Interspecies Literature: Clarice Lispector's Zoophytographia

• Main Author: Vieira, Patrícia
• Publication Date: 2017
• Format: Article
• Language: eng
• Source: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Download full: http://hdl.handle.net/10316/48126; https://doi.org/10.21471/jls.v2i2.194
• topic: Ecocriticism; Plants and animals in literature; Inhumanity; Laços de Família; A Paixão Segundo G.H.

This essay analyzes the role plants and animals play in Clarice Lispector’s work. I argue that Lispector often stages a face-to-face encounter with non-humans to trigger a process of defamiliarization, whereby our anthropocentric values and norms come undone. I discuss exemples of this encounter in short stories from Laços de Família and in the novel A Paixão segundo G.H. In these works, Lispector reflects upon concepts we usually take for granted, such as reason or language, a process that results in a profound transformation and extension of these concepts to our non-human others.