| American short story writer,Lydia Davis’ s short stories are famous for brevity and strong emotional appeals.In 2013,Davis was awarded the Man Booker International Prize,which established her reputation as an important international writer.Most of her short stories feature seemingly insignificant people,things and scenes in daily life,which are somehow put into extraordinary situations.The philosophical speculations implied in these short stories reflect Davis’ s unremitting efforts to persistently explore a better way of living for human beings and thus entail her post-humanistic visions.Taking Lydia Davis’ s twenty-four short stories as research objects,this thesis explores her challenge against the anthropocentrism and traditional ecological ethics as well as her narrative and linguistic strategies to endow the non-human beings,nature and the marginal groups of human beings with subjectivity and volition.Throughout her works,Lydia Davis reinforces her philosophical view of harmonious coexistence between human beings and non-human beings,acknowledging the difference and the significance of every being in the world,and the possibility of building a posthuman symbiosis,where multi-species live in mutual respect and mutual benefit.This thesis consists of three parts.The first part,introduction,offers a general overview of Lydia Davis and her short stories,literature review,theoretical framework and thesis statement.Chapters One,Two and Three compose the main body of this thesis.Chapter One interprets Davis’ s questioning of reason,which is the pillar system of modernism and western metaphysics,exploring how Davis calls into question the long-standing hierarchy of mind over body,sanity over madness in western philosophical and cultural traditions in her short stories.Chapter Two focuses on Davis’ s exposition of human exploitation of nature and animals as well as the hierarchical suppression against woman,examining the effects of the deep-rooted anthropocentrism on both the human and non-human beings in modern and contemporary society.As is known,narrative and linguistic strategies are not neutral and transparent and they carry ideological and political implications.Chapter Three looks into Lydia Davis’ s posthuman poetics,such as her deliberate disturbance of human language,her invention of a metalanguage and her employment of fantastic narratives,demonstrating how Lydia Davis constructs a posthuman utopia where all things on Earth can live in symbiosis through her narrative techniques.The conclusion draws an overall summary and discusses some of the significance of Lydia Davis’ s post-humanistic writing in contemporary times. |
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