The Politics Of The Animal: A Cultural Critique Of The Postcolonial Animal Representation In Novels From The White Bone To The White Tiger

The "animal turn" in the research of Western humanities and social sciences in the 1980s has brought about a breakthrough in the literary studies. Researchers have been probing animal images with a range of critical theories. However, the study of animal representation from the postcolonial perspective has just emerged in the West, and no systematic or theoretical research has been conducted. In China, no researcher focuses on the analysis of the postcolonial animal representation hitherto.Since the publication of Orientalism by Edward Said, as a critical theory, postcolonialism has undergone remarkable development. However, postcolonial critics have been, and remain resolutely human-centred. They neglect the vital role that animal imagery plays in the practices of colonialists and imperialists, colonial writing and the construction of colonial discourse, and further fail to discern its positive role in the construction of anti-colonial discourse and the decolonization of the mind in the postcolonial contexts. Through close reading, this dissertation aims to make some tentative explorations into the theoretical construction and analytical strategies in terms of animal studies with postcolonial critical approach.In their material and discursive practices, colonialists and imperialists are inextricably linked to the animal. Politically and militarily, in demonstrating their colonial power by hunting ferocious animals, colonialists aim to make preparations for or consolidate their political domination and military conquest. Culturally, based on Eurocentrism and racism, colonialists and colonialist writers attempt to accomplish cultural penetration and domination by highlighting their superiority in identity and culture to the indigenous people and animals in colonies. Ecologically, based on the Western anthropocentrism and speciesism, colonialists recklessly exploit and plunder the wild animal resources in colonies, causing devastating ecological crises and damaging the original ecological thinking prevalent among indigenous people. A fundamental discursive paradigm of imperialism may be found in the dichotomy between the European whites and the animal and the animalized people in colonies.In the postcolonial epoch, with the collapse of the Empire, the material practices of colonialism directly involving the animal in colonies cease to exist; however, the once-colonised countries are still haunted by the imperialist ideology in terms of the animal, which has persistently obtained new forms in the contexts of globalization.The writers in once-colonised countries are the pivotal intellectuals who attempt to subvert the imperialist discourse. From the postcolonial perspective, my research aims to investigate three different modes of resisting the imperialist discourse by examining the cultural implication of the animal images in the following masterpieces of five novelists from former colonies based upon the systematic connection between colonialist practices and animals:Barbara Gowdy’s The White Bone (1998), J. M. Coetzee’s Disgrace (1999), Zakes Mda’s The Heart of Redness (2000), Yann Mattel’s Life of Pi (2001), and Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008). With animal imagery as an avenue of realizing the decolonization of the mind, these five writers have attempted to make their own explorations into the means and strategies of subverting the imperialist discourse at the turn of the 21st century.My dissertation falls into three chapters.Chapter One examines the radical form of resistance to imperialism that animal images reflect by referring to the historical association between big-game hunting and imperialist conquest. It is argued that in the context of colonialism hunting is a symbolic activity to construct and guarantee the colonial identity and superiority, and complement the political and military conquest enacted by imperialists. Then, through close textual reading, the significance of several colonial animal stereotypes and their transformation in the postcolonial context are investigated.Chapter Two focuses on the vital roles that animal images play in re-articulating, deconstructing and subverting the cultural domination of imperialism. By crystallizing the cultural imposition as a layer of imperialism, this chapter explores the resistance to the cultural domination of imperialism from four aspects, namely, the disempowering or commanding of the coloniser’s language-a vital vehicle of conveying Western values and ideologies, "becoming-animal" as an important means of blurring the boundary between the white coloniser and the colonised, the zoo as a cultural space reflecting and deconstructing the colonial discourse and the strategy of allegory as an important means to subvert the imperialist discourse.Chapter Three concentrates on the revival of the impaired ecological thinking embedded in indigenous cultures through the representation of the animal and human-animal relations, which is a response and resistance to the ecological exploitation of imperialism. Ecological imperialism has resulted in the demolishment of the ecological thinking and ecological imbalance. Therefore, to reconstruct the harmonious coexistence between native people and animals is a vital avenue of resisting ecological imperialism. By adopting some important notions in postcolonial and ecological studies and the ecological ethics put forward by Randy Malamud, the postcolonial ecological thinking that the animal imagery demonstrates is explored and the resistance against the ecological imperialism discourse is investigated.All in all, employing the critical approach of postcolonialism and from multiple perspectives, this dissertation explores the animal imagery in the works of five contemporary writers of once-colonised countries from the following three aspects of imperialism:military conquest, cultural domination and ecological invasion. The representation of the animal imagery demonstrates their efforts in deconstructing colonial discourse, thereby constructing an anti-imperialist discourse. It is of great significance to probe the cultural implications of the animal images in their writings. It is of theoretical and practical significance for the animal imagery scholarship.