the text
opens a fissure in the capitalist and patriarchal discourse. From a literary point
of view, Ouida is not interested in theories (Pollock 2005). The short novel is
not a canine autobiography (like the earlier Puck, by the same author) and does
not investigate the dog’s Umwelt, as Virginia Woolf does in Flush, but still tries to
offer the dog’s point of view. What makes the story noteworthy is that no point
of view takes precedence over the other, neither the human one nor the canine.
The narrator is external, extradiegetic, but follows, in parallel, both Nello’s and
Patrasche’s perspectives.
From the incipit to the end, what matters is the bond that connects Nello and
Patrasche. We know that they are individuals who have chosen to be friends.
At the same time, the author reminds us that they are different. They are the
same age “by length of years,” but one is still young, and the other is old. Nello
thinks and articulates his dreams. The dog cannot understand everything, but
he gives his explanation. From his point of view, Antwerp’s churches are “great,
sad piles of stone,” while the small church of the village is a “small, tumbledown,
gray pile opposite the red windmill.” Rubens, the great Flemish painter much
admired by Nello, must have been a good person since Patrasche knows that he
“had loved dogs or he had never painted them with such exquisite fidelity; and
men who loved dogs were […] always pitiful” (A Dog of Flanders, 1872).
The tale of Nello and Patrasche was translated into Japanese for the first
time in 1908 by Shiken Hidaka. It was subsequently rendered into many media,
including two animé TV series, in 1975 and 1992, an animated film (1997),
and even a video game. Nowadays, in Japan, “Nello and Patrasche” “is a phrase
representing a bond never to be untied …” (Ikawa 2018, 1).
Thanks to this success, the story lures many visitors from Japan to Antwerp
(Van Broeck and De Gruyter 2004; Geraghty 2019). There are no material
references that can satisfy their curiosity in Hoboken’s village, where Nello’s
house is believed to have stood. So a small statue of the boy and the dog was
erected there in January 1985. In 2016, just outside of the Cathedral of Our
Lady, a marble statue by Batist Vermeulen (Tist) was erected of Nello and
Patrasche huddled together under a blanket of cobblestones. According to
visitors’ comments on Tripadvisor, it makes you want to go home and hug your
dog.3 Hence, even if in a rather tortuous and transmedial way, via the novel,
144 Posthuman worlds
the animé, and a marble statue in Antwerp’s public space, Ouida’s message still
remains powerful today.

8.6 “Jara is my friend”: antispeciesism (and environmental

justice) in Animal’s People
Animal’s People (Indra Sinha, 2007) is a novel set in the fictional location of
Khaufpur (“pur” is a suffix that means “village,” while “khauf ” in Urdu means
“fear”). So, Khaufpur is the “place of fear.” Khaufpur stands for Bhopal, the
Indian city where “the worst industrial crisis in history” (Kim 2014) occurred
on the night of December 2–​3, 1984. The disaster, known as the “Bhopal Gas
Tragedy,” was caused by the leakage of about 45 tons of methyl isocyanate,
MIC, from a pesticide plant owned by the Indian subsidiary of the US cor-
poration Union Carbide. About 500,000 people were exposed to the gas.
The number of victims varies between the 3,000 deaths officially declared at
the time of the disasters and the 15,000 subsequently estimated. Hundreds of
thousands of other people then suffered from various forms of infirmity due
to gas exposure, in what Rob Nixon described as a deadly form of “slow vio-
lence” (Nixon 2011). According to a survey conducted by the Indian Medical
Research Council, the vast majority of people affected by the gas were of very
low social and economic status (Faras 2020).
Like The Road (2006, Cormac McCarthy), and The Walking Dead (2010-on,
AMC), Animal’s People does not describe the disaster. The author focuses on “the
less obviously eventful aftermath, the slow violence that, by the novel’s end, comes
to be recognized as the event itself, a violence that has yet to run its course”
(Nixon 2011, 44). The story develops around the efforts of a group of activists
to get justice about 20 years after the disaster. It is narrated in the first person by
Animal, one of the survivors still suffering the consequences of the explosion,
in a language that blends English, French, Hindi, and many words transliterating
English terms in a very personal way (the disaster is called “the Apokalis,” and
Union Carbide is “the kampani”). Animal is a 19-​year-​old boy who was born
during the days of the catastrophe. At birth, he was a child like all the others. He
had a name, which nowadays he does not remember. Affected by the gas, he is
now called “Animal” because, instead of walking erect, he moves on all fours. He
is one of “the people of the Apokalis” (one of the victims of the disaster).
The novel raises many issues. The first is environmental justice, or rather
injustice (Faras 2020), in a transcalar perspective (Taylor 2013), from the cel-
lular (Animal’s body) to transnational levels (the connections between the
Kampani and the people of Khaufpur). In this way, “The novel gives focus to
three of the defining characteristics of the current neoliberal order: first, the
widening chasm—​within and between nations—​that separates the megarich
from the destitute; second, the attendant burden of unsustainable ecological
degradation that impacts the health and livelihood of the poor most dir-
ectly; and third, the way powerful transnational corporations exploit […] the
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 145
lopsided universe of deregulation, whereby laws and loopholes are selectively
applied in a marketplace a lot freer for some societies and classes than for
others” (Nixon 2011, 46).
If decisions are taken elsewhere, local populations are deterritorialized, i.e.,
they have no power over what happens in their territorial context (Raffestin
1984). For this reason, writes Rob Nixon (2011, 65), Khaufpur works like a
synecdoche, about all the “poisoned communities spread out across the global
South.”
The text, framed as a translation from a transcription of the tapes recorded
by Animal, is presented as a narration made at first to an Australian journalist
(a “jarnalis” from “Ostrali”), then directly to the readers (that Animal calls
“eyes”). Animal accuses the journalist of being attracted to his story because he
is “drawn by the smell of blood.” This possible meta-​reading opens the second
issue: a certain strand of contemporary literature “that mines sites of polit-
ical violence for stories of suffering and positions the reader as a concerned
humanitarian” (Rickel 2012, 87). Moreover, thanks to its narrative structure, it
“tells the story of a young subaltern individual fighting for his right to ignore
common ways of telling the story of this tragedy” (Bartosch 2012, 11). Written
“as if ” it were a subaltern speaking in a long first-​person monologue, the text
is presented as a voice from below. In this way, it engages the debate urged by
Spivak (1988) on the possibility for subalterns to speak to a dominant audience
(Rath 2013, 162). The real author of the text is Indra Sinha, who is not a sub-
altern, but a successful writer; so, as in all pseudo autobiographies, he can only
use his imagination to place himself in the position of the protagonist and adapt
to his Umwelt.
Animal has many friends, including some community residents, an old
French nun, and, above all, the dog Jara. “Jara is my friend”: in this way, Animal
introduces her. The relationship between Animal and Jara places emphasis on
the posthumanist understanding. Animal and Jara met when, both hungry and
helpless, both on all fours, they contended for leftovers from restaurants. Later
they became partners and learned to give, always outside restaurants, a small
performance: she pretends to fall dead, while he begs. They share the same
point of view because they do not see the world of humans, which is viewed
at a human’s eye-​level; they see below the belt. Unlike Virginia Woolf, Sinha
does not present the world through the olfactory perceptions of a dog. Instead,
he perceives the world at the level of a dog’s eyes. As a dog, Animal “gains an
intimate understanding of the geography of Khaufpur” (Kim 2014), since:“from
a height of eighteen inches you get to know a place pretty well, every crack
in the road, every stone, every dropped, not-​picked-​up coin” (Animal’s People,
2007).4
The relationship between humans and nonhuman animals is one of the cen-
tral themes. Animal introduces himself with the phrase: “I used to be human
once.” A similar statement is variously repeated throughout the novel. Following
Mukherjee (2011, 221), “Animal’s proclamation of his nonhuman identity gives
146 Posthuman worlds
voice to a scandal that lurks behind the tragedy of Bhopal —​if there are those
who, by dint of their underprivileged location in the hierarchy of the “new
world order,” cannot access the minimum of the rights and privileges that
are said to define humanity, what can they be called? It also lends voice to a
different set of questions —​what happens when the rights and privileges of
humans are achieved explicitly at the expense of the sufferings of the majority
of nonhuman beings, and how can we imagine an alternative practice”?
Not being human, however, for Animal does not mean being less than
human. It is a choice. It means to be on the side of those who have no rights
(and for this reason, they have “the invincible, undefeatable power of zero”).
Thus, “Animal is human, but he struggles to figure out a posthumanist way of
understanding his existence and his relationship to others” (Rickel 2012, 91).
This issue opens a perspective that questions anthropocentrism frontally, as it
resonates in the discussion about Paradise: “‘Farouq says if I want to end up
in paradise I’ll have to turn human.’ ‘Why so, moosh?’ ‘Paradise is for humans,
not for animals.’ ‘What harm do animals do?’ ‘Not a question of harm. Do you
expect that every ant that gets crushed under a villager’s horny heel goes to
paradise?’ ‘Don’t see why not. If they have flowers and birds in paradise why not
ants? Isn’t there room?’” (Animal’s People, 2007).5
A few more elements help to unlock the author’s anti-​anthropocentric
approach. First of all, there is Animal’s bond with Jara. Then there is Somraj, the
former singer, who has lost his ability to sing as a consequence of the disaster
and now teaches music, not only to children, but also to lizards, and recognizes
musical notes in the singing of frogs. Then, more related to the use of language,
there is the frequent use of similes with animals, dotting Animal’s narration.
With this constant reference to the animal world, a sense of common space is
created not only between Animal and the nonhuman animal world, but also
between the nonhuman animal world and all the members of the community,
“Animal’s people.” The setting offers some additional elements. In the area of
the factory, after the gas leak,“A forest is growing, tall grasses, bushes, trees, cree-
pers that shot sprays of flowers like fireworks…throughout this place a silent
war is being. Mother Nature’s trying to take back the land…at such moment
the forest is beautiful, you forget it’s poisoned and haunted” (Animal’s People,
2007).6
Like many other protagonists of dystopian or post-​apocalyptic narratives,
Animal finds refuge in the forest. The forest of Bhopal, however, is not a “green
place” and does not offer a way out through classic geographical binarism. It
is poisonous, though lush. It thus reminds us that the world is one; there is no
Planet B. In the forest, Animal gets lost and, starving, he believes he is dying. Jara,
followed by his human friends, finds him. After being rescued, Animal decides
that the surgery which could make him walk erect again is no longer his goal.
He does not need it. He is Animal, and his “people” are made up of humans and
nonhumans. He leaves the readers with a provocative reminder: “Tomorrow
there will be more of us.” More desperate people, or more “animal’s people,”
 Viewing dogs with (post)human lenses 147
sharing a sense of collective belonging and community between humans and
nonhuman animals?

Notes
1 The Kennel Club was founded in 1873; it therefore existed at the time the novel was
written, but not at the time of the life of Elizabeth Barrett, who died in 1861, or of
Flush. A Spaniel Club was only founded in the UK in 1885.
2 “Società Protettrice degli Animali contro i mali trattamenti che subiscono dai
guardiani e dai conducenti,” Society for animal protection against the evil treatment
they suffer from their guardians and drivers, later Ente Nazionale Protezione
Animali, ENPA.
3 www.tripadvisor.com/​ S howUserReviews-​ g 188636- ​ d 12645595- ​ r 731029874-​
Nello_​Patrasche_​Statue-​Antwerp_​Antwerp_​Province.html ― consulted on April
4, 2020.
4 The excerpt, from the novel Animal’s People, Indra Sinha, Simon & Schuster, is quoted
with the permission of the publishing house.
5 The excerpt, from the novel Animal’s People, Indra Sinha, Simon & Schuster, is quoted
with the permission of the publishing house.
6 The excerpt, from the novel Animal’s People, Indra Sinha, Simon & Schuster, is quoted
with the permission of the publishing house.

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Angeli.
Raffestin, Claude (1986). Perché “noi” non abbiamo letto Eric Dardel? In Eric Dardel.
L’uomo e la terra. Natura della realtà geografica (pp. 129–​143). Unicopli.
Ranisch, Robert, & Lorenz Sorgner, Stefan (2015). Introducing Post-​andTranshumanism.
In Ranisch, Robert, & Lorenz Sorgner, Stefan (eds.), Post-​ and Transhumanism: An
Introduction (pp. 7–​27). Peter Lang.
Rath, Brigitte (2013). “His words only?” Indra Sinha’s Pseudotranslation Animal’s
People as Hallucinations of a Subaltern Voice. AAA: Arbeiten aus Anglistik und
Amerikanistik 38(2), 161–​183.
Reynier, Christine (2009). Virginia Woolf’s Ethics of the Short Story. Springer. www.jstor.
org/​stable/​43025856
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Humanitarianism in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. ariel: A Review of International
English Literature 43(1), 87–​108. https://​journalhosting.ucalgary.ca/​index.php/​ariel/​
article/​view/​35064
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of Animals: The Second Wave (pp. 87–​103). Blackwell Publishing.
Shaw, George Bernard (1911). The Doctor’s Dilemma. Brentano’s.
Smith, Craig (2002). Across the Widest Gulf: Nonhuman Subjectivity in Virginia
Woolf’s Flush. Twentieth Century Literature 48(3), 348–​361. https://​doi.org/​10.1215/​
0041462X-​2002–​4003
Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty (1988). Practical Politics of the Open End. Canadian Journal
of Political and Social Theory 12(1–​2), 104–​111.
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of Scale in Indra Sinha’s Animal’s People. Literature and Medicine 31(2), 177–​198.
https://​doi.org/​10.1353/​lm.2013.0014
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9 
Posthuman (dis)orders
Monsters, hybrids, metamorphosis

9.1 Fantastic beasts, monsters and non-​“normate”

bodies, from Homer to Harry Potter
What is a monster? According to the definition offered by an Italian dictionary,1
a monster is a being with characteristics that are extraneous to the usual order
of nature. By this definition, the monster is not “ordinary,” in the sense that it
does not belong to the order. Therefore, the monster creates disorder. Creating
disorder means getting out of binary oppositions, classifications, and social hier-
archies. Culture has the function of assigning positive, negative, or neutral values
to phenomena and symbols. Therefore, the meaning of monsters fluctuates,
going from wonder to fear to curiosity.
The term “monster,” which comes from the Latin monstrum, that is portent,
has a negative meaning in many contemporary idioms. In journalistic language,
the monster is someone who has committed a nefarious act, while in popular
parlance a monster is just a hideous person. If, nowadays, the idea of the mon-
ster as “not ordinary” is conceived in negative terms, in the past, it had much
more fluid meanings. Monstrous and hybrid figures are part of the symbolic
heritage of humanity “since the beginning of recorded civilization” (Ferrando
2019), but not all hybrids are monsters, in the contemporary negative sense. In
Indian mythology, for instance, extra-​ordinary entities are often benevolent. In
ancient Egypt, divinities have a hybrid aspect, like Set, with the body of a man
and the head of an animal, or the Sphinx, with the head of a woman and the
body of a lion. In Greek and Latin culture, to be “out of the ordinary” may have
different meanings. In both cases, the extra ordinem may be a bridge between
the divine and the human world (Coppola 2018). In ancient Greece, the term
closest to “monster” was teras (Τέρας), generally translated as “marvel,” “divine
sign,” “prodigy,” or even “monstrous birth” (Li Causi 2013). As Baglioni writes
(2013, 17), whatever is Τέρας, even if it manifests itself, at least in Homeric
poems, at the initiative of the divinity, does not necessarily transmit a message.
If it does, it is not necessarily a negative message, nor does it manifest itself only
as a result of infractions of the norms. In Greek myths, hybrid beings are fre-
quent, formed by a combination of limbs belonging to different animal species,
or human and bestial bodies, and such deviations from the natural order do not
 Posthuman (dis)orders 153
necessarily have a negative connotation. The minotaur, the fruit of an aberrant
coupling between the Queen of Crete and a beautiful white bull, certainly has;
not only does it have the head of a bull on the body of a man (but with hooves,
cow fur, and tail), it also feeds on human flesh. Other hybrid beings belong to a
different order, like Chiron, a wise and benevolent centaur, the master of great
heroes like Ajax, Achilles, and Aeneas.
In the Roman context, the term monstrum appears in association with events
unrelated to the ordinary course of events, or to indicate deformed or hybrid
beings. In both cases, a monster is an omen of doom instigated by the gods
(Baglioni 2013), and in Rome animals with three legs, lambs with two heads,
or hermaphrodites were understood as the result of a “violation of the order”
(Li Causi 2013, 60). Beyond the terata and monstra, which could suddenly burst
into the daily space as a sign of the gods, there were “monstrous” beings from
different spaces, such as the manticore, a being with a human face and feline
body, who lived, depending on the author, in India or Ethiopia; or from a dis-
tant past such as Scylla and Charybdis (Li Causi 2013). In all cases, the monsters
defined the “limits of the community” (Haraway 1985) in both a spatial and
temporal sense.
For the Roman culture, Pliny the Elder’s Natural History (77–​78 C E )
was an essential source of information about “monsters.” More came with
travel accounts. For instance, in his Chorographia (37–​41 C E ), the geographer
Pomponius Mela speaks of Acephals, Macrocephals, vampires, and werewolves.
In the Middle Ages, the Bible and the Nordic legends added their old myths
to the classic tales, and popular fantasies were filled with hybrid creatures,
dragons, mermaids, etc. The Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus, written by an
anonymous author probably in the eighth century, is an extended classification
of monsters and wonderful creatures, divided into three categories: De monstris
(almost human beings), De belvis (animals), and De serpentis (snakes). Dante’s
Divine Comedy is full of references to classical culture, including Cerberus,
the Greek three-​headed dog. Monsters and hybrids are also included visually,
becoming a recurrent subject of medieval art (Sebenico 2005). Even angels,
traditionally portrayed in Christian culture as asexual beings of extraordinarily
harmonious (“angelic”) forms, but endowed with large feathered wings, can
be considered hybrids. Consequently, in the Middle Ages, “monsters” were
ambiguous; they may be linked to the devil, but they also appear in Christian
iconography. It is not certain that they are malicious; on the contrary, some
extra-​ordinary creatures may have a different appearance and composition;
some monsters, indeed, are beautiful (Sebenico 2005).
The religious, or magical, dimension of the extra-​ordinary creature was still
predominant in the works of Hieronymus Bosch (1453–​1516). In the centuries
that followed, curiosity was supplemented by a desire for rationalization. The
portrayal of the extra-​ordinary body moved from the magical-​religious dimen-
sion of myth to the scientific-​descriptive one. The fascination with “diversity”
and the attempt to rationalize it (thus bringing the monster back into order)
are often combined in scientific works, such as De monstris by Fortunius Licetus
154 Posthuman worlds
(1616) and Monstrorum historia by Ulisse Aldrovandi (1642). The baroque aes-
thetic mixes curiosity, a taste for the exotic, and merely aesthetic pleasure. It still
featured monsters, by which is meant beings out of the norm, and therefore
continued to arouse amazement.
Extra-​ordinary bodies were included in architectural decorations, in gardens,
even in the family portraits of the wealthiest families, where to host at least one
person suffering from dwarfism was almost an obligation of high status. He or
she would be incorporated in family portraits or even exhibited in a collection,
as in the Agostino Caracci’s Triple Portrait of Arrigo, Pedro and Amon (1599). The
painting shows a man, Arrigo, at that time “owned” by the noble Farnese family,
who has hypertrichosis. Arrigo is dressed as a “savage” and is shown in the com-
pany of exotic animals (a parrot, a monkey), a hunting dog, lapdogs, a “dwarf,”
and a “jester.” The depiction of extra-​ordinary bodies and nonhuman animals
in the same scene conveys the idea of how these individuals were considered
midway between animals and humans and therefore exhibited as curiosities and
manifestations of luxury (Pedraza 2009).
A passion for the non-​“normate” body also characterized the nineteenth
century. Here, however, the magic/​ esoteric is relegated to certain figures
(vampires, werewolves). A pseudo-​ scientific approach based on categoriza-
tion and rationalization, linked to a growing need for classification and order,
sparked interest in everything that, though human, is out of the norm. Monsters
were now perceived as a “mistake of Nature,” a breaking in the scientific ration-
ality of modernity. For this reason, bodies whose forms seemed to transgress
the social categories of gender (like the bearded woman) and human species
(like the “mule-​man” or the “crocodile man”) become particularly sought after
(Garland Thompson 2017).
The transition from amazing to ridiculous to pitiable is part of the con-
temporary representation of the extra-​ordinary body. The posthuman approach
aims at changing the perspective. Posthumanism internalizes the hybrid, the
“cyborg,” the monster, as its point of departure, to destabilize the limits and
symbolic borders posed by the notion of the human as referred to in Western
history, that is “white, male, heterosexual and propertied citizens, who would
comply with institutionalized norms, as well as with ethnic, cultural, and phys-
ical characteristics” (Ferrando 2019, 4).
In children’s literature, the dividing line between the human and the non-
human animal is often called into question (Harrison 2018). In the Harry
Potter saga (1997–​2007), for instance, the moral relationship between human
beings and other forms of life is a running motif. In particular, the author, J.K.
Rowling, focuses on animal sentience, the relationship between human beings
(or wizards) and the natural world, and also “monstrosity” (Dendle 2008). In
the saga, boundaries between species are challenged by transformation, meta-
morphosis, hybridization. Body instability is a tenet, so much so that it makes
“any stable sense of embodiment at best problematic and at worst impossible”
(Harrison 2018, 327). At Hogwarts, instead of being fixed representations of
human bodies, the portraits on the walls move and speak. Real bodies can
 Posthuman (dis)orders 155
appear and disappear, thanks to the cloak of invisibility. Witches and wizards,
called Animagi, can take on the appearance of an animal at will. Harry Potter’s
body is transformed in a myriad of ways, so much that it may be considered
posthuman itself (Batty 2015). To episodic and voluntary transformations
linked to magic are added involuntary transformations like those imposed by
Remus Lupin’s lycanthropy. While Harry Potter’s transformations are capable
of accessing a nonhuman subjectivity, Lupin’s werewolfism places him in the
condition of not being recognized as human; indeed, in the bestarium studied
by Harry as a textbook, it is written that “werewolves […] have been shunted
between the Beast and Being division for many years” (Batty 2015, 27). Like
werewolves, the “merpeople” are also discriminated against because they cannot
speak like human beings.
Becoming aware of this “speciesist” discrimination helps Harry to challenge
not only “the viability and the desirability of being ‘purely’ human” (Harrison
2018, 326), but also the validity of a system that creates a hierarchy of bodies
(and individuals) in accordance with a socially constructed norm.

