Cirrus@Austlit

'This essay asks: what is the value of cross-species empathy in a time of ecological crisis and how can contemporary fiction help along new thinking about human relationships with other animals? I make the case that empathy, in the dominant sense, fetishizes closeness. Empathy has become positive and valuable because it is said to narrow the distance between self and others. I develop the idea that the dominant view of empathy gives limited consideration to how degrees and kinds of difference complicate this view, while disregarding the enduring presence of other animals in scientific and philosophical treatments of empathy. In my close reading, I examine a concept routinely connected to empathy in existing scholarship: proximity. I investigate how different kinds of proximities manifest and complicate empathies between humans and other animals in Laura Jean's 2020 novel, The Animals in That Country. My methodology differs from traditional treatments of empathy in Literary Studies in two significant ways. First, I do not define cross-species empathy upfront, but look to McKay's text to produce new ways of thinking about empathy through the different kinds of proximities (spatial, linguistic, geographical, species) that unfold. And second, I do not examine how a reader's empathy for humans or other animals is encouraged or stifled by the text. Rather, I view McKay's text, as an art form and a critical tool, as David Herman instructs, "for reconsidering—for critiquing or reaffirming, dismantling, or reconstructing" what cross-species can be and do in the here and now.' (Publication abstract)

'The death of a bird haunts the relationship between two siblings. A lonely narrator waits for a bus that never comes. A boy makes soup with his grandmother and wonders about the memories she has buried.

'For the sixteenth edition of Verge, we asked contributors to reflect on the theme of Home, a word that took on a new meaning after a year of solitude and separation. We chose this theme because we hoped to read about homes of all kinds: unhomely homes, abandoned homes, unlikely homes, forgotten homes, found homes. And we were awed by the beauty, depth and variety in the pieces we received. Our writers explored homes of past, present and future; they probed the bleakness of domesticity and mourned the loss of what was once held close. They wrote about familial ties and found communities, about the painfulness of childhood and the bonds of ancestry. Writing, indeed, to make a home in.'

Source : publisher's blurb

'Shaun Tan’s 2001 picture book The Red Tree features a nameless, redheaded protagonist wandering through a series of surreal, strange and overwhelmingly dark landscapes. Tan himself, together with his commentators, has characterised The Red Tree’s contents as “absurd,” yet this term has not been defined, nor have any connections been traced between the themes of the text and one of the most important thinkers of the absurd: the twentieth-century French philosopher Albert Camus, whose notion of the absurd is explicated in The Myth of Sisyphus. This article argues not only that Camus’ notion of the absurd provides insights into Tan’s The Red Tree, but also that Tan’s work can help readers develop an understanding of Camus’ philosophy. It focuses on three significant aspects of Camus’ work that serve to unite these two writers, namely the journey of self-explication one undergoes after sensing the absurd, strangeness, and hope.'

Source: Springer.