230520 Nature's Revenge and Anthropo(s)cenes - Revisiting Animal Horror in Literature and Film (S) (WiSe 2020/2021)

‘But’, said I. ‘These things – these animals talk!’
− H. G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896)
Contemporary fictional media allow us to meet hyperintelligent sharks, cooperating zombies, aliens and various forms of artificial intelligence. What seems to unite these different semantic fields, be it classic horror fiction, be it simple adventure stories like Trevorrows Jurassic World (2015), is one pressing question haunting us − the question of the nonhuman, the question of the animal (Derrida) and the "animality" we like to think of as hidden in the prehistoric past of our human self.
Many traditions have told us how culture and mind were clear distinction categories separating human and nonhuman spheres. Animals as objects, material or products belong to everyday life in facts and fiction. However, for several decades, developments in biology, robotics, food production and many more branches, have been leading to new questions regarding human and nonhuman forms of existence now. When it comes to concepts of humans versus “others”, today we are confronted with different politics, industries and increasingly blurry boundaries. All forms of fictional media from novels to story-based computer games frequently reflect this musing about the human-nonhuman binary.

In this cultural studies seminar, we will study patterns of animal representation through focus lenses of critical animal studies, posthumanism and anthropology. Examples for analysis will include film, literature and art, while looking specifically (but not exclusively) at horror fiction.