9.2 Body order versus extra-​ordinary bodies: The Dolphin

People and The Shape of Water
The Shape of Water (2017) and The Dolphin People (2006) are two texts that,
at first glance have very little in common. The first is a film directed by an
award-​winning filmmaker, Guillermo del Toro, which grossed $195,333,312
worldwide,2 received 13 Academy Award nominations, and won four Oscars,
including Best Picture. The second is a novel by a mysterious author who uses
the name Torsten Krol, but whom no one has ever seen, not even his Australian
publisher with whom he only communicates by mail. The Shape of Water is set
in the US in the 1960s. It tells the love story of a mute young woman with an
amphibious creature captured in the Amazon. The Dolphin People is set in the
1940s and tells the story of a German family traveling by plane who crash-​land
in the Amazon forest and get lost.
On closer examination, however, the two texts have much in common,
starting with the Amazonian forest as “otherness” in spatial terms. In both
cases, the plot establishes an opposition between, on the one hand, “order”
and those who want to impose it, and on the other, those who respect and
even admire the extra-​ordinary body and its right to exist; therefore between
anyone who wishes to defend order consider people with an “extra-​ordinary”
body as impure, eliminable, and expendable in scientific terms, and those who
want instead to defend them. In both texts, the one who wants to impose
order is the villain, and he is a character with all the features of the “human” in
accordance with the criteria of Western humanism: he is a white, handsome,
heterosexual male (Ferrando 2019) with a “normate” body. He wants to
rectify the disorder or sacrifice it in the name of scientific progress. In this
way the two texts question body binarism, and the male ̶ female, human ̶
animal, nature ̶ culture dichotomies. What both texts fail to question is the
156 Posthuman worlds
geographical dualism between the West and the Rest (Hall 1992), since they
associate order, or the pursuit of order, with the scientific (and militarized)
reality of respectively, Germany and the US, and dis-​order with the mys-
terious “elsewhere” of the Amazonian forest (a fact that is made more evident
in The Dolphin People by the rather flat and stereotyped representation of the
people living in the forest).
The Dolphin People is set immediately after the Second World War. The story
is told by Erich, a boy of 16. His mother, Helga, is a war widow. She has decided
to marry Klaus, the brother of her dead husband, and to move with him and
her two sons (Erich and Zeppi, the younger brother) to Latin America. During
the journey to their destination (the facilities of a company where Klaus found
work as a physician), the plane crashes in the Amazonian forest.They are rescued
by the Yayomi, a tribe of natives with no contact with the outside world. The
Yayomi believe that the family are a family of dolphins that emerged from
the waters of the river. Erich, Zeppi, Helga, and Klaus thus become “dolphin
people.” Gerhard, a German anthropologist who has spent 11 years with the
natives and knows nothing about the war, helps the family, by acting as inter-
preter and cultural mediator.
The novel is presented as a coming-​of-​age story, with the result that Erich’s
first-​person account becomes more articulate and detailed as the narrative
unfolds. Described by Klaus as “a splendid specimen of Aryan boyhood,” Erich
voluntarily enters into a “going Indian” process (Baird 2018), gets an indi-
genous wife, thus losing his virginity, and gradually acquires local cultural traits
(to the point of getting a tattoo on his face). Leaving Western culture behind,
Erich gets rid of the nationalist and racist beliefs he was taught in Germany.
Racial issues become apparent in his eyes. He allows memories of his Jewish
friend to resurface, on whom, while in Germany, he had turned his back; he
also remembers when his now-​dead father confessed to him that he had not
been a hero in the war and that he did not deserve the Iron Cross that Erich
still so proudly flaunts round his neck. Equally clear in his eyes is the imbalance
in gender relations, especially in the case of the Yayomi population.
As the plot unfolds, the other dolphin-​people also become, or prove to
be, very dissimilar from their initial image. Helga, the flawless mother, cannot
accept the new situation she is in; she never washes, so as not to undress in front
of others, starts to stink, goes crazy, and dies. Klaus, elegant and impeccable at
the beginning of the novel, is revealed to be an SS officer on the run, proud to
have exterminated hundreds of thousands of Jews; he is also a drug addict, who
at first uses morphine, then survives a crisis of abstinence, and eventually starts
abusing indigenous hallucinogens. Only little Zeppi remains faithful to his per-
sona; described by Erich at the beginning of the novel as “the prettiest boy” he
has ever seen, to the point of looking “like a girl,” Zeppi indeed turns out to
have breasts under the shirt.
In short, Zeppi has an extra-​ordinary body that the group has to come to
terms with. If modernity is order and cleanliness, a body that does not fall
within the norm is a body that is not modern. Its place, therefore, is in the
 Posthuman (dis)orders 157
forest (the spatial “Otherness”), not in a civilized country. Hence, Klaus tells
Zeppi: “You’re better off here in the jungle with the Indians, with these …
splendid appurtenances, than you would be in the city. The Yayomi may think
nothing of them, nothing at all.” Klaus, for his part, is modern and does not
tolerate what he calls “mistakes of nature”; “abominations must be disposed of
immediately,” he says, while “nature’s simple mistakes” can be corrected “with
the scalpel.” He cultivates the ambition to advance science through surgical
experimentation (so much so that, when he was in the concentration camps, he
detached the arm of a healthy Jew to transplant it onto another man). When he
gets the chance, he tries to get Zeppi’s body back in “order,” and removes his
male genitals, causing him to die.
Despite its symbolic importance as a space of otherness and disorder, in
opposition to the order of modernity, the forest remains a setting. It is a barely
described backdrop, a spatial container, not a place with which to relate. Hunting
is practiced normally, animals are pets, and the forest is opposed to civilization
in a painstaking repetition of a spatial binarism. However, for a few moments an
unexpected simile brings the human world close to that of nonhuman animals’
suffering. Regarding the scream of his dying mother, Erich says that it is “like
the sound made by horses in the slaughterhouse back home as the hammer
came smashing down between their eyes.”
The Shape of Water is set in Baltimore in the 1960s. Elisa is a young
woman who can hear but not speak on account of an injury she suffered as
a child; she works as a cleaner in a laboratory. One day, a mysterious being
is brought in; the creature is partially human (and male) but lives in water
and has amphibious features. He comes from the Amazon, and there he is
considered a god. A military man, Colonel Richard Strickland, brought the
“monster” to the laboratory to vivisect him to benefit scientific knowledge.
As in The Dolphin People, the villain in The Shape of Water is also a champion
of “humanity” (male, white, heterosexual, with a “normate” body), and aims
at the destruction of the extra-​ordinary body.
Elisa teaches the monster how to speak with signs. As she does so, she falls
in love with him and, with the help of her friends Giles and Zelda, succeeds
in rescuing him and setting him free. Those who oppose the “normate” villain
are all “marginalized” people: Elisa is mute, Zelda is a Black woman and Giles
is gay. It is not difficult to understand with whom the director’s sympathy lies,
and the appeal of the contrast between the “human, social monster” hiding
behind the “normate” body and all those whose identities are excluded, denied,
or violated by him (Monteith 2018). Showing not only the possibility, but even
the beauty of the love between Elisa and “the monster,” “The Shape of Water
embraces an alternative view of humanity that disengages the human from a
particular set of physical traits” (Mejia 2018, 717), and perhaps goes beyond the
very dimension of humanity itself. From this perspective, the monster does not
need to turn into a human when he gets kissed by the princess, like the Frog
Prince or the Beast in fairy tales: he already looks beautiful, at least in the eyes
of Elisa and her friend Giles (even if he eats Giles’ cat, reasserting the fact that
158 Posthuman worlds
he is also an animal). In this way, Del Toro’s film dialogues with posthumanism,
and questions the liberal humanist vision that considers the exceptionality of
the human being in relation to nature as a granted asset (Mejia 2018).

9.3 Between human and animal: Truismes

Truismes (1996, Marie Darrieussecq) is a novel about the transformation of a
body. At the time of its publication, the book was so “astonishingly successful”
(Rodgers 2000) that it became a literary event (Depoux 2004). By June 1999,
it had already sold 450,000 copies and had been translated into 34 languages
(Rodgers 2000).
In French, the word “truismes” indicates something that is very obvious; but
it is also possible to use the term about things that have to do with a “truie,”
the French word meaning sow. The wordplay in English is untranslatable. The
English translation of the novel has a different title, Pig Tales: A Novel of Lust
and Transformation, which is less intriguing but more explicit about the book’s
topic.The novel is the autobiography of a Parisian masseuse, very successful as a
prostitute, whose body slowly turns into that of a sow. What is so evident as to
be self-​evident, as suggested by the wordplay of the French title, is the metaphor
of the woman’s flesh as “pork meat” (Cottille-​Foley 2002). More specifically,
the narrator is the victim of a patriarchal society that abuses women, but she
has internalized society’s values (so much so that she becomes a sow) and only
evaluates herself in accordance with the way others look at her (Rodgers 2000).
However, the text goes far beyond this truism. It deals with the theme of
writing, an inherently human act (even if the narrator apologizes at the begin-
ning of the book for her écriture de cochon, literally “pig-​writing”). Moreover,
from a posthuman perspective, it questions the relationship between humans
and nonhuman animals and investigates the different perception of the world
that an animal like a pig has, compared to a human being. It also addresses
the theme of the death of pigs in slaughterhouses from the opening epigraph
(a passage by the Norwegian author Knut Hamsun). It describes a dystopian
society politically dominated by a single leader. Eventually, in contrast with
the urban reality’s devastated environment, it offers the human-​sow hybrid the
“green space” of the “forest” (thus demonstrating the persistence of the forest as
a symbolic space of “otherness,” disorder and non-​modernity).
The story’s primary focus is the narrator’s body, with its changes in sensations
and perceptions and its hybrid situation (Damlé 2012). As written by Anat Pick
(2011, 79) “From Ovid to Kafka, narratives of the transformations of species
have served as a vehicle for discussing human identity, failings and flaws.” If
in The Dolphin People the transformation from human to animal occurs only
in the imagination, in Truismes the metamorphosis is material. It is so intense
and immersive as to make writing difficult for the narrator, as holding the pen
causes terrible cramping to a limb that is no longer a human limb.The process is
not sudden, as in Kafka, but slow and painful. First, there is hunger and an inev-
itable increase in physical roundness. The flesh becomes elastic and full. Then
 Posthuman (dis)orders 159
comes an aversion to pork and the disappearance of menstruation. Eventually,
hair and additional nipples appear.
Highly appreciated for her beauty and the perfection of her body, the narrator
becomes increasingly fat, vulgar, and animal even in her sexual practices (une
vraie chienne, a real bitch). She begins to walk on all fours; her voice no longer
articulates words. Her tastes change, rendering acorns and even dead bodies
food of quality. Her sense of smell becomes much more powerful.
Throughout the process of transformation, the narrator maintains her human
identity while also assuming an animal identity. Her body alternates between
moments when it is still clearly human and moments when it is porcine. Her
selves multiply, with no real opposition between her two identities (Rolls and
Vuaille-​Barcan 2009). This continuous transition breaks the classic dichotomy
that exists between human beings and nonhuman animals, giving to the non-
human animal an intense subjectivity. The metamorphosis is thus a metaphor
used to underline the “violations that specifically ‘animalize’” the narrator (Pick
2011, 83), but it is also a way to explore animality as a condition, introducing
the idea of hybridity as a way to overcome the separation between human and
nonhuman animals.
A dystopian setting in the background is controlled by an authoritarian
regime dominated by a single leader, in which anyone not homogeneous
in racial terms is liable to be expelled from the political community. The
regime is violent, and, under its aegis, nefarious acts are carried out.Yet, with
the same detachment and the same inversion of moral values with which
she describes the violence imposed on her own body, the narrator offers a
“normalizing” description of the dreadful acts that are carried out on others
(Rodgers 2000).
In search of a final refuge, the story develops against a setting of different
places of accommodation. In the beginning, there is the workplace in the per-
fumery where it is “normal” to prostitute oneself and where it is equally familiar
for the shop manager, before giving you a job, to touch your breasts.Then there
is the boyfriend’s house; then, the search for a new shelter (a mental hospital, the
city sewers, the crypt of a church, the house of another partner, who happens
to be a werewolf). Throughout the narrator’s search for a place to live, her ani-
mality increases, together with her desire to experience nature. In the country-
side, she becomes intoxicated by the earth’s scents, which enter her as if they
were the entire planet: “cette odeur c’était comme si la planète entrait tout
entière dans mon corps, ça faisait des saisons en moi, des envols d’oies sauvages,
des perce-​neiges, des fruits, du vent du sud” (that odor was like the whole planet
entering my body, conjuring up in me seasons, flights of wild geese, snowdrops,
fruits, south wind) (Truismes, 1996/​Pig Tales, 1997).3
Her mother’s house, the last place where the narrator seeks shelter, is a farm
with an abattoir attached. So, the physical metamorphosis is accompanied by
the animal terror of the slaughter. The topic is introduced in the opening epi-
graph, a quotation from Benoni, a novel by Knut Hamsun (1908), which returns
in the narrative, about the killing of a hog.
160 Posthuman worlds
The narrator manages to escape and takes refuge in the forest. She decides
to end her journey and spend most of her time as a sow (and even meets a
handsome and virile boar). If not with an actual voice (because the narrator can
no longer speak after her transformation), the sow keeps a narrative voice using
her écriture de cochon. In this way, “the text also brings forth how the ontology of
nonhuman animals needs to be rethought” (Koponen 2017, 66). Again, literary
fiction has given a subordinate the chance to speak, however, in this case too,
the writer enjoys a very different existential condition (Marie Darrieussecq,
who at the time of writing the novel was 27, had already completed her PhD,
and taught literature at the University of Lille). There is no lack of clichés, such
as the contrast, typical of dystopia, between the violent, urban, human world
and the haven and peace offered by the forest, and therefore the nature ̶ culture
geographical dualism, which seems to be one of the most difficult to avoid.
However, the text has the merit, among others, of introducing a reflection on
how nonhuman animals perceive the world: life seen from a sow’s viewpoint is
different, yet her suffering is not.

Notes
1 www.treccani.it/​vocabolario/​r icerca/​mostro/​
2 www.boxofficemojo.com/​title/​tt5580390/​?ref_​=bo_​se_​r_​1
3 The excerpt, from the novel Truismes, Marie Darrieussecq, is quoted with the per-
mission of the publishing house P.O.L.

