The Killing (Off) of Animals in Some Southern African Fiction, or “Why Does Every Animal Story Have to be Sad?”

Abstract

Summary
The paper begins with cameos of my personal experience of killing animals and a discussion of the media debate in January 2007 about the ritual slaughtering of a “ceremonial bull” by Tony Yengeni. It then investigates representations of non-human animal deaths in some recent southern African fiction in relation to the thinking of Jacques Derrida, Martha Nussbaum, J.M. Coetzee’s Elizabeth Costello, as well as Buddhist ethics and utilitarianism. All the fictional animals are sacrificed to human ideas of “the animal” even though some of the deaths could be classified as euthanasia: the dogs in J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace [1999]2000; Sharisha, the whale, in Zakes Mda’s The Whale Caller (2005); Piet, the baboon, in Justin Cartwright’s White Lightning (2002); and Mangy-Dog in Luis Bernardo Honwana’s short story “We Killed Mangy-Dog” ([1969]1977).
Ethics relating to animal deaths recur in these fictions: the animals’ putative awareness of impending death, the denial of embodied dignity in contrast to the possibilities of human violence and sadism. The animals killed also lose the potential for a flourishing life, even if their suffering has been brought to a close. Some of the writers deploy the sympathetic imagination in their representations of the particular condemned subjects, so that the reader may enter the experience of the othered animal; all portray how the animals are situated, tragically, within a carnophallo-gocentric order which rarely acknowledges their subjectivities or individualises their deaths.

Opsomming

Die referaat begin met kamees van my persoonlike ervaring van die doodmaak van diere en ’n bespreking van die mediadebat in Januarie 2007 oor die rituele slagting van ’n “seremoniële bul” deur Tony Yengeni. Vervolgens word voorstellings van nie-menslike dieresterftes in ’n paar voorbeelde van onlangse Suider-Afrikaanse fiksie ondersoek in die lig van die denke van Jacques Derrida, Martha Nussbaum, J.M. Coetzee se Elizabeth Costello, en ook Boeddhistiese etiek en utilitarisme. Al die fiktiewe diere word geoffer ter wille van menslike opvattings van “die dier”, selfs al kan sommige van die sterftes as “genadedood” geklassifiseer word: die honde in J.M. Coetzee se Disgrace [1999]2000; Sharisha die walvis in Zakes Mda se The Whale Caller (2005); Piet die bobbejaan in Justin Cartwright se White Lightning (2002); en Mangy-Dog in Luis Bernardo Honwana se kortverhaal “We Killed Mangy-Dog” ([1969]1977). Etiek wat verband hou met dieresterftes kom herhaaldelik in hierdie fiksiewerke voor: die diere se veronderstelde bewustheid van die naderende dood, die ontsegging van beliggaamde waardigheid in teëstelling met die moontlikhede van menslike geweld en sadisme. Die diere wat doodgemaak word boet ook die potensiaal van ’n florerende lewe in, selfs al is hulle lyding beëindig. Sommige van die skrywers wend die simpatieke verbeelding aan in hulle voor-stellings van die besondere veroordeelde subjekte, sodat die leser die ervaring van die veranderde dier kan meemaak; hulle beeld almal uit hoe die diere (tragies) gesitueer is binne ’n karno-fallogosentriese orde wat beswaarlik erkenning verleen aan hulle subjektiwiteite of hulle sterftes individualiseer.