Abstract:
Dogs and animals at large have always triggered scientific debates, especially regarding their capabilities and how they frame humans’ self-perception and cultural representations. These nonhuman others also play a significant role in literary imagination, as fictions such as Herr und Hund by Thomas Mann, Mboudjak. Les aventures du chien philosophe by Patrice Nganang, Jock of the Bushveld by Sir James Percy Fitzpatrick, Disgrace by John Maxwell Coetzee, Triomf by Marlene van Niekerk demonstrate, to mention but a few. This article is aimed at scrutinizing human-animal interactions in Hundenovelle by Marion Poschmann and Hundezeiten (French original: Temps de Chien) by Patrice Nganang. The paper explores the aesthetic reconfiguration of dichotomous power dynamics as addressed in the selected fictions. It brings in a gender perspective and further extends a reflection previously started by Alexandra Böhm (2020) to Nganang’s Hundezeiten and investigates both texts from a comparative vantage point. Furthermore, the study suggests an alternative conception of subjectivity which goes far beyond the human and encompasses the nonhuman as propounded by Rosi Braidotti. (2013:2)
