y separately published work icon The Journal of Commonwealth Literature periodical issue   peer reviewed assertion
Issue Details: First known date: 2019... vol. 54 no. 2 June 2019 of The Journal of Commonwealth Literature est. 1965 The Journal of Commonwealth Literature
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Contents

* Contents derived from the , 2019 version. Please note that other versions/publications may contain different contents. See the Publication Details.
The “Unimaginable Border” and Bare Life in Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy, Lucy Neave , single work criticism
'This article offers a consideration of the figure of the feral child in Australian writer Eva Hornung’s Dog Boy(2009), a novel based on stories circulating in the media about children raised by dogs in post-perestroika Russia. The book was praised for its exploration of the liminal space occupied by its protagonist, Romochka, the ecocritical potential in the idea of ferality, and its grimly realistic portrayal of both Romochka’s privations and the comfort offered by the company and loyalty of dogs. I read the novel less optimistically, through Giorgio Agamben’s conception of “bare life” and the metaphorical instrument of its production, the anthropological machine as described in The Open: Man and Animal. Romochka is excluded from political life and from legal protection, yet is subject to state intervention. Further, I argue that the novel is engaged in Australian and international debates about people excluded from political life and from the protection of the law, such as the homeless and refugees, who are nonetheless exposed to state power and surveillance.'

 (Publication abstract)

(p. 243–256)
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