Horror and the Posthuman

“Horror and the Posthuman” offers a reading of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) alongside a reading of critical animal studies that considers nonhumans as capable of not only being the object of ethical practice but also as the subject, as beings that initiate ethical encounters, thereby i...

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Main Author: Janie Hinds
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Humanimalia 2020-03-01
Series:Humanimalia
Online Access:https://humanimalia.org/article/view/9452
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author Janie Hinds
author_facet Janie Hinds
author_sort Janie Hinds
collection DOAJ
description “Horror and the Posthuman” offers a reading of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) alongside a reading of critical animal studies that considers nonhumans as capable of not only being the object of ethical practice but also as the subject, as beings that initiate ethical encounters, thereby inhabiting and co-creating a moral world.  The gothic extremes in Pym, often accompanied by animals produce an ethical point of view which creates, for both the title character and the reader, the nauseating unsettling of “the human” that accompanies horror.  The nonhuman animal  presence in this novel works, further, to unsettle the foundational expectations of narrative, thus providing a model for the decentering of the human and the humanism subtending its era.
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spelling doaj.art-84a898d2a3bf4348acca6419bbf67fbd2023-10-18T08:38:34ZengHumanimaliaHumanimalia2151-86452020-03-0111210.52537/humanimalia.9452Horror and the PosthumanJanie Hinds0SUNY Brockport “Horror and the Posthuman” offers a reading of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1838) alongside a reading of critical animal studies that considers nonhumans as capable of not only being the object of ethical practice but also as the subject, as beings that initiate ethical encounters, thereby inhabiting and co-creating a moral world.  The gothic extremes in Pym, often accompanied by animals produce an ethical point of view which creates, for both the title character and the reader, the nauseating unsettling of “the human” that accompanies horror.  The nonhuman animal  presence in this novel works, further, to unsettle the foundational expectations of narrative, thus providing a model for the decentering of the human and the humanism subtending its era. https://humanimalia.org/article/view/9452
spellingShingle Janie Hinds
Horror and the Posthuman
Humanimalia
title Horror and the Posthuman
title_full Horror and the Posthuman
title_fullStr Horror and the Posthuman
title_full_unstemmed Horror and the Posthuman
title_short Horror and the Posthuman
title_sort horror and the posthuman
url https://humanimalia.org/article/view/9452
work_keys_str_mv AT janiehinds horrorandtheposthuman