Animal-Man-Power: Shape-shifting fictions and political transformation

该项目探索了动物与人类的关系，作为一种产生政治虚构的配置。它以变形为主题，研究与主权问题相关的动物/人类变形的叙事。一般的假设是，物种转变的幻想是从旧的主权形式到新的主权形式的政治过渡的想象表达。这项研究的关键任务将是展示文学和后来的电影对动物/人类结合的想象如何根据西方主权历史上的三个关键阶段发生变化：12世纪君主主权的出现，19世纪人民主权的基础，以及全球化时代对民主的新挑战。该提案将动物/人类关系问题与主权问题联系起来，解决了我们这个时代文化和政治议程上的两个关键问题。以往关于动物题材的文学研究通过建立单语文本语料库和处理单一历史时期，以有限的方式考虑了政治方面。相反，这个项目选择了一种比较和历时的方法。它涵盖了从中世纪盛期到现代和后现代时期的广泛历史范围内的不同民族文学。从这个综合的角度来看，本研究具有双重目的：1。追溯文学传统，其中变形小说的功能是创造和合法化主权；2. 提出政治文化的话题，对当前动物理论进行批判性的修正。在这两种情况下，该提案不仅会使当前关于动物问题的辩论更加丰富，而且还会为动物/人类二元对立的政治意义提供新的视角。

The project explores the animal human relationship as a configuration that generates political fictions. Focusing on the motif of shape-shifting, it studies the narratives of animal/human metamorphosis in relation to the problem of sovereignty. The general hypothesis is that fantasies of species transformation are imaginary expressions of the political transition from an old to a new form of sovereignty. The key task of the research will be to show how literary and later cinematographic imaginations of animal/human conjunction change according to the three crucial phases in the Western history of sovereignty: the emergence of monarchical sovereignty in the 12th century, the foundation of popular sovereignty in the 19th century, and the new challenges to democracy in the age of globalization.Connecting the question of animal/human relationships with the problem of sovereignty, the proposal addresses two key issues on the cultural and political agenda of our time. Previous literary studies on animal subjects have considered the political aspects in a limited way, by setting up a monolingual textual corpus and addressing a single historical period. This project, on the contrary, chooses a comparative and diachronic approach. It covers different national literatures in a broad historical scope from the High Middle Ages to the modern and postmodern eras. From this comprehensive perspective, the research has a dual aim: 1. to trace the literary tradition in which shape shifting fiction functions to create and legitimate sovereign power; 2. to broach the topic of political culture for a critical revision of current animal theory. In both cases, the proposal will not only fertilize the current debate on animal matters, but also shed new light on the political significance of the animal/human binary.