“My destiny is to be a cow”: speaking with (like) animals in contemporary fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11606/sk6swn25Keywords:
Animal studies, Queer studies, Non-human languageAbstract
This article conducts a comparative analysis of Dora Freind’s As Vacas Não Me Olham Mais na Cara (2026) and Claire Oshetsky’s Chouette (2021) to examine the relationships among language, animality, and kinship in contemporary fiction. Drawing on animal studies and queer theory, the article contends that both novels challenge anthropocentric conceptions of language by representing communication that extends beyond human speech and by foregrounding interspecies relationships. Rather than treating humanity and animality as fixed ontological categories, these texts present them as performative identities produced through processes of socialisation, language, and repetition. Finally, the article demonstrates that both novels envision alternative forms of kinship and care that destabilise heteropatriarchal and exclusively human models of family.
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