Beyond Anthropocentrism: Functions of the Second-Person Zoonarration in the Novel Rat by Andrzej Zaniewski

Abstract

This paper presents a correlation between second-person narration and the more-than-hu­man perspectivity in animal narratives. The analysis focuses on representations of “you” nar­ration in Andrzej Zaniewski’s novel Rat, published for the first time in 1995. “Rat-centric” fiction, as Marco Caracciolo describes it, talks about various experiences of the title animal. Although the dominant diegetic form in the novel is the first-person narrative, the appearing parts of the text told from a second-person point of view turn out to be a significant element of a non-anthropocentric perspective. Considering the influence of form on the posthuman message, the paper is based on research in the field of animal studies and contemporary nar­ratology, including, among others, Irene Kacandes’s “literary performative”, David Herman’s “double deixis” or Dominique Lestel’s “thinking with fur”. In this article, I propose to dis­tinguish three functions of the second-person narrative in Rat: immersive, empathetic and identity roles. The immersive function participates in adapting a sensorimotor repertoire to the intersubjective perception of the non-human world. The second of them, the empathetic function, by bonding the human narratee with the animal character, opens a possibility of embodied co-experience and verification of anthropocentric norms. The third, identity func­tion, participates in (de)constructing the rat selfhood. Findings of the proposed perspective of second-person zoonarration sheds new light on its formal opportunities for creating post­human agency, thinking, and storytelling.