HUMAN AND NON-HUMAN ANIMALS IN THE CAPITALOCENE : CALMO'S THE WORKSHOP HEN

This essay expLores the reLationship between anthropomorphism and animaLization in ItaLo Calvino's short story The workshop hen (1958). Through this doubLe narrative movement, the hen and the workers ore reduced to their essentiaL productive function, becoming vulnerable and dispensable in the factory Line. Despite this similarity, it is possibLe to distinguish a hierarchicaL relationship between the worker and hen, in which the former takes advantage of the Latter by creating a chain of expLoitation in which it occupies the Lowest step. The essay shows, how human and nonhuman animaLs are grouped but at the same time divided into this typicaLLy 9apitaLocenicn process of industriaL expLoitation. Finally, an anaLysis of metaphors Like the fetrained goriLLan [the metaphor of the wtrained gorilla is attributed to Frederick W. Taylor by Andre Philip in Le ProbLeme ouvrier aux Etats-Unis (1927) and re-appropriated by Antonio Gramsci in his note on <Americanism and Fordism (Prison Notebooks, Notebook 4, Si)] shows how animaLization and the dehumanization in the factory Line have been centraL in the ItaLian Marxist critique since the beginning of the ItaLian industriaLization process.