Abstract
This essay proposes a reading of the story “Segundo” by Ana García Bergua, centred on the conundrum of deciding whether the protagonists are animals or humans. To this end, we collect ambiguous data concerning space, characters, and the rules they live by, and discuss hypotheses about their identity, opting for a dual reading of the text: a biopolitical one, based on the works by Gabriel Giorgi and focused on the question of the body, and an animist one, based on Viveiros de Castro’s “cannibal metaphysics” and the spiritual connection between species. We emphasize a questioning of the human/animal opposition using posthumanist and animal studies theories (Wolfe), as well as unnatural narratology (Alber) and the concept of symbolic violence (Bourdieu). The ambivalence of the characters and the problem of cannibalism are the key elements that disrupt our traditional conception of the subject. Moreover, anthropophagy does not disappear even if the protagonists are interpreted as animals.
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