Cave canem (ou comment un chien méchant peut en cacher un autre)

Abstract

Far from the standard approaches of the virtues and qualities of the Man’s Best Friend, this article explores the evil futures of the dog. Starting from a short story by Alejo Carpentier, we show how many transformations the dog can suffer: trained for hunting beasts as well as men, he can wish to regain his freedom by asserting his violence. He can also cease to acknowledge human supremacy in a sign of radical political empowerment through the pack or a rather more unusual community. Through a set of stories and movies, we discern how the dog can morph, showing to the men the resources of their own autonomy. In order to prevent a destructive revenge of the animals against their masters, an animal apocatastasis, the figure of the bad dog could serve as a model of a life freed from any supervision, combining the creative destinies of the Dog and the Man.

Keywords

• bad Dog
• metamorphosis
• Carpentier (Alejo)
• politics
• dog liberation