Animal-Man-Power: Shape-shifting fictions and political transformation

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Jing Xuan
• Subject Area: European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: from 2017 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 329051450

The project explores the animal human relationship as a configuration that generates political fictions. Focusing on the motif of shape-shifting, it studies the narratives of animal/human metamorphosis in relation to the problem of sovereignty. The general hypothesis is that fantasies of species transformation are imaginary expressions of the political transition from an old to a new form of sovereignty. The key task of the research will be to show how literary and later cinematographic imaginations of animal/human conjunction change according to the three crucial phases in the Western history of sovereignty: the emergence of monarchical sovereignty in the 12th century, the foundation of popular sovereignty in the 19th century, and the new challenges to democracy in the age of globalization.Connecting the question of animal/human relationships with the problem of sovereignty, the proposal addresses two key issues on the cultural and political agenda of our time. Previous literary studies on animal subjects have considered the political aspects in a limited way, by setting up a monolingual textual corpus and addressing a single historical period. This project, on the contrary, chooses a comparative and diachronic approach. It covers different national literatures in a broad historical scope from the High Middle Ages to the modern and postmodern eras. From this comprehensive perspective, the research has a dual aim: 1. to trace the literary tradition in which shape shifting fiction functions to create and legitimate sovereign power; 2. to broach the topic of political culture for a critical revision of current animal theory. In both cases, the proposal will not only fertilize the current debate on animal matters, but also shed new light on the political significance of the animal/human binary.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants