Agualuza’s Zoo(Po)ethics

Abstract

The works The Book of Chameleons and General Theory of Oblivion, by José Eduardo Agualusa, present animal characters and relations between humans and non-human animals that go against traditional philosophical and interpretative theories, allowing perspectives that break with the notions created by the Cartesian and structuralist matrix theories. Donna Haraway suggested that the cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed, just as the indiscernibility lines created by Agualusa’s characters, which establish an animal (po)ethics and, therefore, cyborg. This paper aims to discuss some of these animal – or animots – occurences in Agualusa’s works.