Latin American Literary Review (Oct 2023)
Of Cattle and Men: Interspecies Encounters in Ana Paula Maia’s De Gados e Homens
Abstract
Writing about nonhuman animals in Latin American literature, Gabriel Giorgi states that novels in which nonhuman animals are neither rhetorical figures nor images, but appear as non-figurative bodies, attest to a ‘crisis of the animal-form.’ This way of presenting the bodies of nonhuman animals coincides with a growing interest in the representation of the ecological crisis threatening life on Earth. Indeed, in contexts of environmental degradation and vulnerability, new forms of interspecies encounters emerge. The novels of Brazilian author Ana Paula Maia depict such encounters and suggest possible, albeit troubling, means of acknowledging nonhuman agency. This article examines how Maia’s novel De Gados e Homens (2014) presents the possibility of nonhuman agency through the eyes of Edgar Wilson, a slaughterhouse worker. To understand Edgar’s standpoint, it is necessary to address his context. Thus, this paper’s first section analyzes the polluted Valley and the slaughterhouse which jointly serve as the novel’s setting. The second section studies how, in that marginal and isolated environment, the slaughterhouse worker’s ethical encounter with the cow’s face renders him response-able. Finally, the third section examines how Maia’s novel suggests bovine agency and explains why the slaughterer is the only character psychologically open to this possibility.
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