Living Knowledges: Empirical Science and the Non-Human Animal in Contemporary Literature

In contribution to recent challenges made by animal studies regarding humanist approaches in empirical science, this thesis offers a critical analysis of contemporary literary fiction and its representations of the non-human animal and the human and non-human animal encounters and relations engendered within the scientific setting. This is achieved through a focusing in on four different scientific situations: cognitive ethological field research, long-term cognitive behavioural studies, short-term comparative psychology experimentations, and invasive surgical practices. Subdivisions of scientific investigation selected for their different methodological procedures which directly dictate the situational circumstance and experience of non-human animals involved to produce particular kinds of knowledges on them.