earticle

영어

In Lessing’s On Cats, the narrator describes various cats who have shared the narrator’s life on an African farm and flats or houses in London. Fascinated by domesticated cats, the narrator grows to really love the grey cat, Lufus, and especially El Magnifico. However, the narration reveals that however pleasant and lovely they might be, cats are likely to be abandoned or battered by their previous owners. Even, the narrator decides to neuter and spay her cats for her own sake. With these experiences, the narrator confesses that it is very cruel to do these operations on the silent cats; moreover, she realizes that the cats can suffer bad and wrong treatment. Considering that they are scapegoats controlled by men’s sovereign power, the cats can be represented as Agamben’s bare life which has a double exception that may be killed but not sacrificed, not in the humane world nor in the divine world. There is still controversy about the narration in On Cats, but it is worthy of re-considering Lessing’s message that the narrator counters a tendency among people to destroy cats without thinking. That is, Lessing reminds us of how painful it is to kill animals in this way, and therefore points out our responsibility for the bare life in our society.