The 'Cockroach': Waste and Wasted Life in World Literatures in English

Abstract

In questo saggio intendo proporre una lettura in chiave comparatistica di tre romanzi postcoloniali – in relazione intertestuale e contro-canonica rispetto a La metamorfosi (1915) di Franz Kafka – che affrontano l’etica, ma anche l’estetica, dell’interconnessione umano-animale. In questo modo, e con il supporto di un apparato critico su Kafka, in particolare il contributo di Deleuze e Guattari (1986), su cui s’impernia il presente studio, intendo esplorare il nesso fra letteratura e ambiente, con particolare enfasi sui rifiuti, nell’accezione anche della necro-politica (Mbembe 2003) e dell’écart (Jullien 2012). La maledizione di Kafka del sudafricano Achmat Dangor (2006), Il ladro del silenzio (2011) del canadese-libanese Rawi Hage e Culo nero (2016) del nigeriano Igoni Barrett saranno qui oggetto di disamina.

DOI: 10.17456/SIMPLE-175

Parole chiave: letterature anglofone, animali, rifiuti, necro-politica, écart.

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