Fiction’s Swarm - The Creation(s) of Animals at the End(s) of Nature

Aug 21, 2026

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Fiction’s Swarm: The Creation(s) of Animals at the End(s) of Nature examines how literary, historical, and scientific portrayals of animal life shape human interaction through two persistent frames: animals as “objects” driven by instinct and as “persons” sharing human traits. Rather than treating these categories as inherent truths, the dissertation argues that entangled interactions among humans, animals, ideologies, and technologies determine what animals become. It analyzes four animal-narrative genres to study power, control of life and death, and the unexpected possibilities that emerge amid mass suffering.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryLiterature

FormatPDF

Pages163

Reading Time4 h 11 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction: Rethinking animal life beyond object/person frameworks

Chapter 1: The Hunting Genre

Melville, Patterson, Akeley, Faulkner, Vann

Chapter 2: The Fecund Dystopia Genre

Sinclair, Pachirat, Atwood, LePan, Coetzee

UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Fiction’s Swarm: The Creation(s) of Animals at the End(s) of Nature Permalink [https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7b36751g](https://escholarship.org/uc/item/7b36751g) Author Tomasula y Garcia, Alba Publication Date 2023 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation [eScholarship.org](eScholarship.org) Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Fiction’s Swarm The Creation(s) of Animals at the End(s) of Nature By Alba Tomasula y Garcia A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Donna Jones, Chair Professor Cathryn Carson Professor Abdul JanMohamed Professor Mark Goble Spring 2023 1 Abstract Fiction’s Swarm: The Creation(s) of Animals at the End(s) of Nature by Alba Tomasula y Garcia Doctor of Philosophy in English University of California, Berkeley Professor Donna Jones, Chair My dissertation is concerned with the consequences of how literary, historical, and scientific representations of animal life tend to depict our fellow creatures through two static frameworks: as either “object”(i.e., a machine-like entity that runs purely on pre-programmed instinct) or as “person”(i.e., a being that shares all the same traits as we humans) . All critique notwithstanding, these tenacious frameworks significantly shape how we interact with living beasts. In contrast to these frameworks, I propose that it is more productive to start from the assumption that it is the entangled interactions between humans, animals, ideologies, and technologies that influence not what animals “inherently” are, but what they, like us, continually become. My dissertation, then, places literature’s beasts at a critical locus within these entanglements, and is composed of four chapters, each dedicated to a different genre of animal narrative: The Hunting Genre; The Fecund Dystopia Genre; The Melancholy Conservation Genre; and the Lively Catastrophe Genre. While my primary texts are not exhaustive of these broadly defined genres, they do serve as fruitful examples of what sorts of animal narratives—and what sorts of animal realities—may emerge from a reimagining of “fiction’s swarm.”Through them, I hope to achieve two objectives: first, to closely analyze a few specific cases of how animals—in both fictional and nonfictional narratives—are used by systems of power to control, determine, and end life on individual, landscape-wide, and global scales. And secondly, to explore how even within the mass suffering and death that the control of life requires, the interactions between humans and non-humans often develop significant and surprising means through which to enact the potentialities that some narratives deny, and others celebrate. I begin my dissertation with the Hunting Genre, analyzing works that are both autobiographical and “strictly” fictional but which all focus on a consequential struggle to the death between a highly individualized human and a highly individualized animal. I begin with Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick (1851) and interpret it as an early, important, simultaneous critique and idealization of hunting, as it is a work defined by both its praise for hunters as well as its painful awareness of the purely economic factors driving hunts for large animals under capitalism. This is followed by two autobiographical accounts, J.H. Patterson’s The Man-eaters of Tsavo (1907) and Carl Akeley’s In Brightest Africa (1923), for these books present a startling shift in attitudes towards hunting, from a firm belief in its necessity to agony over the extinctionsit begets. I next discuss the literary presentations of hunting in William Faulkner’s Go Down, Moses (1942) for its focus on the struggle between the supposed nobility of hunting in the midst

FAQs

What central idea does the dissertation challenge about how animals are portrayed?

It challenges the idea that animal life should be understood mainly through static “object” and “person” frameworks, arguing instead for a view shaped by entangled interactions among humans, animals, ideologies, and technologies.

How is the dissertation organized?

It is composed of four chapters, each dedicated to a different genre of animal narrative: The Hunting Genre, The Fecund Dystopia Genre, The Melancholy Conservation Genre, and The Lively Catastrophe Genre.

What is analyzed in the Hunting Genre chapter?

It analyzes works focused on consequential struggles between highly individualized humans and highly individualized animals, including Melville’s Moby-Dick and autobiographical accounts such as The Man-eaters of Tsavo and In Brightest Africa, followed by later literary treatments like Go Down, Moses and Goat Mountain.

Aug 21, 2026

Upload by Quinn