‘What on earth was he—man or animal?’: Posthuman Permeability in H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau

Authors

  • Anelise Farris Department of Arts and Humanities, College of Coastal Georgia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v9i2.628

Abstract

This article proposes that H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau is a significant posthumanist novel that has been overlooked by scholars in both disability studies and animal studies. Although some attention has been paid to how disability and animality function within the text, the existing scholarship remains fixed on the problematic disability-as-animality metaphor, thus refusing to engage with the more subtle nuances of the work. Consequently, this article moves beyond the surface to instead read the permeability of boundaries – among species and spaces – in Wells’s novel as a positive and imperative call for inclusivity.

Author Biography

Anelise Farris, Department of Arts and Humanities, College of Coastal Georgia

Department of Arts and Humanities, College of Coastal Georgia

Published

2020-07-30

How to Cite

Farris, A. (2020). ‘What on earth was he—man or animal?’: Posthuman Permeability in H.G. Wells’s The Island of Doctor Moreau. Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(2), 130–156. https://doi.org/10.15353/cjds.v9i2.628