Talking (for, with) Dogs

This article is part of my ongoing study of a figure I call the amborg, which represents the interface between species in a variety of ways. One way in which humans and other animals interact is through the attempt to communicate, and we try most sincerely, perhaps, in the human/dog relationship. This attempt is explored in a number of science fiction stories, where scientific extrapolation and subjunctive “what if” speculation allow us to overhear how that communication might occur. The result sometimes reflects genuine grappling with questions of authority, otherness, consciousness, and embodiment. Working with Gayatri Spivak’s concept of the subaltern and Donna Haraway’s companion species, but also the observations and conclusions of animal ethologists, I look at three sf works: Clifford Simak’s City (1952), Sheri S. Tepper’s The Companions (2003), and Kij Johnson’s “The Evolution of Trickster Stories Among the Dogs of North Park After the Change” (2007). I explore ways in which sf allows writers to speculate on how species communicate, resulting in what Haraway might see as figurative interspecies epigenesis: not the speech of the subaltern, but speaking between “alterns.” To imagine this possibility is to break down one of the most common differentiations between the human (as unique possessor of language) and the separate, inferior category of animal, instead offering a more generous definition of language itself and a more observant description of the ways in which humans and other animal beings communicate with one another

Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life

• Animal Viewpoints in the Contact Zone of Adam Hines’s Duncan the Wonder Dog

  Open Access•Joan Gordon•Humanimalia•2014

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