“I thought, Therefore I must Exist”: Authorship and Animality in Memoirs of a Porcupine, by Alain Mabanckou

Abstract

The story of Memoirs of a porcupine consists in confessions made by a porcupine to a baobab about his life and the crimes he has committed in the name of his human master Kibandi. Openly announcing his animality, the porcupine mocks human classificatory and generalist practices and standards, mobilizing several elements that call into question certain binaries such as culture and nature, animate and inanimate beings, as well as the very inadequacy of such classifications with respect to animal diversity and complexity. This article analyses the ways in which this animal autobiography calls us to rethink concepts such as human and non-human, the categorization in specific and well-limited literary genres, science’s dominant paradigm and the relationship between reality and fiction, with significant implications for examining the relations between human and non-human.