Breaking the Divide between Human and Non-Human Animals: Winnie-the-Pooh as a Posthuman Agent.

Abstract

Non-human animals have long been considered as inferior to human society. They are often believed to be wild, emotionless, soulless, and, consequently, disposable. Yet, belittled as they might be, they play a significant role in humans’ everyday life. They appear on multiple levels, from the literary and linguistic spheres to the food on our tables and pests we banned from our houses. Exploring the close relationship between human and non-human creatures is the main goal of human-animal studies. However, by shifting the attention away from the human being and focusing the research on the boundaries that divide them from other animals means to leave the anthropocentric perspective. In so doing, scholars meet the point where human-animal studies connect with posthuman theory. In fact, within the posthuman perspective, the rhetoric of human superiority is significantly de-emphasised, while humans’ right to rule over animals and the environment loses its legitimacy. By making use of the two aforementioned approaches, the purpose of this dissertation is to show how the stuffed animals inhabiting A. A. Milne’s setting of the Hundred Acre Wood in Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner are posthuman beings imbued with human animal symbolism. Milne’s characters are presented to the reader as toys, with a physical body resembling a specific non-human animal, but also as animated creatures endowed with humanness. Breaking the great divide between human and non-human animals, but also the one between the animate and the inanimate, Winnie-the-Pooh and his friends become posthuman agents.