Life Narratives beyond the Human
Chapter 5 turns from issues of medium specificity to the question of how genre bears on narrative engagements with animal experiences in more-than-human worlds. Laying groundwork for chapter 6’s investigation of the way norms for mental-state attributions cut across the fiction-nonfiction divide, the chapter examines forms of generic hybridity, as well as broader questions about generic status, in post-Darwinian life writing centering on nonhuman subjects. In doing so, the chapter explores not only life narratives written about animals, i.e., animal biographies, but also life narratives attributed to animals, i.e., animal autobiographies. The first part of the chapter considers how modernist explorations in the theory and practice of life writing opened up new pathways for interpreting and engaging with animal lives. The second part discusses problems and possibilities raised by classic as well as contemporary animal autobiographies, disputing the assumption that all animal autobiographies are, by their nature, fictional.