ABSTRACT
This chapter considers three anti/postcolonial texts—Manto’s “The Dog of Tetwal,” Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth, and Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers—from the standpoint of animalities. Focusing on a dog’s tail’s capacity to signify in Manto’s text, the chapter argues that the establishment of ethical relations between human and animal are predicated on the ways through which humans anthropocentrically attribute meaning/meaninglessness to the signing bodies of animals. Focusing on the “polyvalent-reversible” use of insect metaphors in Fanon and Pontecorvo, the chapter further argues that anticolonial politics can also be read affirmatively through an “animal” dimension. Fanon and Pontecorvo’s texts show how animality is not just a reductive metaphor for dehumanization but a potential herald for alternative imaginaries of biopolitical collectivity.
