Emotions and Non-Human Animals in Contemporary Literature From the “Francophonies of the North” and Beyond | Metacritic Journal | janv. 2026

« Emotions and Non-Human Animals in Contemporary Literature From the “Francophonies of the North” and Beyond », Diana Mistreanu, Andrei Lazar (dir.), Metacritic Journal for Comparative Studies and Theory, Cluj (Roumanie)
Rats laugh when tickled – a fact established by Jaak Panksepp (1943-2017), one of the founders of affective neuroscience, the proponent, since the late 1990s, of the seven core emotional systems existent across the mammalian brain, namely SEEKING, CARE, PLAY, LUST, FEAR, RAGE, PANIC / GRIEF (Affective Neuroscience, Affective Consciousness, Basic), and the world’s most famous rat tickler (Hook, Affective). Despite the decades that have passed since Panksepp’s pioneering work, and notwithstanding research across fields such as ethology, anthropology, and ecological philosophy – including the famous contributions of Frans de Waal and Jane Goodall, along with recent reflections by Corine Pelluchon, Baptiste Morizot, and Vinciane Despret, among others – the capacity of animals to emote often remains an elusive idea. This is attributable both to deeply rooted, hierarchical, and speciesist anthropocentric worldviews that reduce animals to machines in the Cartesian tradition – denying them agency and depriving them of an inner life – and to a still insufficient understanding of the nature, qualia, and implications of animal mental activity. Indeed, having been long ignored, devalued, deliberately forgotten, or even dismissed as non-existent within Western culture, the emotions of non-human animals have recently become a significant subject of enquiry across multiple disciplines, from the sciences of the mind to the environmental humanities. Their collective aim is to study animals’ mental processes and their capacity to feel, thereby building both knowledge and awareness. This project seeks, on the one hand, to restore the cognitive complexity that the human imagination has denied to other animals, and on the other, to foster greater human consideration for animals whose environment we have a responsibility to protect (Pelluchon, Éthique, Réparons, Manifeste).
Diana MISTREANU, Andrei LAZĂR
Introduction: Rat Laughter and its (Literary) Implications. Fiction and the Affective
Lives of Non-Human Animals ……………………..…………………………………………………… 4
Paul-Mihai PARASCHIV
“Something More in the Beasts than Movement”: Condillac’s Traité des animaux and
the Grounds of Testimonial Kinship ………………………………………………………………… 17
Bieke WILLEM
Maeterlinck’s Non-Human Allies. On the Love of Dogs in Belgian Literature …….… 41
Catherine GRAVET, Delphine COPPIN
The Depiction of Dogs in the Works of Francophone Belgian Novelists (Simenon,
Muno, and Bertin) …………………………………………………………………………………………. 60
Sophie VANDEVEUGLE
Feeling or Rejecting “Humanimal” Emotions: the Place of Liminal and So-Called
Slaughter Animals in the Works of Caroline Lamarche and Gil Bartholeyns ……..… 78
Vera GAJIU
Emotional Eco-Maternity and the Sovereignty of Animal Feeling: Decolonial Kinship
in Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau’s Works ……………………………………………………..… 95
Adrienne ANGELO
Becoming Hare: Emotional Hybridity and Ecological Precarity in Mireille Gagné’s Le
Lièvre d’Amérique ……………………………………………………………………………………..… 120
Hervé GOERGER
Becoming-Crow with Jean-François Beauchemin ………………………………………..…. 146
Vincent LECOMTE
Images of the Monkey in the Works of Jean-Jacques Grandville and Pierre Huyghe:
The Educated Beast or the Expert Chimera? ……………………………………………….….. 162
Thibault DE MEYER, Who Has Seen the Zebra? The Invention of the Animal
Perspective [Qui a vu le zèbre ? L’invention de la perspective animale], Les Liens qui
Libèrent, 2024
Review by Maria SIMOTA ……………………………………………………………………….. 178
Évelyne GROSSMAN, L’Art du déséquilibre [The Art of Imbalance], Les Éditions de
Minuit, 2025
Review by Ilinca PELEA ……………………………………………………………………….…. 183
OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
vincentlecomte (5 janvier 2026). Emotions and Non-Human Animals in Contemporary Literature From the “Francophonies of the North” and Beyond | Metacritic Journal | janv. 2026. Animots. Consulté le 8 mars 2026 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/15geh










