“They Stood like Men”: Horses, Myth, and Carnophallogocentrism in Toni Morrison’s Home

Abstract Toni Morrison’s fiction has frequently attracted critical attention on account of her strategic use of myth (whether classical or Afrocentric) and symbols. This paper examines the role that horses have, as rhetorical constructs, in strengthening the mythical and symbolic unity of her tenth novel Home (2012). Horses have figured widely in the articulation of African American history and letters, often serving as symbols of the abused slaves upon whose bodies the equipment and instruments of oppression and bondage were violently placed. Within Morrison’s cornucopia of animal imagery, their presence is essential for an understanding of the rituals that are so much a part of the novel’…

On Long-Lasting Humanimal Friendships: Gayness, Aging, and Disease in Lily and the Octopus

This paper analyzes the significance and structural development of the theme of aging in Steven Rowley’s debut novel, the bestselling Lily and the Octopus (2016), a narrative that extends and reinvents the literary approach to manhood through alternate forms of humanimal relations. The novel intersects postmodern conceptions of madness, grief, loneliness, intimacy, and death through a tragicomic exploration of the symmetry between an unlikely (insofar as literary tradition goes) couple: Ted, a gay white male in his early forties, and his senior female dachshund, Lily. As signs of the end of Lily’s life are fleshed out by the cancerous “octopus” that chokes her brain, Ted inadvertently paral…

Tiger King and the Exegesis of COVID-19 Media Coverage of Nonhuman Animals

Beginning with the premise that the media participates in the manufacturing of the societal consent that enables and perpetuates the systematized exploitation of nonhuman animals, this article explores how media coverage of such nonhuman animals (and of wildlife in particular) during the COVID-19 crisis may influence our consumption of popular entertainment in a way that centralizes the discussion on the implications of established speciesist practices. I specifically focus on the impact of the first season of Netflix’s successful docuseries Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem, and Madness, directed by Eric Goode and Rebecca Chaiklin, which was released in March 2020, a key moment in the world…

Pit Bulls and Dogfighting as Symbols of Masculinity in Hip Hop Culture

This article explores the aesthetic and cultural connections between the hyper-masculinization inherent to hip hop culture (and particularly to gangsta rap), the pit bull dog breed, and dogfighting. Building on recent scholarship that has identified the racial and racist assumptions underlying the pit bull controversy, I provide further evidence and arguments on how the highly racialized and genderized hip hop discourses inoculate the pit bull body and suffuse it with multiple meanings reminiscent of America’s traumatic encounter with otherness. As a palimpsest that attests to both mainstream and countercultural explorations of racialized masculinities, the pit bull body is made to “perfor…

Zoomasculinities: At the Intersection Between Animals, Animality, and Masculinity