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Of Pregnancy and Dairy Cows: Entanglements of Materiality, Pregnancy and the Farmed Animal in Helena Granström’s ”Skördebrev”

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Published/Copyright: May 4, 2019

Abstract

This article centres on the literary representation of the pregnant body in the short story Skördebrev by Helena Granström. The short story interlocks the narration of the pregnant experience with narration from the perspective of a dairy cow on a farm, thus negotiating the dominating discourses surrounding farmed animals and human pregnancy. The article investigates these matters by discussing the relations between the characters, the farmed animals and the farmed landscape as portrayed in the short story, and in doing this, examines what the relations convey about the portrayal of human, non-human and pregnant corporeality and identity in the text. It does this using Stacy Alaimo’s term trans-corporeality, Karen Barad’s notions of intra-action and Ann-Sofie Lönngren’s adaption of this theory to literary analysis.

The article suggests that the text offers an understanding of the material situatedness of the literary pregnant subject and the dairy cow as partly shared and argues that it shows the potential of literary representation to articulate these intersecting positions. In doing this, it suggests that the text negotiates the societal power structures that are at play in the Western cultural understanding of pregnancy as well as in the farming environment, in an ethical and political manner.

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Published Online: 2019-05-04
Published in Print: 2019-04-24

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

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