Interspecies Literature: Clarice Lispector's Zoophytographia

Abstract

This essay analyzes the role plants and animals play in Clarice Lispector’s work. I argue that Lispector often stages a face-to-face encounter with non-humans to trigger a process of defamiliarization, whereby our anthropocentric values and norms come undone. I discuss exemples of this encounter in short stories from Laços de Família and in the novel A Paixão segundo G.H. In these works, Lispector reflects upon concepts we usually take for granted, such as reason or language, a process that results in a profound transformation and extension of these concepts to our non-human others.