Moses Becomes a Dog: Abandonment, Spectrality, and Literature in «Tropique de la violence» by Nathacha Appanah

Abstract

In Tropique de la violence, Nathacha Appanah addresses the issue of unaccompanied migrant children in Mayotte through the tragic story of a foundling from the Comorian immigration and a stray dog sharing the condition of abandoned creatures. The article focuses on their forms of friendship, examining, specially with Giorgio Agamben and Achille Mbembé, the liminalities – life/law, life/death, domestic/wild, human/animal – that embed illegal migrations within the image of Abandonment ; and discusses, with Peter Sloterdijk, Pascal Quignard and Anne Simon, the role played by literature  in the interspecific friendship during the adoption period (domestication) and at the moment of the act of rebellion, as well as the ties between literature and the living world.