Humbling the human: Posthuman explorations in contemporary short fiction

In a context of manmade global warming, ecological destruction and species extinction, posthumanist scholars have advocated moving beyond the anthropocentrism that determines western thinking in favour of an embedded and embodied interspecies relationality. If these remain fairly abstract notions in the work of critics such as Donna Haraway and Rosi Braidotti, contemporary short fiction provides many interesting examples of these alternative forms of being and becoming. The short story seems especially suited to exploring this decentring of the human subject, given its own status as a liminal, ‘minor’ or ‘humble’ genre and its long tradition of exploring human–animal relations in animal stories. This article demonstrates how contemporary short stories by Lauren Groff, Claire-Louise Bennett, Sarah Hall, Sara Baume and Louise Ehrdrich stage a profoundly biocentric perspective by moving beyond animal stories’ traditional modes of the fabular and the figural towards a realistic depiction of our creaturely existence in experiences that may be at once empowering and terrifying.

Voice

Taking up the problem of whether and how radio broadcasts spoke to Caribbean audiences, this chapter explores the introduction of the sounds of blackness throughout the region. The sounds of what Kamau Brathwaite called “nation language” entered the soundscapes of Haiti and Kingston with implications for the politics of belonging in the late 1950s. The voices and sounds of people speaking--in addition to singing—in creole generated a new interest in broadcasting. Radio personalities like Louise Bennett revitalized a marginalized medium and convinced ordinary people that the radio could speak to them. In Haiti, one of the first regular programs to use creole was “Le Quart d’Heure de Frère Hiss,” sponsored by Nelson Rockefeller’s Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs and staffed by Haitian actors and writers. The traditions of creole and the technological innovations that enabled the implementation of broadcasting in the Caribbean should not be imagined as two forms of media in conflict with one another. Rather they were both necessary to the production of broadcasting as a modern medium.