This essay begins by summarizing an argument in defense of disciplinarity ("openness from closure") that Cary Wolfe makes in What is Posthumanism? as well as an implicit argument that Wendy Wheeler makes in The Whole Creature: Complexity, Biosemiotics and the Evolution of Culture. Wheeler's implicit claim is that biosemiotic language, which humans share with other biological beings, connects human animals and nonhuman animals on moral and affective grounds. Wolfe's defense of disciplinarity is that literary and cultural studies scholars who engage with the "question of the animal" generate claims which are unique and complement other kinds of interrogations (i.e., scientific) of the moral and affective distinctions between human animals and nonhuman animals. I apply Wolfe's and Wheeler's arguments in an (biosemiotic and posthumanist) ecocritical reading of several works of Australian literature: Nugi Garimara's Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, Robyn Davidson's Tracks, and Xavier Herbert's Capricornia.
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CLC Web: Comparative Literature and Culture 16(4), 10pages
