BOOK REVIEW: SUSAN MARY PYKE, "ANIMAL VISIONS: POSTHUMANIST DREAM WRITING", PALGRAVE MACMILLAN, 2019, 314 P.

Abstract

Efforts to challenge our anthropocentric worldview so deeply imbued with ideas of human superiority are, rather fortunately, becoming increasingly prevalent as of late. Susan Mary Pyke’s Animal Visions is one such challenger, attempting to explore and examine literary resistances to speciesism by critically engaging with texts that provide insight into “cross-species relations”, and offer “less hierarchical understandings of animal cognition and sentience”(2). Needless to say, such an undertaking may inevitably come into conflict not only with the supremacist feelings of individual people, but with all the master narratives that have been implanting, justifying and continuously advocating for them to this day.