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4

Reframing carnism
10 
Carnism in popular culture

10.1 Introducing “carnism”

“Parents, teachers, official or friendly, doctors, not to speak of the powerful
individual whom we call ‘everybody’, all work together to harden the character
of the child with respect to this ‘four-​footed food’, which, nevertheless, loves
as we do, feels as we do, and, under our influence, progresses or retrogresses as
we do” (On Vegetarianism, 1901). The quote comes from a short article by the
French geographer Élisée Reclus (1901, 317). Reclus was an anarchist geog-
rapher (Ferretti 2011) known for the originality of his positions in social geog-
raphy (Clark 1996). In his extensive scientific output, only this essay tackles
the issue of vegetarianism. All the same, it should be enough to give him fame.
Reclus tries to figure out why people eat animals and gets right to the core of
the problem. Why do people kill animals to eat them, even if they know that
animals feel and love as humans do? Because “everybody” does it.
Contemporary research has identified a series of psychological mechanisms
that work in this way. Popular culture plays an essential role in normalizing the
belief system, in which eating certain animals is considered ethical and appro-
priate (Joy 2010, 30). In these next chapters, we will investigate this role.
Before Reclus, many other intellectuals argued against the habit of eating
meat. One of the most brilliant advocates of the vegetarian diet in the clas-
sical world was the Greek philosopher Plutarch, who lived between 40 to circa
120 CE. In his short essay On the Eating of Flesh (Περὶ σαρκοφαγίας ̶ De
esu carnium), published in his Moralia, the reasons given have to do with the
beauty of animals, the desire to avoid waste, and the desire to avoid unnecessary
suffering. Before Plutarch, other Greek authors, among whom Pythagoras and
his followers, had practiced vegetarianism, however, Plutarch was the first not
to link vegetarianism with the concept of the transmigration of souls (Spencer
1993). As remarked by Newmyer (1995), Plutarch not only transcended the
religious motivations of his predecessors but also approached the topic in a
“modern” way, taking into account the fact that animals are sentient creatures,
and that human beings do not have the right to rob them of their lives with
cruelty. He first declares absurd the belief of those who claim that the eating
of meat has a natural origin. Human beings do not have beaks, claws, or teeth
166 Reframing carnism
similar to those of predatory animals. He then reproaches the behavior of most
humans, who do not kill the animals themselves but wait for others to do it;
nor do they eat raw meat but cover it with spices of every kind and cook it to
hide the taste of the blood. Finally, he says, eating meat is a habit embedded, like
a hook, in our craving for pleasure. In short, Plutarch’s arguments against eating
meat have much in common with those in the current debate, i.e. we justify
the fact that we eat meat because we consider it “natural,” “normal,” and “nice”
(Piazza et al. 2015). Besides, eating animals is a difficult habit to eradicate.
The idea that eating meat is not natural was taken up again at the begin-
ning of the nineteenth century by the English poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in a
short essay with the title Vindication of Natural Diet (1813), where he affirms,
among other things, that “Man resembles no carnivorous animal.” After listing
the merits of an animal-​meat-​free diet, he adds, moving on to a theme that
today we call “sustainability”: “The most fertile districts of the habitable globe
are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste of aliment
absolutely incapable of calculation” (Shelley 1813, 20). He concludes by saying
that he and his wife (Mary Shelley) have been vegetarians for eight months
when writing the booklet and are doing very well.
Accepting as normal that certain nonhuman animals may be killed for food
while others are so dear to us that we make sacrifices for them, and even shed
tears at their death, requires several steps. As Reclus writes, it is a mechanism
triggered in childhood. Indeed, we are affected by the opinion of “everybody”
from childhood: not only “parents, teachers, official or friendly, doctors,” but
more generally speaking “the powerful individual whom we call everybody”
(Reclus 1901, 317) teaches us to see (some) animals as food.
This powerful “everybody” has that widespread and unquestioned mindset
that Antonio Gramsci, in 1929, called “common sense.” Common sense
is a stratification of ideas, points of view, and ideologies, which becomes
effectual, not because it is true, but because it has been embedded in social
behavior throughout history. In Gramsci’s words, “common sense” is a “con-
ception of the world which is uncritically absorbed by the various social
and cultural environments in which the moral individuality of the average
man [sic] is developed” (1971, 419). There is not only one “common sense,”
of course. The taken-​for-​g ranted world changes over time. What yesterday
was “commonsensical” may no longer be “commonsensical” today and vice
versa. Moreover, within different cultures, a plurality of “common senses”
may coexist.
To denaturalize common sense, Gramsci proposes that it should be
historicized, that is to say relativized diachronically, along the historical path of
human societies. However, he proposes that, from the cultural and social points
of view, it should be relativized synchronically for the different stratifications
(classes and social groups) of the same society. Gramsci’s concept of common
sense, together with the power ̶ knowledge nexus, falls within the Foucaldian
idea of “discourse,” which is the basis of critical geopolitics. We can, therefore,
 Carnism in popular culture 167
address the “habit of eating meat because everybody does it” and because “it is
natural” as a “discursive practice” and try to understand how popular culture
conveys it.
The belief system in which eating certain animals is considered ethical and
appropriate is called “carnism” by Melanie Joy (2010, 30). Like any other com-
monsensical attitude, carnism is a choice, even if it seems to be self-​evident.
Indeed “eating animals is a cultural choice and habit rather than a biological
requirement, as plant-​based diets have been shown to be nutritionally adequate
and often healthier in terms of disease prevention and longevity” (Freeman
2014a, 193). As a “philosophical choice,” carnism is based on an accepted belief
system, not a biological necessity. Nevertheless, it appears to be a “non-​choice,”
because “It’s just the way things are” (Joy 2010); that is, it is made “invisible” by
“common sense.” No name exists to identify meat-​eaters.They are “Everybody.”
Or almost everybody.Those who choose not to do so need be identified with a
name. So, they are recognized as “vegetarians,” or “vegans” (veg*ns). If “carnism”
is a part of our common sense, to understand why “everybody” has come to
think that eating certain animals (and not others) is right and appropriate, it is
necessary to make an effort to “denaturalize” it both from a cultural and his-
torical point of view. Melanie Joy (2010, 96) speaks about the “Three Ns of
Justification” that act as mental and emotional blinders.The three Ns tell us that
eating meat is “normal, natural, and necessary.” Sometimes, it is also “nice” (so
now the literature on the subject tends to speak of “the 4Ns of justification”)
(Piazza et al. 2015; Hopwood and Bleidorn 2019).
Indeed, eating meat is considered “normal,” because it is a social norm; as
such, it is not “merely descriptive —​describing how the majority of people
behave,” it is “prescriptive, dictating how we ought to behave.” Eating meat
is also “natural,” because, it is said, it is part of our eating habits. Humans have
been eating meat for at least two million years. “But,” Joy adds, “to be fair,
we must acknowledge that infanticide, murder, rape, and cannibalism are at
least as old as meat-​eating, and are therefore arguably as natural.” According
to some researchers, and Plutarch’s old philosophy, “humans are anatomically
and physiologically adapted for a diet comprised primarily or entirely of plant
foods” (Masson 2009, 30). However, meat is considered a “necessary” compo-
nent of the human diet though contemporary dieticians have shown that this
is not the case; proteins can also be taken from plant products, and one can live
healthily on a plant-​based diet.
In addition to the “Three Ns of Justification,” Melanie Joy highlights
how carnism rests on three cognitive mechanisms that lead to a distortion of
perceived reality. She calls them the “Cognitive Trio” and terms them “object-
ification,” “deindividualization,” and “dichotomization.” Objectification means
that sentient animals are seen as things. It passes first and foremost through
language: dead animals become meat, the calf becomes veal, and the pig pork.
The word “veal” has no resonance in English. It comes from the translation of
the French veau (calf); “would offend some people’s sensibilities to be asked if
168 Reframing carnism
they would like to be served calf for dinner. It’s not dissimilar from ‘pork,’ which
comes from the French porc, meaning pig” (Joy 2010, 145).
Objectification also comes through legislation, which makes animals human
property. Deindividualization means that animals we eat are not unique indi-
viduals, just numbers. Lastly, dichotomization means dividing animals into cat-
egories such as inedible/​edible to justify eating certain species (or the animals
raised in a certain way) and spare others. Dichotomization (or “splitting,” Masson
2009) calls for self-​justification and leads to “compassionate carnism” (Joy and
Tuider 2016). It may refer to the distinction made between animals bred in the
right conditions, in good farms (which can be eaten), and animals bred in bad
conditions (a thing not morally acceptable). Such distinctions, which are clearly
“social constructs” (Leroy and Praet 2015, 68), are manifold and can refer, in
a very fluid way, either to the species of the animals, or to their age, how they
have been bred, and how they have been slaughtered (Arcari 2020); overall, they
help the well-​meaning consumer to forget that the ultimate end for all these
animals is death. To this “cognitive trio,” Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson (2009) adds
another psychological mechanism, again echoing Plutarch, which is “denial.”
Denial helps us to choose not to consider in their entirety the information
available to us about the death of animals and their suffering. As remarked by
Noélie Vialles (1987, 125) “slaughtering tends to be a somewhat ‘unpopular’
subject: no one wants to know about it.” Therefore, we do not kill the animals
we eat but have others do it; we prefer slaughterhouses to be far away from our
cities, and called by names such as meat plants, or packing plants; we cover meat
with spices of every kind, as Plutarch said, to hide the taste of the blood.
All these psychological mechanisms mutually support each other, sustaining
what constitutes the “common sense” about animal consumption. In conse-
quence, like any form of common sense or ideological system, they deserve
to be questioned. To take a critical approach, we can return to the concept of
“discourse,” in other words, we can identify carnism as the dominant discourse
of contemporary ethics about food and proceed to its deconstruction. A long
historical course leads to the construction of carnism as a discourse to which
the roles of history, cultural traditions, the meat industry, the media, and popular
culture are all contributing factors, as well as being profoundly interconnected
and mutually supportive.
From a historical viewpoint, the passage from the ritual killing of a single
animal to the standardized killing of the modern meat industry (Reed 2014)
plays a vital role in the “deindividualization” and “abstraction.” In a “sacrificial”
offering, the animal is decorated for the purpose, and its death is celebrated as
a sacred moment. In ancient Greece, the slaughter of animals for religious sac-
rifice was usually performed in temples, so “the death of an animal was a gift
rather than a violation” (Young Lee 2005, 7). In contrast, in the modern meat
industry, a bovine animal is slaughtered every twelve seconds (Pachirat 2011). As
Reed (2014, 2) points out, the public slaughtering of animals, albeit in the form
of religious sacrifice, has been progressively banned by societies as an emblem
 Carnism in popular culture 169
of violent ferocity; at the same time, the systematic abstraction of “meat” from
“the animal” has been implemented. Thus, the more democratic the consump-
tion of meat becomes, that is, the more frequent and numerous the killings are,
the more the slaughtering and packaging of meat are removed from the sight
and settlements of consumers, helping them to build their “denial.” The pro-
gressive removal of the “animal origins of meat” is seen as “part of the process
of civilization” (Buscemi 2014, 952). The process also involves cooking, where
the preparation and cutting of the meat can hide the shape of the animal, and
extends to butchering, meat preparation, and purchase.
The slaughterhouse emerged as a new institution in the early nineteenth
century as part of a broader transition from an agricultural to an industrial
economy, accompanied by increased urbanization, technological development,
and an interest in public hygiene. An entirely modern invention, the centralized
slaughterhouse was a political response to the public’s growing lack of toler-
ance for “dirty” slaughter practices, corresponding to changing standards in
social hygiene and the fear of meat-​borne diseases. Within the slaughterhouse,
in Europe and the Americas, animals’ slaughter was rationalized in line with
capitalist imperatives. In parallel with the introduction of hygiene regulations,
the slaughterhouse’s expulsion from the city streets served to save consumers
from confronting the animals’ animality. A Royal Decree issued in Italy in 1890
stated that slaughterhouses should be located “away from the city center and
educational institutions” to avoid the annoyance caused by the “screams of the
animals.” The spatial obliteration of death was added to the animals’ linguistic
and normative objectification and the denial of their individuality. This “geo-
graphical” euphemism is still implemented, not only through the removal but
also through the anonymization (White 2015) of the sites.“The reality is mostly
obscured by […] the creation of a thin veneer of civility surrounding human-​
animal relations, embodied largely by language tricks, isolation of death camps,
and food preparation routines that artfully disguise the true origins of flesh-​
food” (Wolch and Emel 1998, XI).
Together with objectification and deindividualization, dichotomization too
has a long cultural history. In contemporary Western societies, characterized by
an unprecedented level of meat consumption, and by a very intense process of
industrialization in the manufacturing of animal products, there is an extraor-
dinary contrast in the treatment given to meat animals and to pets, which have
never been so numerous or pampered. This dichotomy is nothing new, and it
refers to more than the distinction between pets and farm animals. For cultural
and religious reasons, different food traditions variously differentiate between
the animals that can be eaten and those that cannot. Broadly, a classification
could be made between animals that are bred to be eaten, work animals, pets,
animals considered traditionally impure, and “sacred” animals. However, how
these species are classified is relative culturally (some people eat dogs, others
consider it criminal to eat cows) and historically. Cats were considered edible
in different regions of Italy until the last century; rabbits and horses are still
170 Reframing carnism
eaten, but fewer people consider it acceptable. According to the anthropologist
Marvin Harris, the author of Good to Eat: Riddles of Food and Culture (1998),
different eating habits are simply a consequence of the need to adapt one’s diet
to environmental diversity.

10.2 The “meat paradox” and beyond: how the hegemonic

dietary discourse of carnism is produced and reproduced
by advertising
Hiding slaughterhouses, placing them far from the places where we live, or
making them anonymous, hiding them “in plain sight” (White 2015), is not
enough. As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote (1860, 5), “however scrupulously the
slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is compli-
city.”The awareness of this “complicity,” i.e., the psychological conflict between
the dietary preference for meat and the awareness of the suffering inflicted
on farm animals, has been defined as “the meat paradox” (Loughnan, Haslam
and Bastian 2010; Bastian and Loughnan 2017). Harming others is incoherent
with the vision of oneself as a moral person. Meat consumption makes meat-​
eaters confront a view of themselves that is unfavorable: How can I be a good
person while eating meat? Meat-​eating, they say, “conflicts with deeply held
moral principles, yet people seek to justify these self-​serving behaviors so as
to protect their own interests” (Bastian and Loughnan 2017, 1). Indeed, we
know that “Animal husbandry is one of the greatest sources of suffering in
the world…,” but, at the same time, “Hypocrisy feels less bad, less threatening,
when in a group. If all of us are doing something bad, it can’t really be that bad,
right?” (Shaw 2019). Julia Shaw calls this attitude “the psychology of group-
think” (Shaw 2019).
In the case of meat-​eating, there are two stakeholders: the consumers, who
enjoy eating meat, and the meat producers, who gain from selling it. In the
middle, there are the animals. If consumers are at risk of suffering from the
“cognitive dissonance” (Festinger 1957) that arises from “the attitudinal incon-
sistency between both desiring meat and having concerns over animal welfare”
(Bastian and Loughnan 2017, 2), meat producers must intervene. They have
to induce consumers to overcome their moral reticence and disconnect the
image of meat from the death of the animal. In this way, the animal becomes
an “absent referent” (Adams 2004). So, “in addition to our own attempts to jus-
tify meat-​eating, corporations double down to make it easier for us to do so”
(Shaw 2019).
The meat industry may resort to different strategies and communica-
tion euphemisms to mitigate this conflict. While making the slaughterhouse
anonymous, hidden in plain sight (White 2015), is one of them, another consists
in making all the process of “meat production” appear “scientific,” and “mech-
anically clean.” The slaughterhouse becomes a rationally organized activity in
the killing of animals. The system is perfected to be increasingly mechanical,
rational, and effective. It even changes its name; it is no longer a slaughterhouse
 Carnism in popular culture 171
but becomes a “beef factory,” or a “meat processing factory,” or, in North
America, a “packaging factory” (Philo and MacLachan 2018, 101). To reduce
empathy, “killing” and “slaughtering” are now called “harvesting” (Kunst and
Hohle 2016).The slaughterhouse thus becomes a “perfectly neutral” institution
in the face of serial death, since “the machine has no emotion” (Young Lee
2005, 25).
Advertising can employ other communication strategies.The meat industry’s
publicity may represent meat as the “right” thing to eat or even the “necessary”
thing to eat. In the 1940s, a famous Leo Burnett campaign for the American
Meat Institute presented the consumer with the picture of a piece of raw red
meat against a red background, accompanied by a knife and fork (Buscemi
2018), and slogans like “This is life,” or “Sure, you’re right in liking meat.” In this
way, the campaign not only suggested the importance of eating meat to human
life (meat is “life,” it is a human “necessity”) but also the fact that it is “natural”
and also “right.” It is also “normal,” because the image of the raw meat helped
the consumer overcome the conflict between the desire for meat and its poten-
tially repulsive image.
Advertising campaigns must suggest to consumers that meat is not just a
natural, normal, and “right” food. It is “nice” and “everybody” likes. In many
Italian television advertisements of packed meat products, the slogans repeat
that “everybody” wants just that product, to reassure viewers of its excellent
quality, and at the same time to reaffirm that eating this particular product is
the “normal” choice. In a 1960s commercial, the leading character is a cowboy
who, when it comes to the final shootout, shows that he has canned meat in his
bandoleer instead of pistols. On seeing the meat, “everybody goes to eat with
him” rather than duel. Similarly, in a contemporary advertisement, a child is
seen snacking on ham and gives some to his toy dinosaur, mirroring the slogan
“everyone wants a slice.”
“How we present, prepare, and talk about meat increases willingness to eat
meat by reducing empathy and disgust” (Kunst and Hohle 2016, 758). So, the
meat industry displays meat in a sanitized way, plastic-​wrapped and already
chopped into pieces, “making it hard to think that it came from an animal at
all” (Shaw 2019). Meat can also be presented already cooked and turned into a
food that in no way recalls its animal origin.
Sometimes, animal images are used in advertising materials. In this case,
they are often shown as cartoon figures, using Kindchenschema (“baby schema”)
(Lorenz 1971), which is the set of juvenile features that help humans feel
affection for animals: large eyes, bulging craniums, and round features. This
kind of representation, supposed to give the impression that meat comes from
imaginary animals (Shaw 2019), is a sort of visual euphemism —​“cutification”
(Grauerholz 2007). Not only do animals appear “cute enough to eat,” but
they are smiling in a friendly way, they look happy, they even appear “willing
accomplices in their own slaughter and consumption” (Grauerholz 2007,
349). This communication strategy is quite common in Europe, where now-
adays it is used mostly by small producers, butchers, delicatessens, and dairy
172 Reframing carnism
producers. In this regard, it is worth remembering the extraordinary popu-
larity of Mucca Carolina (Carolina Cow), a cartoon with an exaggeratedly
cutified cow as the main character, which was used in the 1960s to promote
a big dairy company. For dairy products, in a greenwashing effort that is as
brazen (given the conditions of intensive animal farming) as it is widespread,
animals are not only cutified; they are usually drawn against a background of
green pastures.
Using “green pastures” to associate the animal with a pleasant environ-
ment means using a visual propaganda technique called “transfer.” Generally
speaking, we can compare advertising to political propaganda: in both cases,
communicators have a message and want to convince their listeners and viewers
of its validity. In the meat industry, many advertisement messages are often
similar to those conveyed by the most common propaganda devices, identi-
fied in 1939 (Lee & Lee 1939) by the Institute for Propaganda Analysis (IPA)
(Sproule 2001). Eat meat because “everyone does it” (“bandwagon”); do it
because “it’s good, it’s right, it’s healthy” (“glittering generalities”); do it because
he (or she) does it too (“testimonials”); do it because it is healthier, it has more
protein, it has fewer calories (than what?) (“cardstacking”).

