An Administration of Animals: Multispecies Entanglements in Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote

Abstract

In Ahmadou Kourouma’s novel, human animals, nonhuman creatures, geological spaces, mythologies, and elemental beings coexist, mired in a complex network of power relations within the continent of Africa. Among the author’s many authorial strategies to fabricate such a multispecies world, my paper will discuss two specific ones: the characterization of the hunter-dictator, Koyaga, shedding light on his nomenclature and choice of animal totem, and the various visceral entanglements shared between humans and canine creatures in the text, with added emphasis on the figure of lycaons used as guard dogs, employed for purposes of combat by authoritarian agents in the land. By utilizing arguments by Frantz Fanon, Wendy Woodward, and Achille Mbembe, my paper will explicate upon how animality, in Waiting for the Wild Beasts to Vote, alongside human-animal entanglements resides on a network of hierarchical relations under the administrative rubric of a totalitarian state.