The Wild Animal’s Story: Nonhuman Protagonists in Twentieth-Century Canadian Literature through the Lens of Practical Zoocriticism
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Twenty-First Century (2012), I would argue that the contradiction Atwood
identifies is due to the nation’s continued oscillation between the two major impulses that shape its experience with the natural world: “the need to exploit Allmark-Kent 50 natural resources” and “the desire to protect them” (3). As economic prosperity increases, Forkey explains, the inherent value of animals and the environment is protected, but as it decreases the country is compelled to protect itself, and the financial value of animals and the environment are exploited. Throughout its history, the nation has alternated between these positions, but if the nation’s identity and iconography are so heavy with images of wilderness (thriving autonomous animals and grand pristine landscapes) then perhaps a resulting sense of confusion and ambivalence is to be expected. The diversity of First Nations, Inuit, Métis, French-Canadian and English- Canadian cultures means that, for all I have ventured here, the ‘Canadian’ relationship with nature is one to which no single perspective can be applied. As I have argued, those who have attempted over- arching theories of ‘the Canadian psyche’ and its relationship with nature and animals can only ever be reductive and insufficient, particularly since no single homogeneous Canadian psyche even exists. The loose model that I have proposed here based on Fisher’s idea of confusion should hopefully be able to account for this heterogeneity of attitudes, since this very confusion illustrates the absence of any single easy or clear-cut perception of nature and animals in Canada. I argue that the abundance of fascinating animals in Canadian literature is not the consequence of any single factor but a range of changing (sometimes correlating, sometimes contradicting) influences, resulting in diverse and varied representations which express equally diverse and varied responses to the idea of ‘wildness’: savage or serene; pristine or populated; threatening or threatened. Early Canadian works in the form of travel accounts, settler narratives and nature writing engage with and explore attempts to know ‘the wild,’ but as we have seen, these writers encountered ambivalence and confusion. I have Allmark-Kent 51 identified three broad responses to the agency of the wild animal developing as Canadian literature has progressed: the fantasy of knowing; the failure of knowing; and the acceptance of not-knowing, which can take the form of a celebration of animal alterity or an uncomfortable recognition of human ignorance. The wild animal story is unlike the majority of Canadian literature because it performs a fantasy of knowing the wild animal. This nonhuman presence is no longer a confusing or unknowable other; it is a Darwinian relative with whom we can connect across the species divide. The fantasy of knowing is intended to facilitate our empathetic imaginations for increased understanding, respect and concern for nonhuman life. Likewise, the wild environment may not be unfathomable or inhospitable; perhaps it is a place of solace, a refuge from industrial modernity and something to be protected. In this fantasy of knowing, the anti-anthropocentric qualities of nature are embraced, the imagined nonhuman perspective is prioritized, and there is often a moment of defamiliarization in which the violent human who exploits nature becomes seen as the confusing or unknowable other. The agency and alterity of the literary animal (its ability to resist signification) are sacrificed in order to better imagine the real agency and alterity of its flesh-and-blood counterparts. The Nature Fakers controversy condemned the anthropomorphism of this fantasy of knowing and so stigmatized the stories of Seton, Roberts and the others. In response, many authors have accepted our inability to know the animal and thus use literature to explore the process of this failure. In fact, I suggest that the majority of twentieth-century Canadian literature about animals enacts this failure, representing the elusive and confusing but all the more fascinating qualities of the wild animal’s alterity. This categorization is Allmark-Kent 52 distinguished from the ‘acceptance of not-knowing’ because it emphasizes the human character ’s gradual realization of this failure, usually after indulging in a fantasy of knowing. These texts perform a critique of the wild animal story by exploring the anthropomorphism and naivety of this fantasy, as well as reinforcing the intrinsic danger of ‘savage’ wild animals. One of the best-known examples of this category would be Bear (1976) by Marian Engel, which provides a clear response to wild animal stories and anthropomorphic representations: She had read many books about animals as a child. Grown up on the merry mewlings of Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, and Thornton W. Burgess; passed on to Jack London, Thompson Seton or was it Seton Thompson, with the animal tracks in the margin? Grey Owl and Sir Charles Goddamn Rober ts that her grandmother was so fond of. […] Yet she had no feeling at all that either the writers or the purchasers of these books knew what animals were about. She had no idea what animals were about. They were creatures. They were not human. (59-6, emphasis added) Engel’s position on the fantasy of knowing is clear, and she emphasizes the character’s failure to know the animal through a rather misguided belief that she is in a romantic, sexual relationship with a male bear. The character indulges in this fantasy and presuming that the feeling is reciprocal, decides to consummate the relationship. For most of the novel, the bear has been largely disinterested but here he finally attacks, leaving a bloody wound across the characters back and shocking her into realization. The character feels (quite literally) her failure to know this animal and the dangers of her anthropomorphic fantasy. This failure of knowing in Bear will be explored in more detail below, along with Robert Kroetsch’s Studhorse Man (1969), Graeme Gibson’s Communion (1971) and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001). These narratives explore the process of failure and the realization of our inability to know, but do not take their consid eration of ‘the animal’ further. Allmark-Kent 53 Others utilize an acceptance of not-knowing to play with the animal-human divide. This mode of representation is often found in Aboriginal literature, as well as magic realism, both of which resist objectifying scientific discourses about animals, and accept the unknowable alterity of the nonhuman. Here the acceptance of not-knowing is often celebrated, and trickster figures in particular are used by both Native and non-Native authors to unsettle anthropocentrism. The ‘confusing’ and ‘unrepresentable’ alterity of tricksters challenges dominant discourses in works by Aboriginal authors, like Thomas King’s Green Grass, Running Water (1993), Lee Maracle’s Ravensong (1993) or Thomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998). While magic realist narratives like Timothy Findley’s Not Wanted on the Voyage (1984) or Douglas Glover’s Elle (2003) not only utilize this celebration of not-knowing but also adopt pseudo- trickster figures to trouble human ‘superiority’ and the animal-human divide. Curiously, rather like the fantasy of knowing, these texts often involve a sense of defamiliarization when human characters are ‘othered’ by animal characters who possess greater knowledge or understanding. By utilizing the acceptance of not-knowing productively and disrupting the animal-human divide, however, these texts avoid any charges of anthropomorphism. With all of these texts in mind then, we can see that the Canadian literary animal cannot be reduced to Atwood or Polk’s idea of the victimized animal, nor are all of these animals necessarily symbolic of ‘the Canadian psyche’. The examples that I have given here demonstrate the heterogeneity of representations I will explore in the following section, but it is already clear that ‘the animal’ in Canadian literature is ubiquitous, confusing and irresistibly fascinating. |
