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Humanimality

by Erika Capovilla

Overview

Emerging at the crossroads of animal studies and posthumanist theory, humanimality is a critical term denoting the fluid, porous, and contested interspace between humanity and animality. By destabilizing entrenched ontological, ethical, and epistemological binaries – human/animal, nature/culture, subject/object –, this neologism foregrounds profound relational entanglements and ethical continuities across species, resonating with Donna Haraway’s notion of sympoiesis. Conceptually related to the ‘human/animal boundary’ (Mensch/Tier-Grenze), which in Germanspeaking debates often underscores moral, legal, or cognitive distinctions between species, humanimality has primarily gained traction in Anglophone literature and cultural theory, emphasizing performative, identity-oriented, and interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., queer theory, postcolonial studies, affect theory); only recently has it begun to appear in German-language scholarship (Harel 2020; Sommerfeld 2024) as a calque from English (Humanimalität).

Historical and Critical Background

From Johann Gottfried Herder through Friedrich Nietzsche to Peter Sloterdijk, Western thought has repeatedly challenged the ontological and moral legitimacy of a strict dichotomy that elevates humans as exclusively rational, cultural, and unique, while relegating nonhuman animals to the realm of instinct, nature, and presumed cognitive inferiority. Over the past decades, this critique has intensified alongside broader reappraisals of humanist thought. Posthumanist approaches, in particular, have explicitly problematized the anthropocentric and egocentric models of classical humanism, calling for a discursive reconfiguration of the very notion of the ‘human’ – one that integrates marginalized nonhuman perspectives, interests, and beings. Growing emphasis is placed on the biological, ecological and technological co-existence of humans with more-than-human entities (animals, plants, bacteria, machines). This relational ontology – conceptualized as sympoiesis (Haraway 2016) – underpins renewed ethical frameworks rooted in multispecies encounters and transformative imaginaries. This framework also encompasses the epistemological shift commonly referred to as the ‘animal turn’, which describes the expanding scholarly interest in nonhuman animals and their entanglements with human societies across disciplines. Moving beyond biology, this focus has entered the humanities and social sciences, fostering interdisciplinary fields such as Animal studies and Human-animal studies (Jaeger 2020). Literary studies have responded with the emergence of Literary (human-)animal studies, a subfield exploring the representation and significance of nonhuman animals and their connection with humans in literary texts. Within this rich conceptual background, humanimality emerges as a potent lens for describing a hybrid zone of embodied entanglement and ecological co-dependence between species, resisting hierarchical ontologies and affirming a more-than-human perspective. Its manifold nuances can be summarized in the following key aspects:

  • The dissolution of the strict human/nonhuman animal-dichotomy, perceived as an anthropocentric construct justifying humans’ dominion over other species, with far-reaching ethical and political implications about interspecies responsibility;
  • The recognition of intersubjectivity, viewing both humans and nonhuman animals alike as active co-creators of shared realities, i.e., as ‘companion species’ (Haraway 2008);
  • An emphasis on shared traits and continuities between species, with particular attention to embodiment and materiality.

Relevance to Environmental Humanities and Germanic Studies Germanic Studies possess a rich and complex intellectual tradition concerning the human-nonhuman animal relationship, with significant peaks of interest in the Romantic era, at the turn of the 20th century, and in contemporary techno-cultural discourse. German literature, accordingly, abounds with works that explore and problematize the porous boundaries between human and nonhuman animals. Within this context, humanimality may serve as both a critical framework and an analytical tool to revisit these traditions and re-read these texts, opening new research pathways. However, for its effective use in literary analysis, clarifying its modes of representation is crucial. Strictly speaking, humanimality refers to hybrid figures that simultaneously bear human and animal traits (e.g., satyrs, centaurs, sphinxes, sirens, minotauri). More broadly, however, it may be extended to any text that interrogates the human-nonhuman animal threshold: through the deconstruction of binaries, the investigation of boundary fluidity, or the emphasis on biological, psychological or behavioral continuity. It thus encompasses all works that somehow challenge a rigid us/them separation – whether by direct, physical means or through subtler philosophical or psychological strategies. Applying humanimality as a critical lens consequently enables an examination of a wide spectrum of scenarios, including:

