“Eating and Resurrecting the Goats: Animal bodies, death, and Western cultural practices”

According to Norse mythology, two male goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr, pull Thor’s chariot. Once they have completed their labor, these animals can be eaten and resuscitated thereafter, in order to feed their god in an infinite loop of animal servitude. This myth epitomizes the focus of this dissertation, which will engage with the ways in which Western societies and culture negotiate animal depth and engage with the materiality of the animal body. This dissertation explores this relationship by focusing on the representation and cultural digestion of the animal body, specifically on the instances in which animal bodies are, like in the Norse myth, “brought back to life,” in order to serve human needs. Once dead, their bodies are rearranged-as in the case of taxidermy -so that’s Ann illusion of life can be represented to serve human needs-of knowledge and education, wonder and discovery, entertainment, and amusement. Consequently, this research focuses on how the animal body is used to mediate its own loss, in what seems to be a system created for human pleasure.

Alessia Cecchet is an experimental filmmaker and PhD candidate whose work is invested in the representation of non-human animals.

Friday Forum for Graduate Research is supported by the Graduate Student Association, the Humanities Institute, and the following departments HAVC, Literature, History of Consciousness, Psychology, and Education. It is a weekly interdisciplinary colloquium series for sharing graduate research across the humanities.