Challenging Anthropocentrism: Saki’s Use of Animism in His “Sredni Vashtar”

Abstract

Despite their close relationships since the earliest times, human beings have always marginalised and exploited animals due to the anthropocentric mind-set. Derived from the Greek word anthropos, which stands for human, anthropocentrism privileges human beings as the centre of the universe by marginalising all other life forms. Since such an approach justifies itself by privileging human beings due to their agentic capabilities, and by denying the agency of more-than-humans, anthropocentrism legitimises the ruthless use of natural resources and animal species as a means to human needs. Contrary to anthropocentrism, however, an animistic belief acknowledges soul and agency not only in human beings but also in more-than-humans; and therefore, appreciates their intrinsic values. Despite the dominant anthropocentric ideology of his time, the Edwardian short story writer Hector Hugh Munro (1870-1916), who writes his work with the penname Saki, evinces his sensitivities to the exploitation of animals in most of his short stories by challenging the anthropocentric viewpoint. Saki’s direct challenge to anthropocentrism manifests itself with his use of animism in his “Sredni Vashtar,” where the author problematises the notions of human and animal by blurring the boundaries between them through the child protagonist Conradin’s formulation of an animistic religion with an animal god. Accordingly, the main objective of this article is to discuss how Saki challenge anthropocentrism, and tends to step outside of the traditions and dominant norms of his society by incorporating an animistic view into his “Sredni Vashtar.”

Authors and Affiliations

Adem BALCI

Keywords

Related Articles

Unıversity Students' Presentation of Self on Instagram

This study is based on Instagram, an interactive social media network for visual posting created with Web 2.0 technology. The practices of university students who are active Instagram users were examined in this study fr...

Elsa Morante and Arthur's Island

Arturo's Island written by the famous Italian woman writer of the XX. century Elsa Morante respects her life vision and literature understanding by observing everyting from the point of view of children woman and man in...

Parents' Emotion Socialization Practices and Emotional and Social Development in Early Childhood

The aim of this review is to examine parents' emotion socialization practices, which play an important role in the emotional and social competence of their children during early childhood. Emotional socialization occurs...

Public Libraries as a Social Culture Institution: A Situation Map of Çankırı Public Libraries in Terms of Facilities and Services

The phenomena of development and change, increased with the impact of information technologies, has led to the 21st century being referred to as the "Information Age" and the societies fulfilling the requirements of this...

Construction of a Likert-Type Transformational Leadership Scale

The aim of the current study1 is to develop a free-access valid Likert-type measure to assess transformational leadership. Following a preliminary study involving literature reviews and interviews with 20 employees and 1...

Download PDF file
  • EP ID EP617393
  • DOI 10.33171/dtcfjournal.2018.58.1.14
  • Views 93
  • Downloads 0

How To Cite

Adem BALCI (2018). Challenging Anthropocentrism: Saki’s Use of Animism in His “Sredni Vashtar”. Ankara Üniversitesi Dil ve Tarih-Coğrafya Fakültesi Dergisi, 58(1), 270-282. https://europub.co.uk./articles/-A-617393