  1. Hybrid forms: mythological or literary figures that fuse human and nonhuman animal attributes in a varied yet stable, codified way, often symbolizing a tension between rationality and instinct. Examples include Serpentine in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s Romantic novella Der goldne Topf (The Golden Vase, 1814), who oscillates between the form of a green snake and a beautiful maiden, and the narrator of Franz Kafka’s Bericht für eine Akademie (A Report to an Academy, 1917), an ape that adopts human behavior to survive captivity, resulting not just in a biological, but also in a cultural hybrid.
  2. Metamorphic forms: temporary or permanent transformations between species, showcasing identity’s fluidity and the fragility of boundaries. Classic examples appear in the Kinder- und Haus-Märchen (Children’s and Household Tales, 1812–1815) of the Brothers Grimm, with princes turned into frogs by witches, brother transformed into deer after drinking from an enchanted spring, and kids cursed into ravens by their own mothers; similarly, Kafka dramatizes metamorphosis in his novella Die Verwandlung (The Metamorphosis, 1915), as the traveling salesman Gregor Samsa transforms overnight into monstrous vermin while retaining human consciousness, creating a poignant tension between species.
  3. Other relational forms: subtler modes of interspecies hybridization, transformation, and entanglement. These include symbiotic moments that challenge the human/animal divide, foregrounding either the animality within humans or the humanity in animals: For instance, Patrick Süskind’s novel Das Parfum. Die Geschichte eines Mörders (Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, 1985) depicts a protagonist driven by primal, animalistic violence rather than human empathy, while Kafka’s novella Forschungen eines Hundes (Investigations of a Dog, 1922) is narrated through the perspective of a philosophically reflective dog. Other texts feature multispecies alliances and cohabitation, subverting anthropocentric hierarchies through profound connections with more-than-human entities, especially nonhuman animals: in Marlen Haushofer’s novel Die Wand (The Wall, 1963), human survival in a post-apocalyptic setting hinges on symbiotic coexistence with animals, whereas Christa Wolf in Kassandra (Cassandra,1983) emphasizes shared oppression through the protagonist’s relationship with mares; though not primarily focused on human-nonhuman animal cohabitation, a growing emphasis on ecosystemic interdependence can also be observed in various contemporary novels, such as in Jenny Erpenbeck’s Heimsuchung (Visitation, 2008) and Ulrike Draesner’s Sieben Sprünge vom Rand der Welt (2014).

Some works additionally engage in metacritical reflection on the human/animal boundary itself, as in Teresa Präauer’s Tier werden (Becoming Animal, 2018), which draws on Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of Tier-Werden (‘becoming-animal’, 1980) to interrogate the cultural-historical construction of this divide. Here, hybridization emerges not only as a subject of inquiry, but also in the text’s own fusion of narrative, aesthetic reflection, and cultural critique. In these works, animals function not merely as symbols or narrative devices, but rather as active agents in moral, political and affective economies: They embody trauma, mediate memory, catalyze ecological consciousness, and shape human subjectivities – a dynamic commonly referred to as ‘animal agency’. Humanimality thus intersects with zoopoetics, an ecocritical literary approach foregrounding animal agency and expression, which resists allegorical reductions and simplistic anthropomorphism by interrogating the sociohistorical conditions shaping the human/animal divide. By challenging anthropocentric and disciplinary boundaries, humanimality encourages a productive cross-pollination of literary studies, philosophy, ethology, and environmental thought. It fosters a renewed ethical imagination attentive to multispecies coexistence, care, and interdependence, offering alternative, non-anthropocentric models of reality. As such, it provides a versatile framework for reinterpreting both canonical and non-canonical texts in the German literary tradition, illuminating how human and nonhuman animal agencies co-emerge and entangle in fluid identities. Ultimately, it contributes to understanding how ideas about human-nonhuman animal relations have shaped – and continue to shape – public discourse, policy and activism.

References 

  • Calarco, Matthew, Zoographies: The Question of the Animal from Heidegger to Derrida, New York, Columbia University Press, 2008.
  • Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Félix, Mille plateaux [1980], transl. by B. Massumi, A Thousand Plateaus, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1987.
  • Derrida, Jacques, L’animal que, donc, je suis [2006], transl. by D. Wills, The Animal That Therefore I Am, ed. Marie-Louise Mallet, New York, Fordham University Press, 2008.
  • Haraway, Donna J., Staying with the Trouble. Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Durham/London, Duke University Press, 2016.
  • Haraway, Donna J., When Species Meet, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2008.
  • Humanimalia: A Journal of Human-Animal Interface Studies, ed. by Kári Driscoll, Utrecht University, Netherlands (https://humanimalia.org/).
  • Jaeger, Friedrich (Hg.), Menschen und Tiere. Grundlagen und Herausforderungen der Human-Animal Studies, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2020.
  • Harel, Naama, Kafka’s Zoopoetics: Beyond the Human-Animal Barrier, University of Michigan, University of Michigan Press, 2020.
  • Sommerfed, Beate, "Tier-Werden, Pflanze-Werden, Erde-Werden – zur ‘posthumanen Wende’ in Texten der österreichischen Gegenwartsliteratur," in: Wende(n) in Literatur und Kultur: aktuelle Konzeptualisierungen eines Motivs, hrsg.v. Aneta Jachimovicz, Göttingen, V & R unipress, 2024, pp. 211–225.
  • Wolfe, Cary (Hg.), Zoontologies. The Question of the Animal, Minneapolis/London, University of Minnesota Press, 2003.