Library of Congress - (Re)Imagining Animals and Human-nonhuman Relationships in Julio Cortázar's works

This research project aims to explore the representation of animals and human-nonhuman relationships in the works of Julio Cortázar with a focus on the writer’s short story collections. Drawing from pivotal theories in critical animal studies, my research sets out as an ecological interdisciplinary study which rereads and reinterprets the animal figures and human-nonhuman entanglements in Cortázar’s works from a posthuman theoretical perspective. It studies to what extent Cortázar’s depiction of animals challenges the concept of nonhuman animality and the hierarchy of species, and how that reflects and responds to the social and cultural realities during the Latin American “Boom” literary movement in the 1960s. This research brings a timely contribution to the study of Julio Cortázar’s works as it highlights the potential innovative understanding of nonhuman animals, animality/humanity and interspecies relationships in the writer’s portrayal of diverse tensions and contradictions within a close but ambiguous cross-species community. In this manner, my research sheds light on the significance of literature in (re)imagining and encouraging an equal and symbiotic relationship between human and nonhuman species. I aspire to conduct the proposed research fellowship at the Library of Congress.