Abandoning a Dog. The Becoming-Animal in Portuguese Literature of African Descent

Abstract

Besides marking the connection between philosophy and western metaphysics, asymmetrical relations between humanitas and animalitas articulate and justify the (neo)colonial enterprise. By focusing on the common necropolitical destinies of abandonment to which specific animals and vulnerable humans are doomed, this article examines the political, ethical and ontological implications emerging from the interactions between “humans” and “animals” in the field of critical and philosophical theory of Animal Studies and in the novel Maremoto by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida. In this light, Afro-descendant Portuguese literature becomes an artistic movement that interrogates the nation on its recent colonial past, its traumatic heritage, anthropocentric violence and the complexities of historical reparation.