The City as the Anthropos-scene in Shaun Tan’s Picture Book Tales from the Inner City: Interspecies encounters
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.46516/inmaterial.v10.219Keywords:
picture book, Shaun Tan, Anthropocene, Tales from the Inner CityAbstract
In this paper I focus on how the stories that make up the picture book Tales from the Inner City by Shaun Tan (2018) contribute to moving us away from the anthropocentric paradigm, which conceives human beings – the anthropos – always at the centre of the scene, the anthropo-scene. This is achieved through “inter-species-trans-creation” (Carretero-González), prompting the reader to bond with other species, inviting city dwellers to pay close attention, like scientists and poets do, which would constitute an antidote to the Anthropocene, by decentring human positionality as city dwellers. This can occur through an invitation to ponder how we have abused and affected other living beings, or other types of stories that invite us to contemplate the possibility of more virtuous and generative relationships. Tan’s tales have the capacity to elicit collaboration, community, inter- and intra-species encounters, as well as the capacity to decentre the human city dweller. Tan balances the combination of text and image to achieve an immersive and reflective reading experience, as well as deploying other picturebook strategies, such as turning the page, which elicits surprise and expectation.
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