Theorising Loss and the Nonhuman: Melancholia and Trauma in Contemporary Texts

Since Freud’s ‘Mourning and Melancholia’ was published in 1917, many theorists have expanded upon as well as critiqued his work in order to think through questions of grief and subjectivity. In this thesis I argue that such questions are generally framed in relation to the human, and suggest that our contemporary moment is increasingly producing literary texts that are particularly concerned with imagining the relationship between loss and the nonhuman. Following David Eng and David Kazanjian (2002), I use ‘loss’ as a theoretical term that ‘names what is apprehended by discourses and practices of mourning, melancholia, nostalgia, sadness, trauma and depression’, and I argue that this term is able to usefully open up such discourses and practices beyond anthropocentric narratives.