Homens, animais e jaulas: apontamentos para uma zoopoética

Abstract

Situated at heart of the modern city and intended to encourage the reunion of man with animals and with an ever more distant nature, the zoo is, in reality, an artificial space for animal segregation and confinement, reinforcing the divide between human and non-human. In this article, we seek to inquire the ways in which this reunion between man and animal (made possible through the cage) is represented in the literary text, a space allowing the apprehension of animality. Writers attempt to use the powers of fiction to put themselves in the place of animals, imagining what they would say if they could talk, speculating about their knowledge of the world and assessing their human quality. We will focus on the close reading of a short story by Clarice Lispector («The Buffallo» included in the collection Family Ties), as well as the series entitled «Zoo» by Joao Guimaraes Rosa (taken from Ave Palavra, 1970). These texts will be analysed in the light of the theoretical reflection developed by authors such as Gilles Deleuze, Jacques Derrida, and John Berger.