10.3 “Let’s have a hot dog”: meat eaters (and veg*ns) in

popular culture
The carnist discourse, and more generally, the cultural attitude that allows
people to exploit animals and their products (milk and eggs, as well as meat) for
their pleasure, is not only the result of a cultural tradition or the communica-
tion strategy of corporations. In this regard, Melanie Joy (2010) highlights the
role of the news media. The horrific conditions of animals subjected to CAFO
(Concentrated animal feeding operations) and the daily slaughter of millions of
farm animals do not make the news. Therefore, there is an omission of infor-
mation. Animals are commodified in news media; their emotional perspectives
are not represented; they are deindividualized (Freeman 2009).
Moreover, meat consumption, which appears to be central to many global
customs and celebrations, is regularly presented as “normal”; on the occasion
of special festivities (e.g., Thanksgiving Day in the US, Easter in Italy), it even
becomes “a social obligation” (with the turkey or the lamb on the table). So, not
only do the mainstream “media fail to challenge the system,” they also maintain
its invisibility and “reinforce the justification for eating meat” (Joy 2010, 103).
At the same time, veganism, which falls outside of carnist discourse, is generally
presented as a choice contrary to common sense. As demonstrated by a research
conducted by Cole and Morgan (2011), the press often represents vegans as
ascetic, faddish, oversensitive, and hostile characters.
Popular culture plays a similar role. TV and movie characters eat, and so
make dietary choices, and even novels are full of references to food. The art
of painting does not disdain filling its works with dead animals, whether they
are game or slaughtered cattle (see the pictorial tradition of still lifes with dead
 Carnism in popular culture 173
game, or the work of Renato Guttuso, La vucciria, 1974, which has a quarter of
an ox in the foreground). Even popular music happens to exalt food of animal
origins, and in the US, there is a country band called Red Meat.
Given the prevalence of omnivorous people, portraying people who eat
animal products seems justified. “Meals containing animal derivatives are ubi-
quitous in American mainstream media.Almost every family dinner scene, every
celebration party depicted, every romantic date represented, every situation that
has to do with food, usually involves meat, dairy, or/​and eggs” (Grande 2017).
In contemporary movies, it is common for the characters to be seen eating
eggs, to having a hot-​dog together, or going to a fast-​food restaurant for a ham-
burger. In American movies, if there is spaghetti on the table, it is spaghetti with
meatballs; if there is pizza, it is pepperoni pizza. Sometimes, eating a certain kind
of meat is also a sign of national belonging or identity. Spaghetti with meatballs
is a cliché for Italo-​American culture and Italo-​American restaurants in the
US, together with a red check tablecloth and a waiter with a moustache. Eating
hamburgers is a synonym for being American, not only in the US but world-
wide (Ohnuki-​Tierney 1997). In Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle (2004,
Danny Leiner), two boys of Asian origin (Harold and Kumar) cross New Jersey
to reach their favorite burger place and dispel the discomfort caused by racism.
Eating meat can also be synonymous with strength (as Walt Whitman asks him-
self, “How is it I extract strength from the beef I eat?” in the poem Song of
Myself, 1855), gender, and social status. For instance, Babette’s Feast is a short tale
by Karen Blixen (1950) that was later adapted into a film (1987, Gabriel Axel),
in which a Parisian cook is forced to leave France incognito and finds refuge
in a small village in Norway (in Denmark, in the movie) . When, out of grati-
tude, she organizes a banquet for her host family, the menu is made sumptuous
by the presence of certain animal products (turtle broth and quails). Conversely,
the choice, or obligation, to eat only vegetables is often used as a metaphor to
denote a situation of penitence or punishment.
Altogether, literature, cinema, and TV replicate the dominant way of viewing
animals and food “through an anthropocentric and carnistic lens,” so they
“reflect this carnonormativity” (Freeman 2014a, 196). Generally speaking, vege-
tarian and vegan (i.e., veg*an) characters are quite rare. If there are any, they are
hybrid monsters (as in Frankenstein, in Mary Shelley’s novel, 1818) or genetically
engineered post-​human creatures, like the Crakers in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx
and Crake (Quinn 2018). If they are boys, they are often a “soyboy” (Gambert
and Linné 2018).
A notable exception is represented by Libereso, the main character in
the story “Adam, One Afternoon” by Italo Calvino (in Italian, “Adamo, un
pomeriggio,” in the collection Ultimo venne il corvo) (1949). Libereso is a 15-​
year-​old boy, a gardener in a villa, who wants to make a present to a 14-​year-​old
kitchen maid and proposes as gifts the little animals living in the garden, which
are all his friends. Libereso says to the girl: “‘We don’t eat the flesh of dead birds
or animals’, ‘Why, are you always in Lent?’, ‘What do you mean?’, ‘Well, what
do you eat then?’, ‘Oh, all sorts of things, artichokes, lettuces, tomatoes. My
174 Reframing carnism
father doesn’t like us to eat the flesh of dead animals’” (Adam, One Afternoon,
1949 [1958]).
Then he adds that his father, in the evening, reads Elisée Reclus’ books
aloud to his family (in the English translation, 1958, quite amazingly, Elisée
Reclus’ name is replaced by Kropotkin’s) (Guest 2017). Libereso is the son of
an anarchist and his name means “freedom.” Maria-​nunziata, the girl, is instead a
victim of all sorts of rules. She is disgusted by all that Libereso offers her as a gift,
but at the same time she is attracted to it. In this case, vegetarianism does not
question masculinity, but it does certify how much the character is out of the
chorus (and outside the geopolitical discourse of his time). By the way, Libereso
is not a fictional character. Libereso Guglielmi was a young man who worked
in the Calvino family garden and was a pupil of Calvino’s father, a famous bot-
anist. Libereso’s father, in turn, was an anarchist, very active on the Italian scene
(Ferrua 1977).
The trope “real men eat meat” is taken to extremes in the satirical animated
sitcom South Park, in the episode Fun with Veal (2002, season 6, episode 4).
One of the characters (Stan) decides to become vegetarian after discovering
that veal is made of baby cows, but it is so labeled to make it palatable for con-
sumption; visiting a veal farm, he also discovers that the calves are chained to
prevent them from moving, to ensure the tenderness of their muscle tissue. To
prevent calves from being killed, he manages to trigger an ecoterrorist action.
However, one of the other kids (Cartman) tells him, “if you don’t eat meat,
you become a pussy.” And, indeed, Stan develops a strange form of illness
and begins to grow vaginas on his face. With this ambivalent attitude, South
Park on one hand advocates animal rights and censures meat industries for
manipulating markets and consumers (Zekavat 2019), and on the other risks
conveying the message that “interest in animals makes one a ‘giant pussy’ ”
(Fathallah 2015, 1311).
If they are not monsters, mutants, or anarchists, vegetarian characters are girls.
An association between vegetarianism and femininity was already highlighted
at the end of the nineteenth century with two feminist utopian novels: Mizora
(1880, Mary E. Bradley) and New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the Future (1889,
Elizabeth Burgoyne Corbett). Mizora describes a women-​only utopian society
in which people live on fruit and artificial meat. In New Amazonia, set in a
similarly utopian society populated only by women, everyone is vegetarian.
Nowadays, the connection is still present. In contemporary films and TV shows,
vegetarian girls are usually brilliant, like Ellie Wood in the movie Legally Blonde
(2001, Robert Luketic), Darlene Conner in the TV sitcom Roseanne (1988–​98),
Phoebe in Friends (1994–​2004), and Lisa in The Simpsons (1989–​). Sometimes,
they are also potentially laughable figures (Jallinoja, Vinnari, and Niva 2019).
Phoebe, for instance, is portrayed as a bit eccentric, confronted with a world
where “good people” eat meat, which legitimizes carnism by emphasizing its
normalcy. However, Lisa is not only vegetarian but also an activist who tries
to convince her community to adopt similar positions. Unfortunately, people
greet her pleas with laughter. However, this reinforces her message: even if her
 Carnism in popular culture 175
crusade is unsuccessful, she, who advocates reasonable arguments, is right while
others, who do not understand them, are retrograde. It might be said that, in
contrast with Friends, “The Simpsons’ producers are using laughter as a way to
ridicule morally inconsistent social norms rather than just encourage continued
carnistic conformity” (Freeman 2014, 6).
Generally speaking, popular culture tends to represent veg*n characters as
“killjoys” that ruin the pleasure of others by highlighting the unethical nature
of their behavior (Grant and MacKenzie-​Dale 2016). An exchange of lines from
the Spanish television series White Lines (2020) provides a good summary of
this stance, albeit ironic since the speaker is a drug dealer. At first, he defines
“healthy, vegan, crudités” as “the scourge of the 21st century.” And then he adds
“no more meat because f…ing cows contaminate the Earth. No more rock and
roll, man. No more Barbie girls, no more fun” (White Lines, season 1, episode 7).

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11 
Engendering meat

11.1 Meat, myths, masculinity

The “meat-​fun-​Barbie girls” connection made in the TV series White Lines is
maybe ironic, but it is not accidental. “The high value of meat is largely con-
tingent upon its symbolic importance as a tangible representation of human
control of, and superiority over, nature” (Fiddes 1991, 17). Metaphorically, meat
is strength. So, as a symbol of power, it is not surprising that meat consumption
is associated with other discursive constructions of authority, inside a schema
where the “ideal subject” is “a human, male, meat-​eating individual, actively
‘possessing’ nature and accepting the sacrifice inherent to eating flesh” (Derrida
1991, 114).To define this schema, which illustrates the “ideological basis for the
predominance of meat-​based diets in Western culture” (Flail 2011, 84), Derrida
coined the word “Carnophallogocentrism” (1991).
This idea of “carnivorous virility” adds to the concepts of carnism and spe-
ciesism, a gender differentiation element, and focuses on the role of carnivorism
in the making of “male subjectivity.” Carol J. Adams addresses the point in
The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-​Vegetarian Critical Theory (1991) and The
Pornography of Meat (2004). Adams connects meat-​eating and the patriarchate,
analyzing myths of the past (such as the Greek myth of Zeus and Metis) and
contemporary literary works, especially feminist literature and vegetarianism.
Erika Cudworth (2005) coins the term “Anthroparchy” to reference the system
of power that connects anthropocentrism, patriarchate, animal exploitation, and
the capitalist domination of nature.
The connection between masculinity and meat has a long history in different
cultures. Again, there are ancient myths connecting strength, virility, and meat.
Freeman (2014b) quotes the Egyptian myth of the sacred bull Apis, which
symbolized fertility, courage, power, and even kingship. Then, there are male-​
dominated hunting activities. Since the Upper Paleolithic, in many different
situations, men have devoted themselves to hunting and women to gathering.
Some researchers explain this differentiation by referring to the dangers of
hunting (Leroy and Praet 2015), but some deviations from the pattern did
occur. They add that “focus should therefore not be on the sexual task div-
ision in pregiven gender terms, but rather on the emergence of gender within
 Engendering meat 179
a specific socioecological context” (Leroy and Praet 2015, 10). Hunting was
already subject to ritualistic control in prehistoric times, and different cultures
developed different rules (Luke 2007). In many cultures, hunting soon became
a pastime for the privileged and powerful. Even in the early Middle Ages, the
aristocracy of the remnants of the Western Empire was often more interested
in hunting than in agriculture, so much so as to impose areas to be used exclu-
sively for hunting, where the production of food was forbidden.
Hunting played a key role in aristocratic education: it was exalted as a prep-
aration or alternative to war, which kept boys away from more effeminate
pleasures. Moreover, it allowed one to demonstrate the ability to understand the
signs of nature and knowledge of natural history. The combination of rules and
courage made it a highly refined pastime. Hunting practices were regulated on
values of correctness and loyalty: examples are that a wounded animal had to be
finished off, at the cost of following it inside a tangle of vegetation; it was for-
bidden to shoot at random into the herd; and that some animals could only be
shot if they were moving (such as ducks, which otherwise were “sitting ducks,”
i.e., too easy prey), and others only if they were standing. Various elements
accentuated the sexual symbolism of the hunt; usually, with the exception of
the big felines, the coveted prey was the male of the species. Even the collecting
of skins and especially of horns can be read and interpreted in this sense: the
trophy room was, in fact, part of the aristocrats’ homosocial space.
Hunting had a specific meaning in the colonial context. The importance
of hunting, a prerogative usually reserved to the nobles, took on a central role
in imperial ideology, so much so that in colonial Africa, it represented a focal
point in the interaction between Africans and Europeans (Mackenzie 1988).
Many high-​ranking hunters disapproved of hunting as a livelihood connected
with commercial activities or with Africans’ survival techniques. The access of
local inhabitants to hunting was progressively reduced, and areas reserved for
the activity. For Europeans, hunting became a symbol of their position of dom-
ination and a class determinant. Only those who could afford it did so: the rich,
the nobility, high-​ranking officers. On the whole, hunting, when not associated
with the need to provide food, demonstrated courage (and therefore virility)
and skill.
The “erotic of men’s predation” (Luke 2007) can still be found in the lan-
guage used in contemporary hunting literature, where there is an abundance of
expressions connecting the hunter to the prey with terms such as “romance”
and “love.” Sometimes they are even tinged with phallocentric sexuality. The
hunting weapon becomes an extension of the hunter’s body, which penetrates
the animal’s body, while the animal becomes an almost erotic object of desire.
The mental association between hunting and sexual practice is highlighted in
American everyday life by the slogan, recurring on caps and car stickers, “I
Hunt Whitetail All Year Long.” The image of a deer, framed by the viewfinder,
on the left, and of a woman with her back squared in the same way, on the right,
accompany the slogan (Luke 2007).
180 Reframing carnism
Animal killing can also be interpreted as “a central part of the rites of passage
framing the transition to manhood” (Leroy and Praet 2015, 23). Killing animals
without falling into childish sentimentalism can turn boys into men.The killing
of animals as a sign of transition to manhood was still present in US popular
culture of the twentieth century.The movie TheYearling (1946, Clarence Brown,
based on a novel of the same title by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings) is an excellent
example. It tells the story of Jody, a lonely boy who lives in the Florida country-
side with his family and adopts a fawn as a pet. The deer, once grown, destroys
the family’s fields and crops. So, Jody’s mother decides to shoot it. She only
wounds it (she is a woman, of course, and does not know how to shoot well!),
and Jody himself has to finish off his beloved deer with a rifle shot. Only then
does the mother, previously distant and seemingly devoid of affection, begin to
show Jody the love he deserves.

11.2 Real men don’t eat quiche: gender stereotypes and

dietary habits in the media
Real men don’t eat quiche is the title of a satirical book by Bruce Feirstein,
published in 1982, where the author, pretending to teach his readers how to
behave as “real men,” makes fun of gender stereotypes. First of all, to be a real
macho, a man should not be a “quiche eater.” The cliché of the real man who
eats meat is very powerful; it has historical roots linked to hunting traditions,
and is continuously nourished by popular culture.
In TV shows, movies, and cartoons, meat consumption is often associated
with masculinity; thus, very masculine characters are defined by the fact that
they eat hamburgers and steaks. Meat is strength and being a red-​meat eater
increases muscle strength (as recurrently suggested by men’s magazines such as
Men’s Health) (Stibbe 2004). In relation to this, Leo Burnett’s campaign for the
American Meat Institute has to be quoted again, since Burnett affirmed that
“we convinced ourselves that the image of meat should be a virile one, best
expressed in red meat […] Red against red was a trick… but it was a natural
thing to do. It just intensified the red concept and the virility and everything
else we were trying to express” (Ewen 1998).
Moreover, meat is connected with sexual desire. On this, Carol J. Adams
(1991, 210) quotes Elaine Showalter (1985, 129), who claims that in the late
nineteenth century meat was “believed to be the fuel of anger and lust,” while
“a carnivorous diet was associated with sexual precocity, especially with an
abundant menstrual flow, and even with nymphomania.” So, women were not
supposed to like meat, because it did not suit them (Belasco 2008). Indeed,
many girls, fearing their sexuality, were often disgusted with meat, or even
phobic about it (and, along with Eros, they also rejected male power) (Adams
1991, 214). Alternatively, they ate meat with sensual greed, especially if it was
usually denied them. In this case, however, they were not represented as girls
from good families. Elsie, in Arnold Bennett’s Riceyman Steps (1923), is a young
maid who performs a forbidden act: eating her employer’s leftover steak. In
 Engendering meat 181
Elsie’s eyes, as Mary Addyman (2017) points out, the steak is not just food, but a
temptation of biblical significance, a seductive lure pushing her first to lick her
fingers, then to lose control of her actions.
Thus, the gender-​meat-​sex nexus turns out to be very complex. Meat is
related to virility, strength, and pleasure. It is also associated with the female
body.There is an abundance of metaphors that link the female image to a piece
of meat (so much that a dating site may be referred to as a “meat market”).
Popular culture provides explicit examples. In Margaret Atwood’s first novel,
The Edible Woman (1969), Marianne, the lead character, stops eating when she
begins to see the food on her plate come to life. This also happens with meat,
which causes her a sudden sense of rejection and disgust. She manages to free
herself from this form of mental illness when she also gets rid of her boring
boyfriend Peter, by whom she feels somehow “eaten.” Even more explicit than
Truismes (1996, Marie Darrieussecq) in making a connection between sex and
meat is The Butcher (1988, orig. Le Boucher), an erotic novella by the French
writer Alina Reyes. It is the story of a young woman who works at a butcher’s
shop in the summertime and feels erotic when watching the butcher cutting up
the meat. The narrator’s gaze lingers on the butcher’s actions, as if she wanted
to identify herself with that piece of meat, penetrated skillfully by the man’s
blade. Following John Phillips’ interpretation, the author “celebrates the erotic
body, whether male or female, as fragmented and objectified like pieces of
butcher’s meat” (Phillips 1999, 196). The hyperbolic metaphor, however, can
also open up a critical approach, which highlights the connection between
gender constructions as well as processes of objectification of women as “meat.”
The cliché of the male super-​ carnivore may emphasize his “barbarian”
nature or achieve a comic effect by unexpectedly reversing the stereotype. In
the French comic series Astérix le Gaulois (1959, René Goscinny and Albert
Uderzo), at the top of the culinary preferences of the two main characters,
the Gallic heroes Asterix and Obelix, are roast boar and hog. In the historical
drama television series Vikings (2013–​19, History Channel), pigs’ heads and
other parts of killed animals are often seen, and all the characters stuff down a
lot of roasted meat. Moving on to the contemporary era, in one episode (2005,
The Competition, season 4, episode 23) of the US TV sitcom According to Jim
(2001–​09, ABC), the main character and his friend Andy engage in the “annual
hot-​dog eating competition.”They feel sure to win as they are men, but surpris-
ingly a woman takes the prize.

11.3 The “cow” and the “boy” along the trails of the
west(ern)
Mainstream popular culture not only takes for granted that people eat meat, but
also glorifies animal-​based lifestyles. From the bucolic poems of the Greek poet
Theocritus in the third century BCE to the contemporary western genre, pastor-
alism and its practices (breeding, shepherding, transhumance) have been praised
as important traditions and ways of life. Specifically, western cinema and literature
182 Reframing carnism
celebrate cattle-​breeding as one of the founding elements of US national iden-
tity and its workers (the cowboys) as national heroes. “Eat Beef –​The West
Wasn’t Won on Salad” is a catchphrase on bumper stickers, mugs, and T-​shirts.1
In a few words, this statement succeeds in exemplifying “carnivorous virility,”
and “celebrating the genocide of Native Americans” (Adams and Calarco 2016,
41). It also helps us to understand how human-​animal binarism (which lies at the
basis of speciesism), and man-​woman binarism (which lies at the basis of gender
discrimination), are also related to space binarism, which opposes the civilized
space of the colonizers to the rest of the world open to conquest.
Since the nineteenth century, the development of settlement colonies, in
particular in the Americas, has guaranteed an abundance of meat on the tables
of rich Europeans. The whole history of the American West is associated with
meat production. Cattle, which had been brought to the American continent
by the Spanish colonizers together with horses, soon roamed wild again.Thanks
to the favorable context, they began to multiply.
The progressive occupation by farmers and settlers of lands inhabited by
Native Americans, on the one hand, pushed the frontier progressively towards
the ocean; on the other hand, it allowed the cattle industry to grow ever
larger. “The American cattle culture was gestated in Texas” (Rifkin 1992, 68).
Cowboys tamed the “Wild West” and turned it into a vast pasture for cattle.
It was in this way that red meat became associated with this category of men
who embody manhood in the United States (Rifkin 1992). The production
and marketing of beef, and in general the need to organize the industry to
supply the large markets in the East of the country, required transport systems,
commercial hubs, and urban networks. This development led to the expulsion
of Native Americans from their lands and the near extinction of bison, which
were slaughtered by the million to reduce the food resources available to the
native populations, to feed the railway construction workers, and to empty the
grasslands.
This gloomy historical picture, marked by the genocide of a people (the
Native Americans) and the almost total extinction of an animal species (the
bison), would seem destined not to enter a people’s collective memory, but
to be relegated to oblivion. On the contrary, the conquest of the West has
become the cornerstone of the nation’s narrative (Slotkin 1998), with the men
who made the care of livestock their profession its protagonists and heroes. In
the epic elaboration of this myth, popular culture has played a primary role
in a variety of forms, such as songs and ballads, oral stories, paintings, prints,
dime novels, cinema, and traveling shows, all of which had the West as a back-
ground and the cowboy (or bison hunter) as the central character. In this way,
the United States created a national epic for itself: the history of the frontier,
a genre that forged its national image —​the western —​and an undisputed
model of national masculinity —​the cowboy. Some of these forms of popular
culture, such as itinerant performances of the Wild West Show, progressively
tailed off in popularity, while others increased to become productions for the
masses. The cultural products that contributed more than any other to making
 Engendering meat 183
the West the mythical landscape of the American national epic were the movies,
so much so that between the 1920s and 1970s westerns represented about a
quarter of Hollywood’s entire output (Buscombe 1988).
The young herdsman of the Great Plains was often a poorly paid and poorly
fed boy, who was sometimes unemployed during the winter months. Thus, the
reality of the time was that few young men aspired to being a cowboy: it was
certainly preferable to be a rancher. However, in the popular imagination the
cowboy prevails over other figures who lived on the frontier (hunters, soldiers,
railway builders). The nomadic herdsman became an established figure in the
Great Plains during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It was at that time
that the process of territorial conquest was closing and urban and industrialized
America was beginning to miss it, which led to the events inspired by the
conquest of the West entering American popular culture. The cowboy thus
emerged as the figure best able to personify the nostalgia for a mythical past and
uncontaminated “nature.” As from the 1880s, Buffalo Bill’s traveling Wild West
Show put the figure of the cowboy on stage, helping to cement him as a myth-
ical character. Next came the paintings of Frederic Remington and Charles
M. Russell, and then, above all, Owen Wister’s novel The Virginian: A Horseman
of the Plains (1902), which, by promoting the cowboy to the rank of absolute
protagonist of the West, elevated him to the role of the last American hero.With
Wister’s descriptions, the cowboy acquired the physical traits that he would
later maintain over time: he was tall, pleasant-​looking, and possibly blue-​eyed
(although in reality, he was often Afro-​American or Latin).
In some movies, the figure of the cowboy merges with that of the gun-
fighter. In a typical western structure, exemplified by such films as George
Stevens’ Shane (1953) and Clint Eastwood’s Pale Rider (1985), and then seen
in hundreds of variations, the cowboy comes to town, helps honest but fearful
citizens fight the baddies, then, after showing the community how to get by
on its own, goes back to the emptiness where he came from (Wright 1977). In
many other films, however, the cattle are the main focus, when an equally iconic
plot describes the romance and skills involved in moving them from one place
to another (often from the plains to the market). The typical cattle-​drive story
departs from Texas with as destination such places as Dodge City and Abilene,
and states like Kansas or Montana, and is often accompanied by the coming-​
of-​age tale of one or more youngsters. In cattle-​drive movies such as Red River
(1948, Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosson), Cattle Drive (1951, Kurt Neumann)
or The Cowboys (1972, Mark Rydell), the perilous journey into adulthood of
the characters overlaps with the journey of the cattle to their final destination
(the meat market). Thus, while for the former, the “natural” reaching point
is represented by adulthood, for the latter, the equally natural reaching point
seems to be, as is taken for granted, the slaughterhouse.
Worth mentioning here is the television series Rawhide (1959–​65, CBS),
which focuses entirely on the “getting to the market” of the cattle and its dangers.
The series is still remembered today for its theme music, the song Rawhide (1958,
Ned Washington and Dimitri Tiomkin), which was brought back to fame by
184 Reframing carnism
the cult movie The Blues Brothers (1980, John Landis). The word rawhide means
untanned leather, or whip. The lyrics say that the calves must be made to move,
even if they disapprove, not try to understand them, just make them move.
Indeed, they must get to the market, i.e., end up in the slaughterhouse. For the
cowboy instead, at the end of the ride, his true love will be waiting.
Such lyrics are perhaps not surprising, when considering that the song was
written in 1958. The song’s lasting success is proof of the power of carnism, so
the fact that a young animal has to be urged with the whip to go to its death not
only does not horrify us (because the obvious end of the young animal is that
it will be turned into steaks), it is even turned into a song that children hum.
The song was featured with its original lyrics in The Blues Brothers. Later, it was
revived in different cartoon movies. In An American Tail: Fievel Goes West (1991,
Phil Nibbelink and Simon Wells), the Blues Brothers’ version is performed by
some animals, while Fievel (a mouse) travels in tumbleweed. In Shrek 2 (2004,
Dreamworks), the character Donkey sings it briefly, but with different words.
In Happy Feet 2 (2011, George Miller), the song returns with its original lyrics,
albeit sung with an Australian accent by marching sea elephants.

