The nonhuman and coming community in the selected works of Olga Tokarczuk

Abstract

ABSTRACT This paper explores the plight of nonhumans and the form of the coming community through the status quo of border-crossing bodies in selected works by Olga Tokarczuk in light of biopolitics. It highlights the link between dehumanization and biopolitics and argues that the nonhuman becomes a foundation of modern sovereignty. The nonhuman is produced by an inclusive exclusion, where the violence enters in and maintains the sovereign, and this anthropocentric mechanism becomes the fundamental political paradigm. To resist this anthropocentrism, Tokarczuk proposes a new form of community, the ‘airport-republic’ with fluid trans-borders, for opening up a new subject construction model and human organization form for post-Holocaust humanity. However, it is easy for these people who are invisible or becoming nonhuman to fall into the indistinguishable zone between humans and animals, between bios (politically qualified life) and zoē (bare life). They cannot be guaranteed by the sovereignty power, thereby falling back again into the logic of the Holocaust.