Silence and animality.

Between the inner experience and the poetics of horror

Abstract

This article analyses the relevance of the animality in poetics that value otherness, silence and writing. Detached from the Romantic and metaphysical tradition, which insist on biologism, animality allows a reconsideration of the regime of emotions, especially negative, in its relationship with the social. The theoretical considerations of Georges Bataille, Jacques Derrida and Giorgio Agamben are the main approaches to the discussion of animality in its relevant and irreducible aspects. Far from being a theme, a metaphor or the pole of negative otherness in the definition of the human, animality – especially in the discursive configurations that value metonymy – emphasizes the importance of the relationship with the other. In some cases of postmodern poetics, such as Cormac McCarthy's texts, the articulation of animality can underline the complexity of the formation of heterotopias and the protagonism of anti-heroes. Animality, by opening the human being to the secret of language and pain, represents, for poets of different cultural contexts, the necessary enigma for the capacity of representation beyond the lyrical and melancholic investigation of the "I". In fact, the production or discovery of knowledge is part of the aesthetic experience open to the different senses, which seeks the effect of the text beyond the violent and demolishing character of the avant-garde perceptual impact. The role of silence in empty places and spacing involves a speculative posture of the reader that puts representations and their relationship with the imaginary and reality at a distance and into play.