Desire in a Time of Extinction

This article examines human–animal relationships through strange intimacies between humans and taxidermied animals in two contemporary French novels: the (post)apocalyptic novel Sans l’orang-outan [Without the Orangutan] by Éric Chevillard (2007) and the climate fiction La fonte des glaces [The Melting Ice] by Joël Baqué (2017). The intimate relationships with taxidermied animals presented in the two novels depict a human urge to connect with disappearing species. The strange intimacy with taxidermy represents human alienation from nonhuman cohabitants and the destructive impulse that drives the anthropogenic extinction. Reading the two novels within a posthumanist framework sheds light on the anthropocentric narratives of human power over nature and their effect on nonhuman species. In analyzing how taxidermy is staged as a present–absent object in the two novels, this article puts posthumanist theories in dialogue with psychoanalysis.