11.4 Mastering carnonormativity: television cooking shows

and reality formats
Percy Bysshe Shelley wrote this more than two centuries ago in one of his
essays on vegetarianism: “It is only by softening and disguising dead flesh by
culinary preparation that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion,
and that the sight of its bloody juices and raw horror does not excite intolerable
loathing and disgust” (A Vindication of Natural Diet, 1813). A similar affirmation
had been made, about eighteen centuries earlier, by Plutarch. In On the Eating
of Flesh (Περὶ σαρκοφαγίας –​ De esu carnium), the Greek philosopher writes
that “we are so refined in our blood-​letting that we term flesh a supplemen-
tary food; and then we need ‘supplements’ for the flesh itself, mixing oil, wine,
honey, fish paste, vinegar, with Syrian and Arabian spices, as though we were
embalming a corpse for burial.”2
As Noélie Vialles claims (1987), there are “zoophages” that love to rec-
ognize animals in what they consume. They are a minority. Most meat con-
sumers belong to a category which, for etymological homogeneity, she calls
“sarcophages.”They consume only an abstract substance, where nothing is iden-
tifiable from the animal. The role of cooking, sometimes elevated to cuisine,
therefore becomes fundamental.
In this respect, TV cooking shows, be they talent shows or cooking
demonstrations, are another area of popular culture that exalts carnism. In
Francesco Buscemi’s words (2016, 331), culinary talent shows end up having
a “carnivorous mission”: they promote a form of consumption that is today
regarded as harmful to our health, just as cigarette smoking was years ago. They
hide the origin of animal products in sophisticated recipes and normalize their
use, never questioning the practice of cooking animal products. Eating meat and
 Engendering meat 185
other products of animal origin is the “normal” form of sustenance. Cooking,
moreover, can be a great professional skill and even a true artistic expression.The
use of animal products is celebrated and their consumption spectacularized for
the benefit of the audience.This kind of show tends to associate masculinity with
cooking (and with meat), since the people in charge are mostly male chefs in a
professional backdrop (Packham 2016).The format of MasterChef (Shine Group)
offers the best example with its combination of critically acclaimed chefs as
judges, and non-​professional chefs as competitors.The usually male chefs-​judges
are presented in a charismatic manner and typically act authoritatively towards
the contestants. The show thus helps create the figure of the chef as a media star
but also promotes a gender discourse in which masculinity implies power and
hierarchical superiority, thus mixing, once again, carnism with gender issues.
Even though people seem to have less time to cook, food has become
one of the staples of television fodder (Versteegen 2010, 448). Television food
is served in all sauces. It seems to fit every schedule and format: cooking
classes, contests in which chefs compete against each other, inter-​restaurant
competitions, shows in which incompetent restaurateurs strive to improve,
and travel programs about specific food regions. This trend started in the
United Kingdom, where the most successful culinary talent television format,
MasterChef, was launched in 1990. From there it spread around the world.
Different versions of MasterChef, adapted to local realities (Rimoldi 2015), are
produced in more than 40 countries. Different kinds of show satisfy different
audiences. The most traditional cooking program, which teaches viewers
how to cook, is usually broadcast a little before lunchtime. A presenter, usu-
ally a woman, demonstrates the cooking typical of a housewife in a pseudo-​
domestic set. Another format, a competition between restaurateurs or chefs,
such as Italy’s Quattro Ristoranti (based on the German format Mein Lokal, Dein
Lokal) and MasterChef, attracts a more varied audience and is often shown in
prime time. MasterChef Australia (2009–​) is one of the country’s most popular
programs and is exported as a “canned program” (with subtitles or dubbing) to
about 30 other countries.
Cooking programs and culinary talent shows, which “normalize” the con-
sumption of “traditional” meats, may suggest the consumption of less usual
meats at home.With reference again to MasterChef Australia, sellers and suppliers
said that, after the show’s first few seasons, the consumption of unfamiliar foods
such as quails and pheasants had increased throughout the country.3
Sometimes, competitors are asked to deal with “unusual” food preparations,
as occurred during one episode of the Portuguese MasterChef when contestants
were asked to prepare a lamb that had not yet been cut up. To the competitors
“the animals were presented […] with their whole body (with head, eyes, teeth)”
(Fonseca 2015, 49); in this way, the “absent referent” (that is, the dead animal
beyond the food) (Adams 1991) was brought back, somehow implying that, for
a cook, accepting the death of the animal is inevitable and “necessary.” Even
causing the death of the animal can be shown as necessary and inevitable: in
an episode of the English edition (2010), competitors were asked to cook crabs
186 Reframing carnism
by throwing them alive into boiling water. The strength of the carnist message
was reinforced by the attitude of a competitor, a girl of Indian origin, who at
first claimed to be vegetarian and never to have killed an animal in her life, but
who then stated that she was ready to do it, somehow demonstrating the need
to adapt to what everyone does (Rimoldi 2015).
In 2019, the desire to adapt to the growing sensitivity towards food of animal
origin led to the invitation of a vegan chef in an episode of the UK edition.The
competition between the contenders was therefore focused, for once, on the
challenge of producing a plant-​based menu. In an episode of the Italian edition
in 2017, the two teams were confronted with the preparation of a vegan menu
of raw food. These exceptions are so rare that they confirm the rule: for now,
carnonormativity reigns on television networks.
However, new tendencies are emerging, which somehow seem to be a reac-
tion to the growing attention to animal rights. On the one hand, the search for
“ethical” meat seeks to make consumers aware of the conditions experienced
by farmed animals. On the other, there is a “new carnivorism,” the reaction of
those who show contempt for ethical objections to the use of animals for food
and who boast their right to eat meat, offering “new visibility to slaughter”
(Parry 2010). For instance, the BBC’s production Kill It, Cook It, Eat It (2007–​
11) was a television series that followed “the journey of animals from the pas-
ture to the plate.” The show echoed the idea that those who eat meat are
generally detached from the reality of meat production and voluntarily ignore
the death necessary to put it on their plate (Parry 2010), and aimed to recast
the concept of turning “the repugnant into [the] acceptable” (Pick 2016, 95) by
pointing out the importance of animal welfare and the need to choose “good
meat,” i.e., meat produced from animals that are not factory-​farmed. Similarly,
the Australian SBS documentary For the Love of Meat (2016) aims to induce the
public not to give up meat but to consider purchasing animals farmed fairly.
Both programs present the dichotomy between animals that are good to eat
and those that are not (Joy 2010; Arcari 2020) while normalizing the use of
animals as food (Arcari 2017). Conversely, the British reality show Meat the
Family (Channel 4, 2020–​) straightforwardly questions the dichotomy between
animals for food and animals as pets. In the show, meat-​consuming families
are given farm animals (broilers, piglets, lambs) to raise for three weeks as pets.
At the end of that time, they have to decide whether to send them to a sanc-
tuary (but in that case, they have to become vegetarians) or let them go to the
slaughterhouse. In that case, they will have to eat them. In the first episode, both
families sent their adopted chickens and piglets to the slaughterhouse, shocking
the audience.4
The Butcher is an American competition reality series (History Channel,
2019–​) that is very explicit in its “new carnivorism” (Armstrong and Potts 2014,
179). In the show, competitors are required to show off their ability to dissect
animals, which sometimes are very unusual (a nutria, an alligator, a bison), and
often using even more unusual tools (such a tomahawk). In this way, the show
focuses on the lack of connection between urban meat consumers and animals,
 Engendering meat 187
contrasting traditional and “authentic” hunting practices with contemporary
methods of industrial meat production (and again suggesting the possibility of
“splitting” between animals that are good to eat and animals that should not
be eaten).

Notes
1 The saying was launched by a 1990 North Dakota Beef Commission promotional
campaign (“Beef…because the West wasn’t won on salad”). https://​www.barrypopik.
com/​index.php/​new_​york_​city/​entry/​eat_​beef_​the_​west_​wasnt_​won_​on_​salad
2 https://​penelope.uchicago.edu/​Thayer/​E/​Roman/​Texts/​Plutarch/​Moralia/​De_​
esu_​carnium*/​1.html
3 www.smh.com.au/​entertainment/​masterchef-​f ans-​drive-​specialty-​boom-​20100
726-​10smk.html
4 www.theguardian.com/​tv-​and-​radio/​2020/​jan/​09/​meat-​the-​f amily-tv-​doesnt-
get-​creepier

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12 
Carnonormativity and its
discontents

12.1 Cracking carnonormativity

According to Comolli and Narboni (1969, 11), “every film is political, inas-
much as it is determined by the ideology which produces it (or within which
it is produced, which stems from the same thing). The cinema is all the more
thoroughly and completely determined because unlike other arts or ideological
systems its very manufacture mobilizes powerful economic forces in a way that
the production of literature (which becomes the commodity ‘books’) does
not —​though once we reach the level of distribution, publicity and sale, the
two are in rather the same position.”
The authors are telling us that all texts (films, but also books) are related to an
ideological position; the vast majority follow it, some oppose it, either because
of the content or the form, or both. Specifically, the majority are so “imbued
[…] with the dominant ideology in pure and unadulterated form” that they
become “the unconscious instruments of the ideology which produces them”
(Comolli and Narboni 1969, 13). Some texts instead attack the ideology. They
may be politically committed in terms of the message, or formally resistant in
their expressive form. Lastly, some texts seem to fit in fully with the dominant
ideology but have “cracks” in them that may contradict the system.
Comolli and Narboni’s analytical frame was later revised and summarized by
Stam, Burgoyne, and Flitterman-​Lewis (2005). Among other categories, they
distinguish “dominant films,” thoroughly imbued with dominant ideology;
“resistant films,” which attack dominant ideologies on the levels of both the sig-
nified and signifier; “formally resistant films,” which do not have an openly pol-
itical message, but practice formal subversion; and “fissure films.” Fissure films
superficially belong to the dominant cinema but provide a “crack” by means
of a detail, a single scene, or a dialogue. Even if they seem to be integrated into
the system and the ideology, such movies can help to dismantle the system from
within. There is also “live cinema,” which may critically depict contemporary
events and sometimes also question the traditional mode of representation.
Comolli and Narboni’s frame about the possible relations between a text
and the dominant ideology was first formulated within a Marxist framework.
However, by broadening the perspective from capitalism to patriarchy, and to
 Carnonormativity and its discontents 191
speciesism, a similar frame helps analyze other sides of the hegemonic dis-
course that we may call “anthroparchy” (Cudworth 2005). In the following
paragraph, I will try to analyze popular culture texts regarding carnism as
ideology and to problematize representations of nonhuman animals and con-
sumption practices.
As seen in the previous chapter, mainstream popular culture is generally
so imbued with carnism as the dominant dietary discourse that it becomes
its “unconscious instrument.” Overall, this “carnonormativity” (Freeman
2014a) contributes to normalizing the consumption of animal products for the
audience.
“Resistant” fictional texts, which can be interpreted as specific “politically
committed” attempts to go against the carnist imperative, are few. A “resistant”
film in content and form is Il potere (Power) by the Italian director Augusto
Tretti (1971). As the title suggests, the film is an attack on power, which is
examined in a historical arc ranging from prehistory to modernity, in all its
forms (first of all religious, then political, military, and economic). Although
the film does not advocate animal rights, animals repeatedly appear as victims
of power. In the initial scene, a hen, chased by a multitude of men and women,
ends up captured and plucked; in the conquest of the West, there is talk of the
extermination of natives and bison; in the modern world, 100,000 egg-​laying
hens are shown crammed together on an industrial farm. The director shows
hens “forced to wear glasses to avoid cannibalism, while the owner praises to
his guests the qualities of the Super-​Egg, actually a nothing full of water and
without yolk, emblem of food in our society, beautiful to see, but without taste
and nutritional values” (Lanzarotti 2010). In addition to the content, the film
also appears “resistant” from a formal point of view. It is shot in black and white,
with non-​professional actors playing all the roles; the sets are declaredly theat-
rical; the three representatives of power (who illustrate the logic in the different
historical phases) wear animal masks. Even the soundtrack, which is cacophonic
and falsely triumphant, contributes to creating a sense of despondency in the
spectator. In an interview, the director declared that he wanted to “ridicule the
formal structures of consumer cinema, its dazzling colors, beautiful photog-
raphy, luxury, and opulence” (Zambetti and Giacci 1973).
Less challenging in the form, but resistant in the content is La Grande Bouffe/​
The Big Feast (1973, Marco Ferreri). It is a French-​Italian movie about four
friends who eat so much that they die (bouffe is the French word for binge).
This grotesque film is a satire of capitalist and bourgeois consumerism, not a
direct attack on carnism. However, the “binge” involves the consumption of
a large quantity of meat. The meat is delivered in its animal form. During the
delivery scene, one of the characters dances with a calf ’s head; a second counts
what is unloaded and comments in a sardonic way: “five innocent lambs!”; the
third states, “you’ll see how exciting it is to dissect the meat,” the fourth declares
the party open (a curious beginning, marked by the presence of so many dead
animals). The scene returns the “absent referent” (the innocent lamb, the calf)
to view, while the association between sexuality and meat consumption is
192 Reframing carnism
somehow satirically reaffirmed, suggesting a generally critical message about
meat consumption and anthroparchy.
Carnage: Swallowing the Past (2017, Simon Amstell) offers an explicit and
direct attack on the carnist discourse, although, again, this is a film that is only
resistant in content. Carnage is a film of fiction produced by the BBC in 2017.
Set in the year 2067, it is constructed as if it were a documentary (it can be
considered a “mock documentary” or mockumentary) and depicts a utopian
future where everyone is a vegan. The younger generations do not under-
stand how human beings were able to feed on animals in the past. The elders,
who ate meat and cheese in the past, are full of guilt. They find themselves in
therapy sessions, like an AA meeting, where they confess their mistakes. The
film intelligently contemplates the historical steps that have led to this trans-
formation of the world. In the intermediate “Age of Confusion” it was realized
that even pets, such as cats and dogs, are carnivorous and unsustainable. It then
demonstrates “how quickly such normalized social ideas as eating meat can be
rejected” (Mills 2017, 179).
In the case of “resistant” texts such as these it would be useful to deepen the
research in order to understand the reactions of the audience. La Grande Bouffe,
which violates all rules of decency, was a scandal at the time; it was booed at the
26th Cannes Film Festival and then, maybe because of this, was quite a success
at the box office. Despite the booing, the film won the “International Critics’
Award” at Cannes, where it was presented again, in a restored version, in 2013.
In the meantime, it had “entered the history of cinema and costume, [the title]
became a classic saying, an emblem of disproportionate excesses in every field
of life and thought.”1 Audience comments remain as divided today as they
were at the time of the film’s release. Some people consider it a masterpiece,
some people think it’s disgusting, some people think it’s simply boring.2 Meat,
represented in a very realistic way, remains a symbol of excess, not an indication
of the killing of a living being.
Even more difficult is to understand the audience’s reaction to Tretti’s film,
a film that, despite the enthusiastic comments of intellectuals such as Federico
Fellini and Alberto Moravia (Lanzarotti 2010), has remained restricted to the
narrow domain of cineforums.
And what about Carnage? The Independent titled its review “Simon Amstell
has made the world’s first vegan comedy that’s actually funny.”3 And it went
on: “Carnage is an almost perfect example of how to push a worthwhile message
without being preachy.” Carnage is available online on the BBC website, so it can
reach, at least potentially, a much wider audience than film forums. However,
just as Power has remained a film for a few intellectuals, Carnage risks remaining
a film for vegans.Very funny, but only those who are already convinced of the
goodness of its message watch it.
More interesting, from the point of view of distribution to the general public,
are the movies that feature animals. There is a tradition of children’s stories
and movies with animals as characters, which somehow carry a pro-​vegetarian
message.The way the animals are represented sometimes makes their ideological
 Carnonormativity and its discontents 193
and discursive position ambivalent, but their ability to reach audiences is cer-
tainly higher than in the films mentioned above. A novel like Charlotte’s Web
(1952, E.B. White) and movies like Babe (1995, Chris Noonan), Chicken Run
(2000, Peter Lord and Nick Park), and Okja (2017, Bong Joon-​ho) all have in
common anthropomorphized animals as characters that share a common des-
tiny: to be eaten in the future. In Charlotte’s Web (from which a cartoon was
made in 1973 and a film in 2006), the main character is a small pig named
Wilbur, who lives happily in a barn. His best friend is the spider Charlotte,
who tells him exciting stories. One day, Wilbur discovers that the farmer is
fattening him up for Christmas dinner. Thanks to Charlotte’s friendship, and
a little girl’s love, the piglet is eventually saved. Babe tells the story of another
piglet (Babe) who is also supposed to become Christmas dinner for the family
of a farmer. Babe succeeds in winning the farmer’s affection and becomes a
“sheep-​pig” instead (the movie is taken from the novel The Sheep-​Pig, by Dick
King-​Smith, 1983). Like Wilbur, Babe is a very cuddly pig and can speak with
the other animals on the farm. The film thus appears to have been produced
primarily as a children’s movie, however, the adult audience and critics praised it
so much that it received several Oscar nominations (and grossed $254,134,910
worldwide).4
The movie has also been successful in delivering a vegetarian message. In
the year after the release, the US Department of Agriculture showed a stagnant
demand for pork, as reported by the Vegetarian Times (O’Connor 1995, 16), and
many people claimed to have become veg*ns on account of it, including the
actor who played the farmer, James Cromwell (Nobis 2009). This has resulted
in the coining of the term “Babe vegetarians.” The story of Babe, who changes
his destiny from being an animal to be eaten by assuming the role of a shepherd
dog, conforms to the dichotomy, typical of carnism, between edible and ined-
ible animals; if the message is pro-​vegetarian, then the overall discourse is still
framed within carnism.
Released about 25 years later, Okja is the story of another pig. Here, the main
character is not a piglet, but a giant and genetically modified animal. For Okja,
too, the final destination is the slaughterhouse. Like Babe, the movie delivers a
clear message. It is more direct, as it deals with industrial agribusiness, forced
insemination, the mass slaughter of factory animals, and ecoterrorism. However,
the effectiveness of the communication risks limitation by the appearance
of the genetically modified pig: it is true that she’s cute, but she has more
similarities to a manatee or a dog than to a real pig. Again, “Okja is endearing
because she mirrors these human-​constructed qualities that we desire in our
companion animals” (Gunawan 2018, 3). The audience’s attachment to Okja is
created by the fact that she behaves and looks like a non-​edible animal (a dog),
not because she deserves to be respected as a pig.
Generally speaking, the use of anthropomorphic characters that over-​express
similarities between nonhuman animals and humans may rouse criticism (Molloy
2011; Parkinson, Twine, & Griffin 2019). The attribution to other animals of
human-​like qualities prevents people from appreciating them as such, and the
194 Reframing carnism
natural world as it currently exists; moreover, it depicts a relationship between
humans and nonhuman animals based on a specific set of power relations
(Parkinson 2019). Similarly, the birds in Chicken Run are anthropomorphized
animals that can speak; their depiction is therefore far from realistic and again
fails to provide any species specificity. All the same, the film has the merit of
dealing with the issue of slaughter and the production of animals as commod-
ities (Molloy 2011), and therefore somehow manages to open a fissure in the
usual carnonormativity of the media.
In addition to resistant texts, discontent with carnonormativity can be
expressed in texts where the dominant discourse is fissured only to produce
cognitive estrangement or laughter. In the realms of science fiction, The War of
the Worlds (1897, H.G. Wells) raises questions about “speciesism.” The narrative
places Earthlings in confrontation with an intellectually and technologically
superior alien species that feeds on them. Questioning the relationship between
species is another way to create an opening in the carnist discourse. “We should
remember,” says the narrator, “how repulsive our carnivorous habits would
seem to an intelligent rabbit.”
Sometimes, the crack is opened for humorous purposes. Yet it may spark
glimmers of reflection, even if an explicit vegetarian message is unintended.
Popeye the Sailor (1929–, Elzie Crisler Segar) is a comic strip and an animated
cartoon for children whose eponymous character is a sailor who becomes extra
strong by eating spinach. He sings “I’m strong to the finish ̉cause I eats me
spinach.” The comic effect is triggered by the contrast between the machismo
of the sailor and his vegetable diet. However, seeing the cartoon seems to have
led children to eat more spinach and less meat (Sirikulchayanonta et al. 2010).
Three Little Pigs, an animated short film produced in 1933 by Walt Disney, tells
the story of three little pigs under attack from a ravenous wolf. In the house of
one of them, Practical Pig, there are pictures of relatives and parents: the painting
with the title “Mother” shows a sow with her young. In “Father” we see just
a string of sausages. In a third, called Uncle Otto, we see a football. In Three
Little Pigs, the association between the movie characters, which are strongly
anthropomorphized, to “the absent referent” (Adams 1991), and to the destiny
of death faced by real pigs, was probably conceived as a sort of background
humor. However, it can also operate as a fissure, cracking carnonormativity and
helping audiences to connect the cute animals on the screen with those killed
to be eaten.
In other cases, the fissure aims at different aspects of anthroparchy (such as
patriarchy or consumerism), but it also works in fissuring carnonormativity. In
two movies from the mid-​twentieth century, By the Light of the Silvery Moon
(1953, David Butler) and The Giant (1956, George Stevens), there is a scene of
a (patriarchal) family reunion during the Thanksgiving lunch; in both cases, the
element that creates the fissure is the relationship between the children and the
turkey, which must be sacrificed for the occasion. In the first case, the turkey
(Gregory) is saved but he breaks into the dining room during lunch, making
much noise and ruining the celebration. In the second, the children discover
 Carnonormativity and its discontents 195
that the roast brought to the table is Pedro, the turkey that they have fed and
made friends with in the previous days. Again, the lunch is ruined (in this case
by their crying). As a side effect, the two scenes offer a glimpse of the unfair
destiny of “eatable” animals, questioning the dichotomy, typical of carnism,
between animals that can be eaten and pets.
Beyond fiction, the cinema world contributes to a critique of carnism
through the life choices of many of its protagonists. During the second decade
of the twenty-​first century, “veganism has turned from a poorly known vege-
tarian submovement into a way of life praised by some of the world’s top celeb-
rities, business people and politicians” (Jallinoja, Vinnari, and Niva 2019, 157).
Many Hollywood actors claim to be vegans, such as Benedict Cumberbatch,
Zac Efron, Natalie Portman, Woody Harrelson, and Michelle Pfeiffer. To please
them, glamorous events, such as the pre-​show dinner at the 77th Golden Globes
awards (2020), may be plant-​based. Moreover, celebrities sometimes cash in on
their visibility to launch appeals against animal exploitation and meat consump-
tion, turning the stage of Hollywood’s great events into an animal rights forum
(as Joaquin Phoenix did at the Academy Awards ceremony, 2020).

