A Tale of a Man and His Jackdaws. The Depiction of Animals in Marcel Beyer's Kaltenburg: A Study on the Relationship Between Human and Non-Human in the 'Eco-Fiction of the Ordinary'

In the age of the Anthropocene, human activity is massively altering the composition of biotic communities; other-than-human animal and plant species are increasingly dying out, showing the devastating effects of the anthropo- and egocentric action that human beings exert on their own environment by placing themselves above it, and above nature itself. Focusing on Amitav Ghosh's concept of 'recognition' and the Freudian implications of its 'uncanny' component, as well as on some fundamental concepts taken form literary animal studies, the article aims to examine the abiding presence and aesthetic representation of other-than-human animals in Marcel Beyer's novel Kaltenburg (2008), especially with regard to their human counterpart and their coexistence. Inscribing Kaltenburg in the literary subgenre of ecofiction, specifically in the strand here referred to as 'ecofiction of the ordinary', the goal is to show how the novel and its author fit into a context of contemporary literary voices that contribute to the 'great disclosure' of an ecocritical way of thinking designed to counter the current ecological crisis.