ABSTRACT
Tracy Letts’s 1996 play Bug joins the ranks of many worksdramatic and otherwise-that are unexpectedly activated (I am tempted to say “reanimated”) when seen through the lens of the emerging eld of animal studies. That lens is characterized by a kind of stereoscopy: it reveals the double nature of animal representation, the fact that the animal, which was for so long and so unquestioningly treated as a symbol or metaphor, a stand-in for human ideas and feelings, is now seen to be, and to always have been, also a representative of the real species to which it belongs. Whatever animals may “stand for” in works of art, literature, and lm-and in the art of a self-obsessed species like ours, they will inevitably stand for myriad human concerns-the animal studies framework insists that they also be read as standing for, and signifying about, themselves. Seen thus, the animal gure in art becomes a productive site for the ecological revisionism called for by the accelerating crises of climate change.
