Animality Beyond Humanism in David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster

Tavasoli, Ahmadreza

doi:10.48308/clls.2026.244680.1465

Animality Beyond Humanism in David Foster Wallace’s Consider the Lobster

مقالات آماده انتشار

نوع مقاله : مقاله علمی پژوهشی

نویسنده

Ahmadreza Tavasoli

University of Paris VIII

10.48308/clls.2026.244680.1465

چکیده

Consider the Lobster (2004), originally written as a report on the Maine Lobster Festival for Gourmet magazine, is one of David Foster Wallace’s most discussed essays. Through a close reading of the text, this article examines posthumanism not in terms of human–machine hybridity, but as a perspective that emerges after humanism. Accordingly, the article investigates the relationship between the lobster as a non-human animal and the human as a human animal. This duality emerges as a question of self and other that, in a broader sense, constitutes a foundational logic of humanist thought.
This article examines David Foster Wallace’s “Consider the Lobster” through three interconnected perspectives: historical, literary, and philosophical. It explores the relationship between the figure of the lobster and the human, and, more broadly, the relationship between humanity and nature, with particular attention to bioethics and the question of killing and violence in the Anthropocene. The study also foregrounds the relationship between habitat and the living being, examining how the presence or absence of habitat, here represented by the body of water, can challenge the humanist framework. Through an engagement with different theoretical perspectives, the article demonstrates how Wallace's ethical position can be understood at the intersection of humanism and posthumanism.

کلیدواژه‌ها

David Foster Wallace

Posthumanism

Animal Ethics

Self and Other

New Humanism

موضوعات

شماره موضوع-محور نشریه

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