Title: Animality

Abstract: Animality is a key concept for examining human–animal boundaries, colonial power, and biopolitics in Latin American literature and culture. Its intellectual origins can be traced to European philosophy’s definition of the rational subject. During the colonial process in the Americas, however, it was transformed into a mechanism of governance that distinguished civilization from barbarism. Nineteenth-century national literatures continued and reworked this logic, while from the twentieth century onward, animality has gradually become a critical resource for questioning anthropocentrism and the modern sovereign subject. The writings of Roger Bartra, Gabriel Giorgi, Mónica Cragnolini, and Julieta Yelin delineate a conceptual genealogy that moves from colonial discourse and cultural diagnoses of the nation to biopolitics, ethics, and literary thought, demonstrating the theoretical specificity that animality has acquired through Latin American historical experience.

Keywords: animality, Latin American literature, colonial discourse, biopolitics

Author: Yishuang Guo, Lecturer, School of Foreign Languages, Southeast University, Nanjing, Jiangsu, China.

DOI: 10.19967/j.cnki.flc.2026.03.007