Keep Cats Safe and Save Bird Lives: Ecological Responsibility in Margaret Atwood’s Angel Catbird

Abstract

This thesis examines how Margaret Atwood's graphic novel series Angel Catbird (2016) visually reimagines the relationship between humans and animals in order to make the reader feel ecologically responsible for the well-being of other species. Using Giorgio Agamben’s theory on the anthropological machine and Dominic Pettman’s notion of the humanimalchine as a conceptual framework, the thesis discusses how the comics explore the complex differences and similarities between humans and animals and how they hold humanity accountable for practices of animal abuse. The thesis also examines how the comics reproduce anthropocentric workings of biopolitics by differentiating between the ethical status of pets and rodents as bare life and how the comics fail to give the nonhuman animal a voice on the changes in animal behaviour that the text advocates.