Being Out of Time: Animal Gods in Contemporary Extinction Fictions

Abstract

Discusses representations of animal gods in popular and critically successful extinction fictions 'in order to demonstrate why their representations of animal gods deliberately connect specific and historically underrepresented acts of genocide to species extinctions. More precisely, I examine the ways in which nonhuman deities, in the form of animals, become involved in contemporary narratives of the historical demise of ecosystems and societies through a comparative analysis of Hayao Miyazaki's 1997 animated film Mononokehime, translated as Princess Mononoke, and Linda Hogan's 1998 novel Power. Partly historical fictions, these exemplary texts address systematic eradications of indigenous peoples—respectively, the Emishi of northwestern Japan, and the Seminole of the southeastern US—that paved the way for colonial and industrial states.