Edward Carpenter Beyond the Human

Primarily remembered for his pioneering writings on LGBT+ liberation and his participation in fin-de-siècle socialism and feminism, Sheffield-based essayist, poet and campaigner Edward Carpenter’s (1844-1929) views on nonhuman animals have only recently begun to be critically explored. This thesis contributes the first systematic, dedicated overview of his more-than-human writings; from a literary animal studies perspective, it appraises the liberatory potentiality of his pro-animal activism and thought in reaching beyond the human. Through detailed archival research – including previously unexplored material – it enriches scholarly understanding of the thematic significance which pro-animal issues hold across Carpenter’s prolific oeuvre, part of extensive late-nineteenth-century debates on human-animal relations. Fostering a global perspective attentive to connections between his engagement with animality and his views on colonialism, race, and Eastern philosophy, it demonstrates that focalising nonhuman animals deepens broader scholarly understanding of Carpenter’s ideas.

Part I: Practice explores Carpenter’s animal advocacy – particularly through his work with the interspecies campaigning group The Humanitarian League (1891-1919) – via his antivivisectionism and pro-vegetarianism. Part II: Theory probes the interspecies politics of Carpenter’s systematically expressed, vitalist philosophical framework, a tripartite teleology rooted in humanity’s original unity with, subsequent alienation from, and predicted reconvention with nature. Chapter Three explores Carpenter’s synthesis of various contemporaneous evolutionary theories to emphasise the shared life and unity underpinning all beings, comparing this with contemporary vitalist-inspired philosophical and literary thought. Responding to an emergent tension between these unitary assertions of interspecies simultaneity and Carpenter’s simultaneous attempts to preserve human superiority and typified categories of difference, Chapter Four advances concentric circles as a spatial framework for critically conceptualising his more than-human thought.

An extended conclusion argues that, despite the humanist limitations these latter considerations pose to his thinking beyond the human, more-than-human possibilities emerge from applying deconstructive approaches to Carpenter’s work. Highlighting resemblances between deconstruction and Carpenter’s theory of the continuous ‘exfoliation’ of ossified social forms, I represent exfoliation as a spiral. As a movement of excess beyond existing spatio-temporal boundaries, the spiral offers a compelling tool for thinking beyond Carpenter’s humanist critical paradigm, re-accessing the visionary utopianism which constitutes his most generative contribution to the pursuit of interspecies justice.