Stealing from Bakhtin: Writing the Voices of the ”Voiceless”

• Main Author: Guro Flinterud
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Nordic Journal of Science and Technology Studies 2014
• Subjects: Bakhtin; speech genres; folklore studies; animal studies; polar bear Knut; Science; Q; Technology; T; polar bear
• Online Access: https://doaj.org/article/d7d9d474d2194decafb7111faa2db52d

This essay investigates an approach to writing about animals within the humanities. The goal is to focus attention on animals as actors, rather than speaking on their behalf. By combining Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of speech genres with Donna Haraway’s perspectives on co-habitation between all species, I suggest that a careful attention to animals as communication partners might give us a tool to capture the contribution animals make in the creation of history and culture. Two examples will be provided to illustrate this concept: The first example is a media story about celebrity polar bear Knut. The second example is an oral account of human-animal interaction in the zoo.