"Real" Stuffed Animals: Rabbit Tales in the Anthropocene
Title and/or Affiliation
Seoul National University
Presenter Bio
Jiwon Rim specializes in the study of animal ethics in twentieth-century Anglophone culture. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on the ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic construction of the animal in "cute" animal books for children. She earned a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of Pittsburgh in 2021. She currently teaches at Seoul National University.
Session
Panel: Reading Classics through Other Eyes
Location
Zoom
Start Date
8-7-2022 2:45 PM
End Date
8-7-2022 4:00 PM
Abstract
Against common sense and intuition, Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit (1922) makes the predicament of the stuffed toy rabbit feel real. How can the stuffed animal be as real as flesh-and-blood rabbits in the wild? Taking seriously The Velveteen Rabbit’s claim that its story of the toy rabbit is an account of the real animal, this chapter proposes to read The Velveteen Rabbit as a valid record of the historical reality of commodified animals of the twentieth century. I begin by placing both wild rabbits and toy rabbits in the history of the technological domination and violent molding of animal bodies. The stuffed toy rabbit is not a fake animal that has nothing to do with the real animal, but one of the animal products of the all-encompassing system of animal commodification, as is the image of the authentic wild animal.
"Real" Stuffed Animals: Rabbit Tales in the Anthropocene
Zoom
Against common sense and intuition, Margery Williams’s The Velveteen Rabbit (1922) makes the predicament of the stuffed toy rabbit feel real. How can the stuffed animal be as real as flesh-and-blood rabbits in the wild? Taking seriously The Velveteen Rabbit’s claim that its story of the toy rabbit is an account of the real animal, this chapter proposes to read The Velveteen Rabbit as a valid record of the historical reality of commodified animals of the twentieth century. I begin by placing both wild rabbits and toy rabbits in the history of the technological domination and violent molding of animal bodies. The stuffed toy rabbit is not a fake animal that has nothing to do with the real animal, but one of the animal products of the all-encompassing system of animal commodification, as is the image of the authentic wild animal.
Comments
Moderated by Lisa Rowe Fraustino