Abstract
This chapter examines Carson McCullers’ Reflections in a Golden Eye in light of the relatively recent “animal turn” in literary criticism. Focusing on the horse Firebird, it analyzes McCullers’ engagement with the discourse of speciesism and its intersections with other topics—gender, race, and sexuality—that have been prominent areas of focus in critiques of McCullers’ work. Additionally, it draws from Foucault’s analytics of power to illuminate ways that McCullers both subverts the discourse of speciesism and queers the human/nonhuman binary through a focus on corporeality and biopower. The author identifies aspects of the text that may be considered posthumanist, along with the ethical considerations for both human and nonhuman subjects that necessarily follow from such a reading.
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Gowan, T. (2016). “To be a Good Animal”: Toward a Queer-Posthumanist Reading of Reflections in a Golden Eye . In: Graham-Bertolini, A., Kayser, C. (eds) Carson McCullers in the Twenty-First Century. American Literature Readings in the Twenty-First Century. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40292-5_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40292-5_8
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