Animal Diplomacy in De ganados y de hombres and Entierre a sus muertos by Ana Paula Maia: towards an Ethics of Consideration

Abstract

This article aims to read the novels De ganados y de hombres (2013) and Entierre a sus muertos (2018), by Ana Paula Maia, based on the concept of animal diplomacy elaborated by Baptiste Morizot. The French philosopher, in Les diplomates (2016), defines animal diplomacy as a new paradigm of relationships between biotic communities, which must be understood in their political nature. The Brazilian writer chooses, in these two novels, to give an account of Edgar Wilson job performance, first as an abattoir stunner and then as the person in charge of removing animal carcasses from a rural highway. Wilson is the agent of an animal diplomacy, in the porous frontier between animals and humans, between a necrocapitalism and an ethics of consideration. After a theorical journey through animal studies form the post-humanist perspective, it will be analyzed, in the works, how Wilson tries to figure the agent of an animal diplomacy, which is inscribed between sacrifice and redemption, in an exploited and abandoned territory.