Aspects of Metamorphosis: Fictional Representations of the Becoming Human (review)

THE COMPAKATIST pression that break out ofthe bounds offamiliar communication, moving toward glossolalia, embodied pre-speech, or child semiotics (e.g., Beloved's interior language in Morrison's novel ofthat title, or Sula's language ofjouissance in SuIa). These and other examples are evoked also in the last chapter on bell hooks to illustrate relatively successful articulations ofracial and sexual traumas in black women 's fiction but also the cooperation between the therapeutic function ofretrieving memories and the ethical function ofcommunity (195). Such instances ofprocessoriented , performative literary discourse come closest to embodying intuitively what Ziarek means by a feminist ethics ofdissensus that emerges "from a complex negotiationbetween the hegemonic articulation ofthe multiple forms ofantagonism and the ethical responsibility grounded in embodiment" (116). Marcel Comis-PopeVirginia Commonwealth University DAVID BARRY DESMOND ASKER.Aspects ofMetamorphosis: Fictional Representations oftheBecoming Human. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2001. viii + 170 pp. Many will be familiar with Dan Siegel's now classic film, Invasion ofthe Body Snatchers. This work, as well as many others ofthe same genre, deals with the loss ofhumanity and its nightmarish consequences. D.B.D. Asker's concern is the exact opposite. In his Aspects ofMetamorphosis: FictionalRepresentations ofthe Becoming Human, he investigates the possibility of our becoming more human. Asker uses Deleuze and Guattari's concept of"the becoming human" as a frame within which he explores literary texts in order to do justice to the universal imperative that "we must inescapably involve animals in our ethical universe" (160). Implicit in his project is that ifwe do not heed this imperative, we risk being no more human than those who were invaded by the alien pods in the 1956 science fiction film. Asker's book is short, yet ambitious. Despite its brevity, it does contain a Works Cited list, as well as an index. Insofar as the title contains "metamorphosis," it is somewhat misleading, for the reader may expect to encounter famous writers and their texts, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses, Apuleius' 7Ae Golden Ass, or Kafka 's Metamorphosis. Such expectations will be disappointed. Asker adopts a much broader definition ofmetamorphosis, which goes beyond texts that are metamorphic in the traditional sense, i.e. works in which "one animal or human form changes literally into another" (vii). Instead oftreating such works, Asker adopts any text for his purposes "in which an animal-human blending is presented so forcefully as to assist in some shift ofa major theme" (vii). Put differently, Asker looks at ways in which human and animal realities can be blended without one necessarily and literally changing into the other. In many ofthe texts he discusses, it suffices that a human being or human beings spend much time in the company of animals. The literal metamorphosis, according to Asker, is only "one extreme option" (139). Alternative approaches "employ a different kind of symbolic and psychological treatment" (139). As a consequence, Asker includes in his investigation such works as Dr. Doolittle and Nicholas Evans' popular novel, 7Ae Horse Whisperer. In neither work do we encounter metamorphosis, or a literal transformation of any kind. Yet Asker includes them on the grounds that the protagonist's ability to understand and communicate with animals draws the reader to a "forceful VcH. 27 (2003): 177 REVIEWS shift of attention," in which the major theme becomes the fact that humans and animals share a single reality, are part ofa single ecosystem. Asker himselfsuggests that the phrase "[l]iterary species-blending" (vii) describes his undertaking much better than "metamorphosis." The first and last chapters are the most important, because they explain the author's argument. By the same token, these two chapters also reveal the book's limitations. In the first chapter, "Introduction: Metamorphosis as a Social Construct ," Asker maps out in very clear and succinct prose what he wishes to accomplish . The fundamental impetus which drives the text is "the notion that we are unable to understand what it means to be human without having had experience of the non-human, in literary form" (2). The non-human experience in literary form, of course, can be found in metamorphosis texts. Voluntarily confining himself to prose texts only, Asker analyzes metamorphosis texts to show how they "provide a way ofconstructing...