12.2 The Jungle and more: investigative journalism and the

power of the “cognitive trio”
With the necessary adjustments, Comolli and Narboni’s frame (1969) also works
for the analysis of the “production of literature (which becomes the commodity
‘books’)” (Comolly and Narboni 1969, 11), and carnism. In the case of literary
texts, one can define as “resistant” texts that directly attack carnism and spe-
ciesism and experiment with new forms of writing, to make people think about
the unjust suffering of nonhuman animals (for instance, the autobiographies
and biographies of nonhuman animals).Texts that use direct and perhaps under-
cover observation, and more generally the sources used by investigative jour-
nalism, are also “resistant.”Then there are texts written by great novelists, which
raise the problem of animal rights, sometimes directly soliciting the reader’s
empathy. Lastly, there are “fissure” novels that talk about something else but
manage, with just one paragraph, or maybe just a simile, to open a crack in the
carnist arguments.
An example of “resistant” text, in terms of both content and form, is Beautiful
Joe: An Autobiography (1894, Margaret Marshall Saunders). To bring the reader
closer to the dog’s subjectivity, it uses the autobiography technique. Moreover, it
offers numerous openings on the life of pets and farmyard animals. For instance,
during a train journey, the following dialogue is reported between the lady
traveling with the dog Joe and an “old gentleman”: “Think of the cattle on the
western plains. Choked with thirst in summer and starved and frozen in winter.
Dehorned and goaded on to trains and steamers. Tossed about and wounded
and suffering on voyages. Many of them dying and being thrown into the sea.
Others landed sick and frightened. Some of them slaughtered on docks and
wharves to keep them from dropping dead in their tracks. What kind of food
196 Reframing carnism
does their flesh make? It’s rank poison. Three of my family have died of cancer.
I am a vegetarian” (Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography, 1894).
The anti-​ carnist strength of the quotation is mitigated by the
“dichotomization” proposed in the following lines, where the same “old
gentleman” states: “It’s a possible thing to raise healthy stock, treat it kindly, kill
it mercifully, eat it decently. When men do that, I, for one, will cease to be a
vegetarian” (Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography, 1894). The novel was the first text
published in Canada to sell over a million copies (Harde 2009). Therefore, it is
probable that it attained, at least partly, its goal.
Beautiful Joe is a book based on a true story but was destined predominantly
for children, and consequently its denunciation is open but adequate for the
public. Much more direct is the message conveyed by texts that mix fiction and
investigative journalism, which deserve the credit for disclosing the cruelty of
what takes place inside a slaughterhouse. Documented reality about the meat
industry and fiction are mixed in Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle, published first in
serial form in 1905 and then as a novel in 1906. The story about a Lithuanian
immigrant, Jurgis Rudkus, working in a slaughterhouse drew inspiration from
the journalistic investigation Sinclair conducted in the Chicago Stockyard
undercover. As its focus is more on the exploitative working conditions of
humans than on nonhuman animal suffering, the book is considered a “prole-
tarian novel” (Brewster Folsom 1979) more than a manifesto for animal rights.
However, while denouncing the lack of attention paid to the quality of the
product and the dramatic exploitative conditions of workers, The Jungle also
exposes animal suffering. In particular, Sinclair highlights the blameless inno-
cence of animals in the face of death and their unfair “deindividualization”
(Joy 2010). Every hog is an individual and should be treated as such: “It was
all so very businesslike that one watched it fascinated. It was pork-​making
by machinery, pork-​making by applied mathematics. And yet somehow the
most matter-​of-​fact person could not help thinking of the hogs; they were so
innocent; they came so very trustingly; and they were so very human in their
protests –​and so perfectly within their rights. And it was adding insult to injury
as the thing was done here, swinging them up in this cold-​blooded, impersonal
way, without pretense at apology, without the homage of a tear… Was it per-
mitted to believe that there was nowhere upon the earth, or above the earth,
a heaven for hogs, where they were requited for all this suffering? Each one of
these hogs was a separate creature” (The Jungle, 1906).
At the time of its publication, the book was an extraordinary success; it sold
more than 100,000 copies within a year5 and was translated into 35 different
languages. The sensation it raised was related more to the representation of a
food industry where hygiene was deplorable than to the issues that were close
to the author’s heart, namely the conditions of workers and the unfair fate of
animals. As a result, the public outrage caused by the book stimulated new food
quality standards in the US and led to the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, but
it did not promote a movement against meat consumption.
 Carnonormativity and its discontents 197
Investigative journalism has contributed, also in more recent times, to the
focusing of attention on the meat industry and its practices. Books and docu-
mentaries have multiplied in number, offering increasingly disturbing images
and more detailed information. One of the most critical texts is Beyond Beef: The
Rise And Fall of the Cattle Culture by Jeremy Rifkin (1992), which gives a clear
picture from a historical perspective of the role of the meat industry in the
United States’ regional geography. More informative is Fast Food Nation (2001)
by the investigative journalist Eric Schlosser. The subtitle of the first edition,
The Dark Side of the All-​American Meal, spells out what the book is about. It
tells why Americans have come to eat so much fast food and how the system
provides them with such large quantities for little money (Pearce 2011, 457). It
focuses mainly on the industrial transformation of fast food and the economy
and geography of the ingredients; it describes the transformation of ranch
farming, and of small cities following the opening of meatpacking plants and
analyzes the conflict between meatpacking companies and traditional ranchers.
It even dedicates a few pages, clearly elegiac in style, to the poetics of traditional
ranching and the description of one of its protagonists, Hank, who is “handsome
enough to be a Hollywood cowboy, tall and rugged, wearing blue jeans, old
boots, and a big white hat,” but commits suicide at the age of 43 because of the
“enormous pressure” of the conflict with industrial farming. A few pages later,
the book offers a realistic account of what happens in a modern slaughterhouse.
So, like The Jungle, Fast Food Nation is not explicitly focused on animal advocacy
but helps to make the reader aware of the fate of animals. The Jungle succeeds in
breaking one of the cornerstones of the carnist discourse (deindividualization),
by focusing on the individuality of each hog. Fast Food Nation, which contrasts
the good farmer (Hank) with the evil protagonists of intensive farming, falls
into that dichotomization between good meat and bad meat that is one of the
pillars of Melanie Joy’s “Cognitive Trio”(Joy 2010).
Eating Animals by Jonathan Safran Foer (2009) is also investigative journalism.
The book revolves around one question: the author wonders whether it is right
that his little son, for whom food seems to be so important, should eat meat. It
opens with some reflections on the meaning of the story about what is right to
eat and what is not (and questions what justification there is for sparing dogs but
eating other animals, for instance, as dogs abound, while other animals have to
be bred). One of the book’s objectives is to stigmatize the “species barriers”: the
dichotomy between animals that can be eaten and those that cannot. After, as
Upton Sinclair and Eric Schlosser did before him, Foer uses the experience
he gathered through an unauthorized visit to an intensive farm to attack his
main goal: factory farming, the appalling conditions of the animals, the danger
of the abuse of antibiotics, and the consequences for the environment. At this
point, however, he falls into the trap of dichotomization: he presents the “good
butcher,” who butchers, one by one, pigs from non-​intensive farms, and the
“good breeder,” who leaves the animals free to graze in an almost idyllic situ-
ation when compared to factory farming.The division between animals that are
198 Reframing carnism
“good to eat” (because they were farmed correctly and humanely slaughtered)
and those that are not to be eaten (because they were bred using intensive
farming) makes its appearance once more, and the carnist discourse remains
virtually unscathed.

12.3 Consider the animals: empathy and the role of

literature
If investigative journalism, sometimes mixed with fiction, can become an instru-
ment of resistance, explicitly denouncing what happens on industrial farms and
in slaughterhouses, what can literature do? Can a novel be “resistant”? A similar
question about the role of literature is asked in The Lives of Animals (1999) by
the South African novelist (and Nobel Prize winner) J.M. Coetzee. The book
consists of two short stories (“The Philosophers and the Animals” and “The
Poets and the Animals”), accompanied by comments from leading thinkers,
including the philosopher Peter Singer. Coetzee wrote it, when, invited as a
speaker at the 1997 Tanner Lectures at Princeton University, he decided to
read two short stories of fiction instead of lecturing conventionally. The two
stories present a sort of nesting pattern, as “a metatextual fiction” (Garber 1999,
76). The main character, the Australian feminist Elizabeth Costello, is a writer
invited to lecture by an American University (Appleton College) and she
decides to speak about animals.
Events are narrated by Elizabeth’s son, who happens to be a lecturer at the
same university. Elizabeth could have chosen any subject, he says, but, instead
of speaking “about herself and her fiction, as her sponsors would no doubt
like” (Coetzee 1999, 16), she gives two lectures on vegetarianism and animal
rights. In her first lecture, Costello links the “denial” (Masson 2009) that many
inhabitants of Treblinka had about what happened inside the concentration
camps with the general attitude towards the horrors of the slaughterhouses: we
know it, but we prefer not to know it. She also explains that human beings
must not place themselves above animals simply because they believe that they
are more rational than them; they should instead strive to put themselves in
their place, feeling empathy because those who lived around extermination
camps also lacked empathy. The reading, and the conversation in the following
dinner, also deals with “speciesism” and the distinction made in many cultures,
between animals that are good to eat and animals that are not eaten, i.e.,
dichotomization. The second lecture is organized as a debate about the rights
of animals and goes into many issues related to animal welfare policy (“another
Western crusade against the practices of the rest of the world,” says the phil-
osopher who disputes with Elizabeth) (Coetzee 1999, 60). Before and after the
debate, Elizabeth’s son and his wife Norma argue about the meaning of veg*n
dietary choices (“It’s nothing but food-​faddism, and food-​faddism is always
an exercise in power,” says Norma, irritated by Elizabeth’s vegetarian choice,
and her refusal to see any food of animal origin on the table [Coetzee 1999,
67]). The central question is perhaps about the real power of words, literature,
 Carnonormativity and its discontents 199
and poetry, in representing animals and their sufferings, and it is formulated by
Elizabeth’s son: “Do you really believe, Mother, that poetry classes are going to
close down the slaughterhouses?” (Coetzee 1999, 58). The answer is no, but all
the same, Elizabeth does not “want to sit silent” (ibid., 59).The story ends with a
final conversation between Elizabeth and her son, and one last question, which
touches on one more fundamental point in carnism as a discourse: “group-​
thinking” (Shaw 2019) or the role played by “the powerful individual whom
we call Everybody,” as Élisée Reclus wrote in 1901. So, Elizabeth says: “Is it
possible, I ask myself, that all of them are participants in a crime of stupefying
proportions? Am I fantasizing it all? I must be mad! Yet every day I see the
evidences. The very people I suspect produce the evidence, exhibit it, offer it
to me. Corpses. Fragments of corpses that they have bought for money.” And
she adds: “Yet I’m not dreaming. I look into your eyes, into Norma’s, into the
children’s, and I see only kindness, human kindness. Calm down, I tell myself,
you are making a mountain out of a molehill. This is life. Everyone else comes
to terms with it, why can’t you? Why can’t you?”6
By raising these questions, and answering or not answering them through
Elizabeth’s voice, Coetzee creates a “fictional device [that] enables him to dis-
tance himself from them” (Singer 1999, 91), thus proving his “confusion” (Pick
2011, 9) and the difficulty of rationalizing on such complex issues. Though
it raises some points fundamental to carnism as a discourse, Coetzee’s con-
tribution has been considered by some critics to be too tied to the human
standpoint and unable to present animals as protagonists (Barrett 2014). By put-
ting together “aesthetics and ethics” (Gutmann 1999, 3–​4), however, Coetzee
provides empirical and philosophical arguments on the ethical question about
how humans are supposed to behave towards nonhuman animals; he also
succeeds in dispelling many of the accusations made against those who defend
the rights of animals and highlights the ecofeminist connections between the
various forms of oppression in the world (Wright 2018). At the same time, he
advances some fundamental issues about the power of the arts, and in particular
the role of literature which is based on “words,” something that distinguishes
humans from animals, with regard to the representation of animals; so the cen-
tral question of the text is: “Can literature find a way to get beyond itself in
order to respond ethically to the animal?” (McKay 2010, 69).
Being unable to share the thoughts of “Everybody,” and also of God, at
least according to the interpretation offered by his religion, is the central point
of a story by another Nobel Prize-​winning writer, Isaac Bashevis Singer. The
short story, called The Slaughterer, was published in The New Yorker in 1967. It is
about Yoineh Heir, a man appointed against his will as “the ritual slaughterer”
of his religious community. Being very religious, he obeys, in the knowledge
that “A man may not be more compassionate than the Source of all compas-
sion.” Nonetheless, each killing causes him intense pain, as if he were cutting
his own throat. Then, he starts getting uncomfortable with bodies —​his own,
and other people’s. In the month of Elul, when the sacrifices become innumer-
able and “everybody offers a sacrificial fowl,” he dreams of killing a calf, which
200 Reframing carnism
becomes a girl who asks him for help. He becomes “obsessed” with all living
things, all insects, which he loves with an “unfamiliar love,” even flies, even mice.
Furthermore, he loves human beings less and less, including his daughters, who
overeat (meat) and become fat. In his progressive detachment from “Everybody,”
he detaches himself from God too, who, in the end, no longer seems so merciful
to him. He transfigures the landscape and sees blood flowing from the sky, and
parts of animals hanging from trees. Eventually, in despair, he commits suicide.
Isaac B. Singer was openly vegetarian and thus committed to the cause of
animals. In another short story, he wrote that “for the animals it is an eternal
Treblinka” (The Letter Writer, 1967). Nonetheless, literary critics often mar-
ginalize his vegetarian philosophy (Savvas 2018). Moreover, in The Slaughterer,
as in The Lives of Animals, the narrative focus is on the human protagonist
and his emotions, not on animals (Barrett 2014), and thus Singer’s story has
been analyzed for its ethical-​religious content (see Zatlin 1969) more than
as advocacy of animal rights. The theme of empathy, which the slaughterer
demonstrates through his ability to identify with the pain of “others,” is never-
theless its main element. Moreover, the story presents a crescendo. Violence
against animals is superimposed first on the main character (who suffers as if
the knife cut him), then on other human beings, and eventually on everything
around the slaughterer, even the trees and the river. The final images of dead
animals and their dismembered bodies on the trees, the blood-​stained river, and
the sky, display compassion for animal suffering not only through the emotions
of a single human being but the whole world.
David Foster Wallace takes a step further along the path of empathy, albeit
with a very different style, in Consider the Lobster. The essay, written in 2004, is
now considered a crucial contribution to posthumanism (Giles 2007; Kaiser
2014). As in Coetzee’s case, for Wallace writing the article was the result of a
specific circumstance, namely an invitation to participate at a food festival and
to write a review of it. The article (originally published in Gourmet magazine,
August 2004) was written in answer to a request from the magazine’s editorial
staff for Wallace to describe his experience at the Maine Lobster Festival of
2003. After describing the festival, he gets to a set of questions: “Is it all right
to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure? A related set of
concerns: Is the previous question irksomely PC or sentimental? What does ‘all
right’ even mean in this context? Is it all just a matter of individual choice?”
(Consider the Lobster, 2004, 243).7
Instead of just a review, Wallace wrote an essay, in which he not only
questions the ethics of boiling a creature alive to increase the pleasure of the
consumers but also tackles the issue of “Everybody,” or “group-​thinking,” as a
justifying strategy for carnism (boiling a sentient creature alive if the creature
is a lobster is “normal” and goes unquestioned by the festival’s organizers and
by its general audience). He also deals with the issue of differentiation between
animal species, which deserve respect from human beings. A dichotomy divides
cattle from lobsters, as at the Maine Lobster Festival it is possible to throw live
animals into the boiling water in front of a complacent audience, while it would
 Carnonormativity and its discontents 201
be unthinkable that at the “Nebraska Beef Festival […] part of the festivities
is watching trucks pull up and the live cattle get driven down the ramp and
slaughtered right there” (Consider the Lobster, 2004, 247).8
On this, he also adds a note, where he explains that the unease about eating
“higher animals” is shown up by linguistic euphemisms such as “beef ” and
“pork,” which can help to separate the meat from the living creature (we
would say to make the living creature an “absent referent”), while “lobster,”
“fish” and “chicken” are words used both for the animal and the meat. Then,
describing an encounter with a taxi driver called Dick, who explains that
lobsters do not have a brain like ours and do not feel pain, Wallace tackles one
more strategy of carnism, denial. Lastly, he explores the topic of the subjective
dimension of pain by looking into the lobster’s “experiential networks” (Kaiser
2014, 54). He demonstrates that, though different from that of mammals, the
lobster has “an exquisite tactile sense” and that the diversity of its sensory
system does not make the lobster any less capable of feeling pain. In fact, des-
pite the lobster’s inability to scream, you can recognize its pain, no matter what
subjective pain it is, from its “pathetic clinging to the edge of the pot” (Consider
the Lobster, 2004, 251).
Alongside “resistant” texts that oppose the dominant discourse frontally,
there are other literary texts that deserve to be remembered, because they open
a “fissure” against it, perhaps with a single sentence or a small paragraph. For
example, to quote texts mentioned in this book, in The Conduct of Life, Ralph
Waldo Emerson cites the remoteness of the slaughterhouse and the compli-
city of the meat-​eater; in The Dolphin People (2007, Torsten Krol), the author
brings the pain of the slaughtered horse to the page with violence, comparing
its scream to that of his dying mother. Truismes (1996, Marie Darrieussecq)
opens with a short sentence taken from Knut Hamsun’s Benoni that describes
the moment of a pig’s death. In the narrative, the sentence is inserted in the
slaughterhouse scene, where the narrator risks being slaughtered by her mother.
Benoni (1908) itself is a “fissure” novel because it is the story of a fisherman
who gets rich and of his love for a girl named Rosa. Although pigs are not the
protagonists, there is a highly dynamic scene that describes the “pig killing day”
in which the pig to be killed gradually becomes aware of what is happening,
first with amazement, then with anger and finally with impotence. “The hog
takes turns at grunting a little and stopping to listen for a bit. He blinks his
eyes and tries to understand what these humans are saying…Now the hog
has started shrieking; he has this rope around his shoulder which keeps him
following the dairymaid and her bowl. What’s the idea of these humans with
this rope? He shrieks with all his might …Then the hog is seized by the four
legs and hoisted on to the sledge. The men’s grip from sheer nervousness and
excitement is so needlessly adamantine and invincible, and the animal lies com-
pletely overpowered on the sledge… Then the knife goes in…At first the hog
doesn’t notice anything: he lies for a few seconds and thinks a bit. But then he
knows he has been killed and squeals out his stifled cries until he can do no
more” (Benoni, English translation 1925, 161–​163).
202 Reframing carnism
In the scene, together with the innocence of the hog, who does not under-
stand why he cannot follow the girl who feeds him every day and carries his
bowl in her hands, the imbalance of power is made very evident. The animal is
progressively “overpowered.” It is difficult not to feel empathy for him. When
reading a passage like this, one finds perhaps the answer to Elizabeth Costello’s
(and Coetzee’s) question about the power of writing.

