Abstract: | The dissertation’s aim is to present the relationships between humans and animals that form and evolve in home. Using the view of posthumanism allowed to address such issues as interspecies affections, modes of representation of the animal, food taboos, the differences between the biological systematics and volk taxonomy, redefinition of language. The construction of the definition of pets and companion animals was an important part of the work, as well as the discussion about the posthuman optics.
The dissertation contains a theoretical part, four analytical parts and summary.
Sequence of the analysis sections corresponds to the chronology of the relationships between human and animal, and presents itself as follows: Zoonatologies present the birth of the companion species, namely the creation of pets for man and man for pets. I made reinterpretation of the major myths standing at the
beginning of the human-animal relation, I presented the places, where human and animal
meet, and I analyzed their semiotics. An important element was to discuss the problem of love
as affection, which can constitute the existence of the categories of pets and companion animals.
Zoadolescence is about the adolescence of the human relationship with pets. I discussed the basics of the animal rights that refer to pets, as well as the food taboos and shame as an influence on human-animal relationship. Zooptics show how looking at animals confuses the ontological and epistemological
questions. The main goal of the four sections was to revise the concept of animal gaze,
extremely popular in animal studies in recent years. Zoonekrographies are an attempt to restore the death of the animal. I discussed in this part the philosophical voices about the difference between the death of the human and the death of the animal. I analyzed the function of pet cemeteries, and I introduced the myth of the return of the animal, which, in various forms, reflects the condition of the human-animal relationship.
The study analyzed a variety of sources: literature, video, tv shows, advertising and graphic. The taken analysis were mostly inspired by thinkers such as Jacques Derrida, Bruno Latour, Cary Wolfe, Donna Haraway, Erica Fudge, Yi-Fu Tuan, Sarah Ahmed. |