Adopting Animals: Home and Family in US Rehoming Narratives

Jopi Nyman

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Chapter 9 Adopting Animals: Home and Family in US Rehoming Narratives

In: Thinking with the Familiar in Contemporary Literature and Culture 'Out of the Ordinary'

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Jopi Nyman

Jopi Nyman
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Type:: Chapter

Pages:: 181–196

DOI:: https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004406742_011

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Abstract

While the central attention in recent adoption studies has been on transnational and transcultural adoption, this chapter expands the apparently anthropocentric focus on human subjects to discuss narratives telling of animal adoption. The rehoming narratives are ways of using the trope of adoption in a context that is quite close to the ways in which more conventional adoption narratives address their subject. By showing how animals enter the private site of home, these stories contribute to the imagining of family and are thus open to cultural readings addressing the meaning of the family. In such texts human–animal relationality is framed in the context of affect and family discourses. This chapter focusses on two contemporary American narratives, namely Jacqueline Sheehan’s Lost and Found and Mark R. Levin’s Rescuing Sprite. The readings propose that the process of rehoming is a way of reconstructing the identities of both human and non-human participants as well as producing ‘hybrid families’. The texts open up windows onto the various discourses governing human–animal relationality. While not necessarily radical or progressive, their representations of adoption tell of contemporary concerns related to the American family and the processes of inclusion and exclusion.

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Thinking with the Familiar in Contemporary Literature and Culture 'Out of the Ordinary'

Series: Critical Studies, Volume: 39 and Critical Studies, Volume: 39

E-Book ISBN:: 9789004406742

Publisher:: Brill

Print Publication Date:: 13 Sep 2019

Subjects
- Literature and Cultural Studies
- Social Sciences
  - Cultural Studies

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Chapter 9 Adopting Animals: Home and Family in US Rehoming Narratives

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Thinking with the Familiar in Contemporary Literature and Culture 'Out of the Ordinary'

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