Disabilities and Trans-Species Connections in Luis Bernardo Honwana's "We killed Mangy-Dog," Paul Auster's and Helen Humphreys' Wild Dogs

This paper implicitly engages with the homology of disability and animality as it brings together disability studies and animal studies in its analysis of three narratives with "disabled" characters. It suggests new ways of interpreting disability in relation to humans and dogs. Rather than promoting a humanist interpretation which celebrates the agency and autonomy of the individual, the essay argues for a posthumanist reading of common human-animal vulnerabilities via Cary Wolfe's theory of trans-species shared being and via Ato Quayson's theory of literary representations of disabilities. Embodied interconnections with a nonhuman animal "resist" representation as the stories extend human disability into other realms of being, both real and metaphysical. Trans-species entanglements in themselves are border-crossing balancing acts; as thresholds, they proffer conduits to a doubled immanence of human and nonhuman animal. Yet trans-species affiliations between people and dogs who are stigmatised engender a certain narrative of "nervousness" in the stories, all of which end tragically in the death of the characters, both human and animal.