12.4 “How can you watch that stuff?”… “I don’t know…

How can you eat it?”
The power of communication as a means of resistance lies at the heart of My
Year of Meats (1998), from which the section title is taken. The novel, written by
Ruth Ozeki, is somewhat autobiographical as the author, in the role of the main
character, is of American and Japanese origin, and started her career as a docu-
mentary filmmaker (Gersdorf 2010).This character is Jane Takagi-​Little, a young
American-​Japanese woman who has to shoot a series of documentaries about
meat. The series, titled My American Wife and intended for Japanese television, is
sponsored by a US meat exporter called BEEF EX, which wants to increase its
sales of meat to Japan. Each episode is supposed to represent a different American
wife cooking a different meat recipe for her family in front of the cameras.
According to the show’s producer, Joichi “John” Ueno, the families who should
represent America for the Japanese public must be all be middle-​class and white.
Instead, Jane chooses multi-​ethnic families and even a couple of vegetarian
lesbians. As her relationship with the production team becomes difficult, Jane
delves into the American meat production industry, from feedlots to industrial
slaughterhouses, and the consequences for the health of the most vulnerable
individuals of its most “unconventional” practices. She does a lot of filming, even
without authorization. The producer fires her, but using her images, which she
believes are much more powerful than words from a communicative point of
view, she becomes the producer of very hard-​hitting documentaries.
The novel covers many aspects of anthroparchy. The function of meat as a
metaphor for a woman’s body underlies the whole narrative, and is highlighted
by Akiko, the bulimic wife of “John” Ueno (she is too skinny and John, to make
the metaphor more explicit, asks her to “put on meat”). Akiko’s story develops
on the other side of the Pacific in parallel to Jane’s, and is a story of violence
(Akiko is beaten and raped by her husband), discovery and agency (inspired by
what she sees in Jane’s documentaries, Akiko flees Japan to reach the United
States). Meat is also the symbol of capitalism and the imposition of Western
values and forms of consumption on the rest of the world (Chiu 2001). In
addition to being a symbol and metaphor of man-​woman, and human-​animal
binarism, meat is also the means by which geographical binarism is linked with
them. As Ozeki writes: “Guns, race, meat, and Manifest Destiny all collided in
a single explosion of violent, dehumanized activity” (My Year of Meats, 1998)
The novel touches on many themes, including ethnicity, mixed ethnicity,
hybrid sexuality, the gendered reading of meat consumption (Chiu 2001;
 Carnonormativity and its discontents 203
Cheng 2009), the role of the meat industry in environmental transformation
and the conquest of the West in the US, food (and cultural) globalization, and
environmental justice. It also stigmatizes the role of the media in the promotion
of carnism and the feminization of those cooking for their families. Moreover,
it opens up a fundamental question about the role of visual documentation
in counteracting carnist discourse and, more generally, the role of images in
exposing the hidden truth behind appearances.
Despite the strong accusation launched at the US meat industry, the novel
does not directly support the veg*n cause.There is no blame for the multi-​ethnic
family that eats Thanksgiving turkey. Jane herself speaks in a somewhat elegiac
tone of her father’s family as small ranchers whose business has been swept away
by factory farming. It is not even a text where animals take a leading role. On the
contrary, they stay in the background, deindividualized, and objectified.
More than a pro-​animal novel, My Year of Meats is a text that attacks the meat
industry and its practices. It is of interest, though, that Ruth Ozeki emphasizes
the value of visual evidence. Jane can tell readers what she saw, which happens
in the literary form within the novel, but she is obsessed with a visual record.
She believes that only by showing what she recorded on video is it possible
to weaken the power of the “denial” that helps people to live according to
the “collective norm” (that is, according to the power of “Everybody”). Her
meat video is “disturbing,” as one of the character comments, but also “very
important.” Hence, the line that gives the title to this section.

12.5 Back to the visual

The question is a recurring one: how is it possible to watch such stuff? More
generally, does the video material collected by activists to denounce the meat
industry’s abominations help the cause, or is it too distressing and, therefore,
cannot be seen by the majority of viewers? (Tiplady, Walsh, & Phillips 2013,
2015). The role of the disturbing visual material is evident, not only to the
fictional character who asks Jane Takashi-​Little how she can watch it, but
also to many environmentalists and many human rights activists. A famous
saying attributed to Linda McCartney goes, “If slaughterhouses had glass walls,
everyone would be a vegetarian.”
Visual footage helps to overcome the sometimes invisible but efficient bound-
aries that surround intensive livestock and meat production facilities (Pick 2016;
Marcus 2018). A first film on the subject, silent and now lost, was based on the
novel The Jungle in 1914. Several visual products representing the slaughter
and death of animals were later produced for different purposes. In 1949, the
French director Georges Franju directed a short documentary entitled Le Sang
des bêtes (Blood of the Beasts). In black and white, the documentary represents
the slaughter of four types of different animals (horses, bulls, calves, and sheep).
An emotionless voice comments on what happens, while the killing is “highly
systematic, rationalized, and professionalized” (Pick 2011, 136). Interpretation is
left entirely to the viewer, who may be horrified by the atrocity of the scenes
204 Reframing carnism
or fascinated by the aesthetic quality of the images (Sloniowski 1998). Many
of the films that later showed images of slaughterhouses owe something to Le
sang des bêtes’ visual approach (Pick 2011): from Meat (1976), a short film by
Frederik Wiseman, also in black and white, to Richard Linklater’s Fast Food
Nation (2006).
A more comprehensive overview, listing all the uses and abuses of animals by
humans in a succession of highly disturbing images, is proposed by The Animals
Film (1981), by Victor Schonfeld and Myriam Alaux.The movie is described by
Pick (2016, 97) as “a suffocating compilation of animals’ subjection to violent
economies of domination and exploitation.” About 25 years later, Earthlings
(2005, Shaun Monson) adopted the same strategy, when we are once again
placed in front of a “graphic exposure of human violence against nonhuman
animals” (Pick 2013, 28).
In the new century, the production of documentaries and docu-​fiction
films related to the topic of animal welfare has become increasingly abun-
dant, thanks to the activism of organizations such as PETA (People for the
Ethical Treatment of Animals) and Mercy for Animals, and the commitment
of celebrities from the worlds of showbusiness and cinema, such as Paul
McCartney, and Joaquin Phoenix. There are films produced by animal welfare
organizations, footage shot undercover by animal rights activists, and animal
rights documentaries. Besides visual works that document the reality of the
meat industry and the cruelty of animal slaughter (Glass Walls, 2009; Dominion,
2018), there are documentaries and short films about the unfair treatment of
animals in farm factories (Meet Your Meat, 2002; Speciesism: The Movie, 2013),
films denouncing the environmental impact of animal-​based food products
(Food Inc., 2008; Cowspiracy, 2014), and also movies that make the effort to
demonstrate the benefits of veg*n nutrition and the dangerous consequences
of meat-​eating (Peaceable Kingdom, 2004; Planeat, 2010; Forks Over Knives, 2011;
Vegucated, 2011; Live and Let Live, 2013; What the Health, 2017; The Game
Changer, 2018). They are distributed using both traditional and new media,
increasingly convergent media platforms, and the internet. There are also
fiction movies like Fast Food Nation (2006), inspired by the book: the film
narrates the working life of a fictional character, Don Anderson, the marketing
director of a hamburger chain. He travels through Colorado to verify product
quality at slaughterhouses and discovers, among other things, the tragic events
of the illegal immigrants working there.
Many of these films are just interviews edited together. Others are a com-
pilation of video footage created by industries that exploit animals for internal
use, which is then smuggled outside to the public, or is footage made by activists
in undercover operations. They work as a “reverse panopticon” (Freeman and
Tulloch 2013, 112) because they invert the power of the gaze: thanks to the
action of organizations and activists from below, these films reveal what is
hidden behind the walls of all the powerful entities that, in one way or another,
exploit animals (entertainment activities like circuses and zoos, pharmaceutical
laboratories, CAFOs and slaughterhouses).
 Carnonormativity and its discontents 205
Earthlings aims to create a biocentric vision of a world to which all animal
species belong. Other films concentrate more on human health and veganism
and may therefore display a certain degree of anthropocentrism (Pick 2016).
Furthermore, with their focus on factory farming, they sometimes fall into
the dichotomization between what should not be eaten (intensively farmed
animals) and what it is right and fair to eat (traditional extensive farming)
(Arcari 2017). Even so, they are all committed to breaking down the hegemonic
discourse on meat. Undercover footage, whether available on the internet or
edited in a documentary, proves an essential tool for the advocacy of animal
welfare (Arcari 2020). Although these films are sometimes a “collage of atro-
cities” that can upset more sensitive viewers (Tiplady, Walsh and Phillips 2015;
Marcus 2018), they can have a significant effect on their audience: according to
an online survey conducted in 2013, to which about 7000 people responded,
42% of those who decided to become vegan did so after seeing an educational
video or film.9

Notes
1 www.lastampa.it/​spettacoli/​2013/​05/​13/​news/​una-​g rande-​abbuffata-​1.36093343
2 www.movietickets.com/​ m ovie/​ l a-​ g rande-​ b ouffe/ ​ 8 9d4494a- ​ 1 e6c- ​ 3 0f5- ​ 8 fd0-​
2782e905ba34/​reviews/​audience
3 www.independent.co.uk/​ a rts-​ e ntertainment/​ t v/ ​ c arnage- ​ review- ​ b bc- ​ i player-​
simon-​amstell-​vegan-​comedy-​actually-​funny-​a7636871.html
4 www.boxofficemojo.com/​title/​tt0112431/​?ref_​=bo_​se_​r_​1
5 www.encyclopedia.chicagohistory.org/​pages/​679.html
6 Excerpts from The Lives of Animals (1999, 69), John Maxwell Coetzee, Princeton
University Press.
7 Excerpt from Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, copyright © 2005.
Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette
Book Group, Inc. .
8 Excerpt from Consider the Lobster by David Foster Wallace, copyright © 2005.
Reprinted by permission of Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette
Book Group, Inc.
9 https://​faunalytics.org/​survey-​of-​vegans-​2013-​the-​results/​#

