Morgan Hunn

Abstract: Texts such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Apuleius’ The Golden Ass, and Sjón’s The Blue Fox, which incorporate mythic or folkloric conceptions of animals as being capable of reason and transformations between human and non-humans, demonstrate a kind of mythic unity that may prove instrumental in amending humans’ colonialist attitudes towards animals and being while allowing the distinction between the human and non-human to become a less important element of culture.

By displacing the human/non-human boundary from the center to the periphery of a global, cultural conscious, a more, empathic, and responsible relationship between humans and non-humans can grow. This displacement will allow humans to embrace their similarities to animals without fearing a loss of their own statuses as humans. While unity through similarities is core to this idea, I do not aim to iron out all differences and thereby flatten all categories, as differences between categories can prove invaluable.