A material reading of Brenda Peterson's "Animal Heart"

Abstract

This article analyzes the topic of xenotransplantation in American author Brenda Peterson’s novel Animal Heart (2004). The transplanting of a baboon heart into a human patient is analyzed as a case of boundary crossing where the dualisms human/animal and spirit/matter are dismantled. Such a process challenges modern techno-science’s use of human and nonhuman bodies, proposing instead a worldview where matter and its associated terms — animal and body — are reanimated by the practice of panpsychic and animist-relational epistemologies. In light of such a reanimation of matter, this article uses the framework of material ecocriticism to focus on the baboon heart’s nonhuman agentic capacities, which the novelist describes in a way that illustrates the liberating power of literature.