Other Animals and Literary Criticism

Abstract

This chapter sets out the aims, methods and theoretical premises of Other Animals in Twenty-First Century Fiction, describing it as an interdisciplinary work of literary criticism, and a principled response to the lives of whatsoever species, including humans, as they are lived in consequence of their vulnerability to the human–animal distinction. The chapter sets out the idea of the human–animal distinction as a story of the Western human, a potent story that tells us we are not like other animals. Literature plays its part in reproducing this story, but it can also re-make or un-make these traditional terms and conditions, and Other Animals explores such possibilities in twenty-first-century fiction.