The “unimaginable border” and bare life in Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9003772 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Lucy Neave (0000-0003-1648-5893, Australian National University, corresponding author), Lucy Ann Neave (Australian National University) |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 54 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 243-256 |
| Publication date | 2017-03-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | The Journal of Commonwealth Literature (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-9894 • E-ISSN: 1741-6442 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publishing (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/0021989417692389 |
| OpenAlex | W2593913589 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 11 |
This article offers a consideration of the figure of the feral child in Australian writer Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy (2009), a novel based on stories circulating in the media about children raised by dogs in post-perestroika Russia. The book was praised for its exploration of the liminal space occupied by its protagonist, Romochka, the ecocritical potential in the idea of ferality, and its grimly realistic portrayal of both Romochka’s privations and the comfort offered by the company and loyalty of dogs. I read the novel less optimistically, through Giorgio Agamben’s conception of “bare life” and the metaphorical instrument of its production, the anthropological machine as described in The Open: Man and Animal. Romochka is excluded from political life and from legal protection, yet is subject to state intervention. Further, I argue that the novel is engaged in Australian and international debates about people excluded from political life and from the protection of the law, such as the homeless and refugees, who are nonetheless exposed to state power and surveillance
Aesthetics · Art · Intervention (counseling · Legal guardian · Liminality · Literature · Loyalty · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Power (physics · Refugee · Sociology · State (computer science · Subject (documents · Anthropology · Gender Studies · Geographies of human-animal interactions · Gothic Literature and Media Analysis · History · Law · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis
| Highly cited | No |
|---|