A weird tea and other animals

“Tigrela”, by Lygia Fagundes Telles, and the Critical Animal Studies

Abstract

Usually connoted to the Fantastic genre, a part of Lygia Fagundes Telles’ short stories can, however, be reread from the perspective of Critical Animal Studies. The recent passing of the writer, also culminating in initiatives such as the one from Companhia das Letras, with the full publication of her short stories (2018), leads to a resumption of her work. The animal turnover, starting point of the lead reflections, take precedence, first, for questioning the centrality granted to the human animal, particularly in the Western culture and specially since Modern times. The Antrhopocene Epoch is characterized precisely by this authoritarian imposition of human needs and desires in the face of rights arising from other forms of life. The analysis of the short story “Tigrela”, of Seminário dos ratos (1977), intends to observe meanings beyond the mere animalization contained in the evocation of the protagonist and to perceive in Lygia’s writing a game between the figurations of non-metaphorical animals (FERRREIRA, 2005), which is close to some creations of João Guimarães Rosa and Clarice Lispector. Read today by Critical Animal Studies, both Rosa’s and Clarice’s texts elucidate a possible and even desired relation between human and non-human animals, based on an awareness of the subaltern role played by the non-human beings in our imagination. The reading of the text has also the theoretical foundation based on the concept of becoming (DELEUZE; GUATTARI, 2012) and the apprehensions of female anti-speciesism, in addition to the critical considerations of Gabriel Giorgi and Julieta Yelin.