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Index

28 Days Later 85, 116 narratives 7, 72, 79; evolutionary

28 Weeks Later 116 theory and 35–​36, 134; as illusion of
grandeur 32; nature as resource 2, 5,
Ablest Man in the World 119 30, 31, 38–​39; as Western characteristic
According to Jim 181 31; Western resistance to 33–​36, 87–​94,
“Adam, One Afternoon” 173–​174 see also environmental ethics
After Earth 98 anthropomorphism, limitations of
After London 73 193–​194
A.I. 74, 121 apocalypse: as cautionary tale 70;
Alaux, Myriam 204 environmental metaphor par excellence
Aldrovandi, Ulisse 154 6, 75; see also post-​apocalyptic
Alexie, Sherman 104 narratives
Alien 99, 120 Arbor Day movement 38
Allen, Woody 71 Aristotle 31
Amazonian forest 155, 156 Ashley-​Cooper, Anthony 135
American Anti-​Vivisection Society Asimov, Isaac 73, 119
(AAVS) 136 Askins, Byron 103
American Meat Institute 171 Asterix 181
American Society for the Prevention of Atwood, Margaret 71, 101, 118,
Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) 136 173, 181
American Tail: Fievel Goes West 184 audience research methods 62–​63
Amstell, Simon 192 Axel, Gabriel 173
Anderson, Michael 80
androids 100, 119–​122 Babe 193
angels 153 Babette’s Feast 173
“animal autobiography” 137 Baldwin, Alec 204
animal geographies 46 Ballard, J.G. 74, 79, 82, 83, 84–​85, 90–​92
Animal Liberation 32 Balto 128
Animals Film 204 Barrett, Elizabeth 139–​140
Animal’s People 144–​147 Battersea Dogs’ Home 134
anthroparchy 43, 178, 191, 192, 194, 202 Bean, Charlie 132
Anthropocene 37, 93 Beautiful Joe: An Autobiography 131, 137,
anthropocentrism: in “animal 195–​196
autobiographies” 137; carnism Beethoven 128
and 7; Christianity and 31–​32; in Bennett, Arnold 180–​181
conservationism 33, 37, 39; in critical Benoni 159, 201–​202
geopolitics 46; definition of 30–​31; Bentham, Jeremy 34
dogs and 126, 130, 133, 138, 140, Bergh, Henry 136
146; dominance of 33; in dystopian Beverly Hills Chihuahua 128
210 Index
Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle species dichotomy 168, 169–​170,
Culture 197 186–​187, 193, 195, 197; “good” vs.
Bhopal Gas Tragedy 144, 146 “bad” farming 3, 168, 186, 196,
Bible 72, 153 197–​198, 205; “meat paradox” 170;
bigotry 23 news media 172; normalized by
biocentrism 39–​42, 87, 88, 112, 117, 205 popular culture 165, 167, 172–​173;
bison, near extinction of 182, 191 normalized by TV cooking shows
Black Beauty 137 184–​187; objectification of animals
Black Mirror 75 167–​168; sacrificial offerings 168–​169;
Blade Runner franchise 74, 80, 82, 83, 97, slaughterhouses, distancing of 169,
100, 119, 121, 122, 128 170–​171, 201; Three Ns of Justification
Blixen, Karen 173 167; tool to examine human–​
Blomkamp, Neill 83 nonhuman relationships 6; see also
Bluck, Nigel 58 carnonormativity; meat, gendering of;
Blues Brothers 184 vegans and vegetarians
Bolokitten, Oliver 73 carnonormativity: animal protagonist
Book of Eli 79, 81, 99 films 192–​194; communication as
Bosch, Hieronymus 153 resistance 202–​203; definition of 191;
Boulle, Pierre 113 dominant film discourse, fissures in
Boyle, Danny 85, 116 194–​195; dominant literary discourse,
Bradbury, Ray 73 fissures in 201–​202; empathy as
Bradley, Mary E. 174 resistance 198–​202; investigative
Brahmanism 34 journalism 196–​198; resistant films
Brave New World 73, 80, 84, 97, 117 191–​194; resistant literature 195–​201;
Brooks, Max 116 visual images, resistant power of
Brown, Clarence 180 203–​205
Brown Dog 136 Carpenter, John 99
Browning, Robert 133, 135, 137, 140 Carroll, Lewis 135, 136
Buddhism 34, 41 Carter, Forrest 53
Buffalo Bill 183 Cattle Drive 183
Burka Avenger 1, 2 cattle farming as environmental threat 6
Burnett, Leo 171, 180 Chandler, Izora C. 137
Burning World 85 Charlotte’s Web 193
Butcher (novel)181 Chicken Run 193, 194
Butcher (TV show) 186 Children of Men 83, 98
Butler, David 194 Chorographia 153
Butler, Samuel 73 Christianity 31–​32, 34, 36
By the Light of the Silvery Moon 194 Christmas Twister 74
Byron, Lord, George Gordon 72 Chrysalids 73
cinema, ideology and 190
Caidin, Martin 120 Circle 75
Call of the Wild 131, 133, 139 cli-​fi 74–​75
Calvino, Italo 173–​174 Clockwork Man 119
Cameron, James 75, 121 Clynes, Manfred 119
Canticle for Leibowitz 73 Cobbe, Frances Power 135, 136–​137
Caracci, Agostino 154 Coetzee, J.M. 198–​199
Carnage: Swallowing the Past 192 Collins, Suzanne 1
carnism: abstraction of “meat” 167–​168, Collins, Wilkie 138
169, 184, 201; advertising 171–​172; colonialism 103–​105
“common sense” justification 166–​167, Colony 71, 80, 81, 83
168, 172, 199, 200; deindividualization common sense 166
of animals 168, 196, 197, 203; denial concentrated animal feeding operations
168, 169, 201, 203; edible vs. inedible (CAFO) 172, 204
 Index 211
Conduct of Life 201 Divine Comedy 153
Confessions of a Lost Dog 137 Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Consciousness of Dogs 137 83, 119
conservationism: anthropocentric Dog of Flanders 141–​144
tendencies 33, 37; in dystopian dogs: “animal autobiography” and 137;
narratives 6–​7; emergence of in US breeds of 127, 128–​129; cyborgs
36–​38; preservationism vs. 38–​39; and 126; friendship with 141–​144;
utilitarian 38–​39, 40 “good dog” formula 129–​133;
Consider the Lobster 200–​201 imagining Umwelt of 139–​141, 145;
Cowspiracy 204 omnipresence in popular culture
consumerism: anthroparchy and 127–​129; posthumanism and 138, 140,
194; in dystopias 3, 7, 84, 86; meat 142, 145–​147; servitude in real-​life
consumption and 191; Thoreau’s praxis 126–​127; theft for ransom 134,
criticism of 35; zombies and 116 139; vivisection and 133–​139; women,
Cooper, James Fenimore 37 comparisons with 133, 140
Corbett, Elizabeth Burgoyne 174 Dog’s Purpose 132
Cowboys 183 Dog’s Tale 137
Crichton, Michael 121 Dogs Whom I Have Met 136–​137
critical geopolitics: anthropocentrism Dolphin People 155–​157, 158, 201
of 46; convergence with ecocriticism Dominion 204
25; deconstructing geopolitical Drought 74, 85
discourse 21–​22; definition of 4, 21; Drowned World 74, 79, 90–​92, 93
formal geopolitics 22; Hunger Games Drowning Towers 82
and 4–​5; practical geopolitics 22; see dystopian narratives: anthropocentric
also ecocritical geopolitics; popular tendencies 72; anti-​capitalist 83–​84;
geopolitics biologically enhanced humans
Cuarón, Alfonso 83 117–​118; borderscapes in 81–​83;
Cujo 128 as cautionary tales 70; definition of
Cyborg 120 70–​71; genres of 72; “green place”
cyborgs 100, 102, 112, 113, 119–​122, fantasies in 79–​81, 97, 102, 158, 160;
154 heroic male agent 97; mainstream
conservationist attitudes in 6–​7;
Dante 153 origins of 72–​73; settings in 78–​79;
Darkness 72 technological fears 75; twentieth-​
Darrieussecq, Marie 158, 160 century success of 73; urban spatial
Darwin, Charles 35–​36, 134, 135, 137 hierarchy in 82; wastelands in 83–​85;
Dawn of the Dead 116 women as exploited resource 101;
Day After Tomorrow 74, 97 see also post-​apocalyptic narratives
de Grainville, Jean-​Baptiste Cousin 72
De monstris 153 Earth Abides 88–​90, 93, 97, 99, 104,
deep ecology 41–​42, 43 113, 128
del Toro, Guillermo 155, 158 Earthlings 204, 205
Dernier Homme 72 Eastwood, Clint 53–​54, 183
Derrida, Jacques 178 Eating Animals 197–​198
Descartes, René 31 ecocentrism 40–​41, 44, 54, 79, 88
Devlin, Dean 74 ecocritical geopolitics: audience analysis
Dick, Philip K. 75, 83, 119 61–​63; compositional analysis 57–​58;
Dickens, Charles 136 content analysis 55, 58; definition of
discourse: critical geopolitics and 21, 166; 25; discourse analysis 55, 60–​61; genre
common sense and 166; definition of analysis 56–​57; landscape, concept
2, 21, 30, 60; discourse analysis 55, of 59–​60, 78, 87; landscape analysis
60–​61; regimes of truth 21, 60, 61 57–​58; message analysis 53; narrative
Divergent series 1, 72, 102 structure analysis 56; place, concept
212 Index
of 59; setting, concept of 78; territory, Flush: A Biography 128, 139–​141, 143
concept of 59, 60 Foer, Jonathan Safran 197
ecocriticism: convergence with critical Food Inc. 204
geopolitics 25; cross-​fertilizations and For the Love of Meat 186
24; definition of 23–​24; naming of Ford, John 57
23–​24; popular culture, expansion Forks Over Knives 204
into 24–​25; thematic vs. systemic Fortunius Licetus 153
approaches 25; see also ecocritical Foster, Marc 116
geopolitics Foucault, Michel 2, 19, 20, 21, 30, 55,
ecofeminism 4, 33; carnism and 199; 60, 166
connecting forms of oppression 199; Francis of Assisi 34
dystopia and 72; environmentalism, Franju, Georges 203
critique of 42–​44; Handmaid’s Tale Frankenstein 173
and 101; Hunger Games and 4–​5; Mad Franklin, Chester M. 131
Max and 102; posthumanism and 7, Friends 174, 175
24; spatial dualism and 45; teenage
heroines and 1–​2, 74 Game Changer 204
Edible Woman 181 Garibaldi, Giuseppe 135
Eggers, Dave 75 Gattaca 117–​118
Elysium 83, 98 genetic engineering 117–​118
Emerson, Ralph Waldo 35, 170, 201 geography: animal geographies 46;
Emmerich, Roland 74, 97, 99 cartographical reason 20, 32, 45;
Empedocles 33 dualisms 45, 59, 112; etymology of 19;
environment, popular culture as instrument of power 19; landscape,
construction of: context of action 3; concept of 59–​60; normalizing effects
dualistic vs. multipolar 2, 86; genre of 20; place, concept of 59; as power
3, 53; hegemonic representation 4; 19–​20; spatialization of difference
message vs. discourse 53; point of view 44–​45; territory, concept of 59, 60
3; posthuman approach 3; taken-​for-​ George, Chief Dan 53
granted world of author 3, 53 Geostorm 74
environmental discourse: definition of 29; Giant 194
dualisms 30; exploitation vs. idealism Gilgamesh 72
30; mastery vs. harmony 30 Gilman, Charlotte Perkins 127
environmental ethics: biocentrism and Gipson, Fred 130
ecocentrism 40–​41; deep ecology Ghosts from Mars 99
41–​42; definition of 39–​40; racism in Glass Walls 204
42–​43; sexism in 42–​44 Gramsci, Antonio 166
environmental justice 5; in dystopian Grande Bouffe 191–​192
narratives 7, 70, 72, 74, 83; Gulliver’s Travels 72–​73, 97
neoliberalism and 144–​145; production Guttuso, Renato 173
for space 44 Gypsy, the Mongrel 129, 141
Erewhon 73
Hallström, Lasse 132
Fahrenheit 451 73, 97 Hamsun, Knut 158, 159, 201
Fallout 79 Handmaid’s Tale 71, 101
Fast Food Nation 197, 204 Happy Feet 2 184
fear: representation of 69–​70; socialized Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle 173
nature of 69; see also dystopian Harrison, Harry 74
narratives; post-​apocalyptic narratives Harry Potter saga 1, 11, 154–​155
Feirstein, Bruce 180 Hawks, Howard 183
Ferreri, Marco 191 Heart and Science: A Story of the Present
Fire 74 Time 138
Fleischer, Richard 74 Hector, My Dog 137
 Index 213
Heidegger, Martin 41 Kill It, Cook It, Eat It 186
Her 100 King, Steven 128
heroic male agent 97–​99; fatherhood role King-​Smith, Dick 193
97–​98; green father trope 98; Judeo-​ Kline, Nathan 119
Christian messianic hero 97; magical Knight, Eric 128
negro 98; white savior 98–​99 Kommissar Rex 128
heroines 99–​103; Amazonian 99; Krol, Torsten 155, 201
beauty of 103; cyborg women Kropotkin, Peter 45
102; exploited as “resources” 101;
feminized androids 100; rebels Lady and the Tramp 128, 132
against patriarchy 102; relegated to Landis, John 184
supporting roles 100; teenage 1–​2, 74, landscape see ecocritical geopolitics
102; whiteness of 103 Landscapes of Fear 69
Herzen, Alexander 135 Lang, Fritz 82
heteronormativity 23, 97 Lassie 128
Hidaka, Shiken 143 Last Man 72, 87–​88
High Rise 82 Last Man on Earth 115, 116
Hillcoat, John 92 Last of Us 98, 116, 117
Hiroshima 73 Lawrence, Francis 116
Hoggan, George 135, 136 Lee,Vernon 135
Holgate, Jerome B. 73 Legally Blonde 174
Homer 33, 127, 152 Leiner, Danny 173
Hughes Brothers 79 Leopold, Aldo 33, 39, 40
Hume, David 34 Level 7 73
Hunger Games 1–​2, 4–​5, 72, 80, 83, 102 Liber monstrorum de diversis generibus 153
hunting 40–​41 Lind-​af-​Hageby, Lizzy 136
Huxley, Aldous 73, 117 Linklater, Richard 204
Linnaeus, Carl 111–​112
I, Robot 99, 119 Little Red Riding Hood 70
I Am Legend 99, 115, 116, 128 Live and Let Live 204
Idiocracy 71, 85–​86, 98 Lives of Animals 198–​199, 200
Il giorno 129 Logan’s Run 80, 97
In Time 82–​83, 118 London, Jack 79, 131, 139
Independence Day 99 Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in
indigenous writers 104–​105 Heaven 104
Inhumane Humanity 136 Lord, Peter 193
International Relations 47 Lost City Raiders 74
Interstellar 74 Luketic, Robert 174
invasion fiction 103–​105; as allegory of
colonialism 103–​104 MacDougall, Ranald 85
Iron Heel 79, 80 Mad Max franchise 58, 74, 81, 97, 100,
102, 113, 120, 128
Jefferies, Richard 73 MaddAddam trilogy 118
Johnson, George Clayton 80 Make Room, Make Room! 74
Jonze, Spike 100 Mantegazza, Paolo 135
Joon-​ho, Bong 74, 193 Marsh, George Perkins 37–​38
Judaism 34, 36 Masks 120
Judge, Mike 71 MasterChef 185
Jungle 196, 197, 203 Matheson, Richard 115, 116
McCarthy, Cormac 75, 92–​94
K-​9 128 McCartney, Linda 203
Kafka, Franz 158 McCartney, Paul 204
Kennel Club 128, 134 McG (Joseph McGinty Nichol) 122
214 Index
McTeigue, James 75 60, 79, 86, 98, 126, 130, 157, 160;
Meat 204 nostalgia for 183; see also wilderness
meat, gendering of: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind 79
carnophallogocentrism 178; cooking neoliberalism 116, 144
shows, male-​dominated 185; female netnography 55, 62, 63
body as meat 179, 181, 202; hunting Neumann, Kurt 183
and aristocracy 179; hunting New Amazonia: A Foretaste of the
and colonialism 179; hunting, Future 174
contemporary 179; hunting vs. Niccol, Andrew 82, 117, 118
gathering 178–​179; killing as rite of Night of the Living Dead 115
passage 180; media stereotypes Nineteen Eighty-​Four 73
180–​181; sexual desire 180–​181, Nolan, Christopher 74
191–​192; in Westerns 181–​184 Nolan, William Francis 80
Meat the Family 186 Noonan, Chris 193
medieval fairytales 70 NYC: Tornado Terror 74
Meet Your Meat 204
Men in Black 99 Odle, Edwin Vincent 119
Mercy for Animals 204 Ogilvie, George 100
Metropolis 82, 84, 100, 119 Okja 193
Miller, George 74, 100, 128 Old Yeller 130
Miller, Tim 122 Omega Man 116
Miller, Walter 73 On the Eating of Flesh 165, 184
Minority Report 75 One Hundred and One Dalmatians 128
Mitchell, Edward Page 119 Orwell, George 73
Mizora 174 Oryx and Crake 118, 173
Monde tel qu’il sera 73 O’Shaughnessy Dam 38, 59
monsters: in antiquity 152–​153; body Ouida 132–​133, 137, 141–​144
instability 154–​155; in children’s Outlaw Josey Wiles 53–​54, 56
literature 154; definition of 152; early Ozeki, Ruth 202
modern 153–​154; human–​animal
metamorphosis 158–​160; hybridity Pale Rider 183
152–​153, 154, 158, 159; medieval Parini, Giuseppe 129
153; nineteenth-​century 154; Park, Nick 193
posthumanism and 154–​155, 158; patriarchy: anthroparchy and 190, 194;
as violation of order 152–​153, 154, carnism and 178; cinematic ideology
155–​157 and 190; culture as masculine 43; dog–​
Monstrorum historia 154 human relations and 127, 140, 143;
Moon of the Crusted Snow 105 hierarchy and 46, 54; industrial system
Mostow, Jonathan 122 and 5; Mad Max and 102; nature as
Muir, John 33, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 59, feminine 43, 101; in popular culture
130–​131 discourses 23; sci-​fi challenges to 99;
My Year of Meats 202–​203 Handmaid’s Tale and 101; Truismes
Mysteries of Paris 61 and 158
Peaceable Kingdom 204
Naess, Arne 41 Pebble in the Sky 73
National Parks movement 36, 39 People for the Ethical Treatment of
Native Americans, genocide of 182, 191 Animals (PETA) 204
Natural History (Pliny) 153 Phelps, Elizabeth Stuart 133, 138, 139
nature: “authentic” representatives of Phoenix, Joaquin 195, 204
98; dogs and 132; environment as Pinchot, Gifford 38–​39, 59
territorial shape of 60; erasure of Planeat 204
humans by 87, 90; gendering of 43, 57, Planète des singes 113
98, 100, 101; nature/​culture dichotomy Pliny the Elder 153
 Index 215
Plutarch 33, 165–​166, 167, 168, 184 Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche 180
Pocahontas 129 Reclus, Élisée 45, 165, 166, 174, 199
Pomponius Mela 153 Red Meat 173
Popeye the Sailor 194 Red River 183
popular geopolitics: definition of 4, 23; Remington, Frederic 183
ecocritical geopolitics, theoretical Resident Evil 99
reference for 55; everyday material for Revenant 57
analysis 61; message vs. discourse 29; rewilding 87
visual media focus of 23 Reyes, Alina 181
Porphyry 34 Reynolds, Kevin 74
post-​apocalyptic narratives:anti-​capitalist/​ Riboli, Timoteo 135
anti-​consumerist 85–​86, 93, 116; Rice, Waubgeshig 105
borders, disappearance of 81; climate Riceyman Steps 180–​181
fears 74–​75; colonialism and 104; Rifkin, Jeremy 197
content analysis of 58; definition of Rin Tin Tin 128, 131
71; epidemics 76, 87–​90, 115–​117; Road 75, 79, 85, 92–​94, 97, 128, 144
excessive recourse to 75–​76; genres of Robinson Crusoe 57, 97
72; “green place” fantasies in 81, 102; RoboCop 120
heroic male agent 97–​98; Malthusian Romero, George H. 115, 116
anxieties 74; nuclear apocalypse 73, 76; Roseanne 174
origins of 72; posthuman landscapes Roshwald, Mordecai 73
in 87–​94; post-​sapiens future 113–​114; Rossetti, Christina 137
settings in 79; trans-​mediality of 75; Rosson, Arthur 183
twentieth-​century success of 73–​74; Rowling, J.K. 154
wastelands in 85; zombies 115–​117; Ruskin, John 136
see also dystopian narratives Russell, Charles M. 183
posthumanism 4; biologically enhanced Rydell, Mark 183
humans 117–​118; dogs and 138,
140, 142, 145–​147; epidemics and Sable and White 137
115–​117; Eurocentricity of humanism Sagal, Boris 116
112; evolution and 114; monsters and Said, Edward 45
154–​155; pigs and 158; Posthuman Salkow, Sidney 115
International Relations 47; posthuman Sang des bêtes 203–​204
landscapes 87–​94; post-​human vs. Saunders, Margaret Marshall 131,
posthuman 111–​112, 113; sci-​fi as 137, 195
medium for 113; technologically Schartau, Leisa Katherina 136
enhanced humans 119–​122; tool to Schiff, Moritz 135
examine dualisms 6, 44, 112, 113; Schlöndorff,Volker 71, 101
transhumanism 111, 112, 113, 118, 119, Schlosser, Eric 197
122; as umbrella term 111; zombies Schonfeld,Victor 204
115–​117 Schopenhauer, Arthur 34–​35, 126–​127
poststructuralism 2, 42 sci-​fi 74, 99, 103, 105, 113, 119; see also
Potere 191, 192 invasion fiction
preservationism 38–​39 Scott, Ridley 74, 99, 120
pre-​Socratic philosophers 33 Sea and Summer 82
Puck 132–​133, 137 Segonzac, Jean de 74
Pure Food and Drug Act 196 sentiment analysis 63
Pythagoreans 33, 165 serial novels 61–​62
Serpico 128
Ragona, Ubaldo 115 Sewell, Anne 137
Ramé, Maria Louise see Ouida Shambles of Science 136
Rawhide 183–​184 Shane 183
Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan 180 Shape of Water 155, 157–​158
216 Index
Sharknado 75, 100 Terminator franchise 75, 80, 119, 120,
Shaw, George Bernand 136, 138 121–​122
Sheep-​Pig 193 Testaments 101
Shelley, Mary 72, 87–​88, 166, 173 Theocritus 181
Shelley, Percy Bysshe 166, 184 Thomson, William 135
Shrek 2 184 Thoreau, Henry David 5, 33, 35–37, 40
Shyamalan, M. Night 69, 98 Three Little Pigs (Disney) 194
Simpsons 174–​175 Three of Us. Barney. Cossack. Rex 137
Sinclair, Upton 196, 197 Thunberg, Greta 1, 2
Singer, Isaac Bashevis 199–​200 Time Machine 73, 114, 118
Singer, Peter 32, 198 Tiomkin, Dimitri 183
Sinha, Indra 144, 145 Tom and Gerry 61
Six Million Dollar Man 120 Tomb Raider 99
Slaughterer 199–​200 Tray 133–​134, 137
Sleeper 71 Tretti, Augusto 191, 192
Snowpiercer 74, 82, 98 Triple Portrait of Arrigo, Pedro and
Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Amon 154
Animals (SPCA) 134 Trixy 133–​134, 138, 139
Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation 73 True Detective 58
Some Popular Fallacies about Vivisection 136 Truismes 158–​160, 181, 201
Song of Myself 173 Tuan,Yi-​Fu 46, 69
South Park 174 Turner, George 82
Souvestre, Émile 73 Turner and Hooch 128
Soylent Green 74, 97 Twain, Mark 137
speciesism: aliens and 194; binarism of
182; definition of 32; dogs and 126, Uglies 80, 102, 118
130, 133; dominance of 33; ideological
analysis and 191; Spinoza and 34; V for Vendetta 75
vivisection and 133 vampires 115, 153, 154
Speciesism: The Movie 204 Vegan Geographies Collective 46
Spielberg, Steven 74, 75, 97–​98, vegans and vegetarians 167, 172,
103, 121 173–​175, 192, 193, 198, 203, 204, 205;
Spinoza, Baruch 34, 41 celebrity vegans 195; gendering of
Stables, William Gordon 137 174–​175
Star Trek 119, 120 Vegucated 204
Star Wars franchise 1, 120 Verhoeven, Paul 120
Stevens, George, 183, 194 Verne, Jules 97
Stewart, George R. 74, 88, 93 Victoria Street Society 135
Stickeen 130–​131 Vikings 181
Stoics 31 Village 69
Storm 74 Vindication of Natural Diet 166, 184
Subliminal Man 84–​85 Virginian 183
Sue, Eugène 61 vivisection 133–​139
Sullivan, Peter 74 Vivisection as a Sign of the Times 136
Swift, Jonathan 72–​73 von Uexküll, Jakob Johann 46, 140–​141
Vucciria 173
Takacs, Tibor 74
Talalay, Rachel 74 Walking Dead 58, 62, 85, 98, 99, 100, 103,
Tank Girl 74 116, 117, 128, 144
Tarzan 60, 61 Wallace, David Foster 200–​201
Taylor, Alan 122 Wall-​E 85, 86, 98
Tennyson, Alfred 135 War of the Worlds 73, 97–​98, 103–​104, 194
Tequila and Bonetti 128 Washington, Ned 183
 Index 217
Waterworld 74, 81 Wild West Show 182, 183
We 73, 80 wilderness: deconstruction of concept 42;
Webb, Millard 131 gender politics of 42–​43; humanized
Welles, Orson 103 space vs. 5, 57, 58
Wells, H.G. 71, 72, 73, 82, 84, 97, Wind From Nowhere 74
103–​104, 114, 118, 127, 133, 139, 194 Winter, Anna 135
werewolves 153, 154, 155, 159 Wiseman, Frederik 204
Western movies 3, 53–​54, 56–​57, 58, Wister, Owen 183
181–​184 Woolf,Virginia 128–​129, 139–​141,
Westphalian system 22 143, 145
Westworld 121 World, the Flesh and the Devil 85, 98–​99
What the Health 204 World War Z 104, 116
Wheatley, Ben 82 Wyndham, John 73
When the Sleeper Wakes 71, 73, 81–​82,
83–​84 Yearling 180
Where the North Begins 131 Young, Egerton Ryerson 137
White, E.B. 193 Yousafzai, Malala 1, 2
White Fang 131
White Lines 175 Zamyatin,Yevgeny 73
Whitman, Walt 173 zombies 115–​117