Speaking Animals: Exploring Animal Narratives and the Evolution of Power

Abstract

The twenty-first century marks increasing concerns for equality and social justice, prompting different modes in which to investigate and address them. Young-adult animal narratives provide a potent avenue for this. While critics contest their capacity for genuine nonhuman empathy, given their inextricable entanglement with human language, thought, and concerns, I argue that this limitation, the inability of such texts to escape anthropocentrism enacts a productive failure, estranging anthropocentric assumptions and cultivating a ‘strained sensitivity’ that exposes contradictions at the core of socio-political frameworks.

To demonstrate this, my dissertation theorizes the evolution of political consciousness in representations of power across animal narratives spanning more than a century. Through close readings of contemporary young-adult novels including Doglands (2011) by Tim Willocks, Dolphin Way: Rise of the Guardians (2011) by Mark Caney and The Bees (2014) by Laline Paull set deliberately against London’s canonical classic, The Call of the Wild (1903), I construct a critical framework that reads these texts as participating in an intertextual dialogue on power, identity, and community. This dialogue, I argue, reflects recurring patterns shaped by the historical and cultural anxieties that give rise to each work.

Leaning on a diversity of theoretical frameworks including John P. Sisk’s reconceptualization of the Pastoral, Paolo Freire’s theory of critical consciousness, Michel Foucault’s analyses of discipline and power, and Aïda Terblanché-Greeff’s interpretation of Ubuntu philosophy, my dissertation contends that each contemporary work builds upon its predecessor by extending or revising its understanding of power, liberation, and consciousness. In addressing the conceptual silences and tensions left unresolved by earlier texts, these narratives, as read through my theoretical lens, invites young readers to challenge inherited notions of human governance and power dynamics, leading to a recognition of the ethical interdependence that binds all forms of life.

Date of Award	9 Mar 2026
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Jerrine Ee-wen TAN (Supervisor) & Joanna Gwen MANSBRIDGE (Supervisor)