Animal Remainders, Remaining Animal: Cross-Species Collaborative Encounters in Victorian Literature and Culture

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dc.contributor.advisorMichie, Helenaen_US
dc.contributor.committeeMemberWolfe, Caryen_US
dc.contributor.committeeMemberParsons, William B.en_US
dc.contributor.committeeMemberPatten, Robert L.en_US
dc.creatorBasnett, Kattieen_US
dc.date.accessioned2014-08-04T21:19:32Zen_US
dc.date.available2014-08-04T21:19:32Zen_US
dc.date.created2014-05en_US
dc.date.issued2014-04-24en_US
dc.date.submittedMay 2014en_US
dc.date.updated2014-08-04T21:19:33Zen_US
dc.description.abstract“Animal Remainders” responds to the challenge of—and challenges to—Victorian animal studies, a sub-field of Victorian scholarship that has not seen the same popular critical reception as modernist or contemporary literary animal studies. Departing from the Victorian critical trend of reading literary animals as salient figures only so long as they can be imagined as symbolic or metaphoric for humans and human concerns, “Animal Remainders” takes literary animals—whether domestic pet or insect—seriously as animals. Moreover, these literary animals are acknowledged as agents of ethical production and transformation structured through a “chimerical collaboration.” The chimerical collaboration is inherently cross-species in nature and, within this collaboration, animals are capable of co-authoring the human and cross-species relations through the act of co-constitution, as well as being capable of explicitly or implicitly co-authoring texts such as literature and music in spite of communications barriers. By reading literary animals as collaborators with, rather than metaphors for, the human I demonstrate that the humanism and anthropocentrism we credit the Victorians and their literatures with as a discipline breaks down—at least in part—as Victorian literary animals are more radical than they have been given credit for. In this spirit, each chapter of “Animal Remainders” focuses primarily on critically marginalized readings of cross-species collaborations as they manifest in Victorian texts—including Charles Dickens’ early novels, Wilkie Collins’s antivivisection novel Heart and Science, animal autobiographies by Virginia Woolf and Anna Sewell, and the poetry of Michael Field—as well as in contemporary literature, experimental music, and the digital humanities. “Animal Remainders” foregrounds important methodological questions about the forces which discipline Victorian scholarship and the history informing our historicism, as well as more intimate questions about ourselves as scholars and living beings in a cross-species world. It enacts a fundamental un-knowing of the Victorian human and its—real or represented—animal other by asking, who is this nineteenth-century human (or) animal we study, but also who is the “we” doing the studying and through what histories and structures of knowledge have we come to know ourselves (and others) as such?en_US
dc.format.mimetypeapplication/pdfen_US
dc.identifier.citationBasnett, Kattie. "Animal Remainders, Remaining Animal: Cross-Species Collaborative Encounters in Victorian Literature and Culture." (2014) Diss., Rice University. <a href="https://hdl.handle.net/1911/76361">https://hdl.handle.net/1911/76361</a>.en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/76361en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author, unless otherwise indicated. Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.subjectAnimal studiesen_US
dc.subjectVictorian animal studiesen_US
dc.subjectCharles Dickensen_US
dc.subjectWilkie Collinsen_US
dc.subjectMichael Fielden_US
dc.subjectAnna Sewellen_US
dc.subjectMatthew Herberten_US
dc.subjectOne pigen_US
dc.subjectAnimal's peopleen_US
dc.subjectWhym Chowen_US
dc.subjectHearten_US
dc.subjectScienceen_US
dc.subjectAntivivisectionen_US
dc.subjectPosthumanismen_US
dc.subjectAnimal theoryen_US
dc.subjectHumanismen_US
dc.subjectCross-species collaborationsen_US
dc.subjectVictorian animal rightsen_US
dc.subjectCora Diamonden_US
dc.subjectCary Wolfeen_US
dc.subjectJacques Derridaen_US
dc.subjectVirginia Woolfen_US
dc.subjectBlack Beautyen_US
dc.titleAnimal Remainders, Remaining Animal: Cross-Species Collaborative Encounters in Victorian Literature and Cultureen_US
dc.typeThesisen_US
dc.type.materialTexten_US
thesis.degree.departmentEnglishen_US
thesis.degree.disciplineHumanitiesen_US
thesis.degree.grantorRice Universityen_US
thesis.degree.levelDoctoralen_US
thesis.degree.nameDoctor of Philosophyen_US
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