Violence divine, Justice et Anthropocène : La Prédation du vivant au cœur d’Anima de Wajdi Mouawad

Abstract

Can justice be guaranteed at the cost of trespassing the realm of law? This is a question asked by Jacques Derrida in his essay, Force of Law scrutinizing the notion of “divine violence” as stated by Walter Benjamin in his essay Critique of Violence. It is precisely to a literary experience investigating the concepts of violence and justice that the Francophone writer Wajdi Mouawad (1968) invites us through his novel Anima published in 2012. An experience that does not only address violence through its figurative prism, but by unveiling our predation capabilities which inscribe us as human beings in a thanatological and necropolitical relation to the living in its entirety. The description of a human hunt through the terrified glancing and testimonies of animals populating different territories and geographies traversed by the character of Wahhch Debch, in search of the murderer of his wife, does not simply divulge exile and banishment as determinations of the “bare life” concept (Agamben), as Grégoire Chamayou evokes in Manhunt. It also enables a re-inscription of the human in an eco-system. We will see how human being predatory aptitudes unshackles a dynamic of domination which concerns the whole living and our impact on the terrestrial bionetwork. The polyphonic bestiary that emerges through this stalking occupies the function of a tragic choir, and highlights a metaphysical and traumatic experience of violence scarring the human identity and memory through the eyes and senses of an absolute other: the animal, the non-human.