Abstract

In Yoko Tawada’s novel Etüden im Schnee, the lives of three generations of polar bears are intricately intertwined with those of their human companions. As the story unfolds through shifting narrative perspectives between bear and human, intimate bodily encounters occur across species lines that disturb the anthropocentric and heteronormative order. In a critical effort to queer zoopoetics and to approach queer theory from the perspective of the animal, this chapter argues that animals and animality are important metaphorical and material sites of intersectionality.