Secularity, the Animal Other, and the “Fragilized” Text in the Works of Jean-François Beauchemin

Powers, Scott

doi:https://doi.org/10.3828/qs.2020.8

Powers, Scott

Quebec Studies (2020), 69, (1), 109–130.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3828/qs.2020.8
Language: English
Pages: 22

Abstract

This essay draws on secularization theory and animal studies to examine the works of Jean-François Beauchemin as unresolved negotiations between the religious and the secular. The series of tensions between the narrators’ atheistic pragmatism and their attraction to the mystery of animals forms multi-layered narratives consisting of conflicting viewpoints and subject positions in flux. The theme of doubt, rooted in a meta-text that underscores the unescapable anthropomorphism of how we think about animals, presents Beauchemin as a hybrid thinker, a skeptic invested in the numinous.

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Powers, Scott

Quebec Studies