Thesis
The spectacle of non-humanism: affect, cinema, and animals
Washington State University
Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
05/2016
Handle:
https://hdl.handle.net/2376/103673
Abstract
This thesis looks at questions central to the field of animal studies through a cinematic lens of performance, narrative, and affect. Cinema has a unique visceral material structure that allows us to engage in a non-human communication, encouraging practices that subvert the inherent human privilege we engage in when we write, film, or even comprehend non-human animals. I do this by invoking the idea of "the non-human human." For example, instead of engaging with the anthropomorphism of common animal depictions, I examine animal problems by looking at how humans themselves are dehumanized by the camera gaze and cinematic narrative, as well as how these viewing experiences animalize their viewers. My contention is that engagement with, and recognition of, ourselves as animals, through the medium of film, is a more productive way of addressing these questions, without falling into uncritical modes of anthropomorphism and anthropocentrism.
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Details
- Title
- The spectacle of non-humanism
- Creators
- Kyle Andrew Sittig
- Contributors
- Jon Hegglund (Chair)Roger Todd Whitson (Committee Member) - Washington State University, English, Department ofCarol R Siegel (Committee Member) - Washington State University, English, Department of
- Awarding Institution
- Washington State University
- Academic Unit
- English, Department of
- Theses and Dissertations
- Master of Arts (MA), Washington State University
- Publisher
- Washington State University; [Pullman, Washington] :
- Number of pages
- 63
- Identifiers
- 99900525061201842
- Language
- English
- Resource Type
- Thesis