Alternative Kinships: La perra (2017), by Piilar Quintana, and El cielo de la selva (2023), by Elaine Vilar Madruga

Abstract

The exercises of affiliation, which until now have portrayed the hegemonic family, are being surpassed by maternities that are not necessarily based on biological creation and the proposal of interspecies care. A sample of this trend is Pilar Quintana’s La perra (2017) and Elaine Vilar Madruga’s El cielo de la selva (2023), narratives that explore bonds where the mother is a human being and the child a dog. To map these alternative kinships, the starting point will be a review of the paradigm of “The Mother”, which is fundamental to understanding the subversion of this paradigm embodied in both texts. Subsequently, the focus will turn to ecofeminist studies which, by combining environmental concerns with gender studies, are committed to “more-than-human views” (Abram 1997: 15), while showing the need to (re)think the prevailing anthropocentrism to articulate new social horizons, where hierarchies are blurred. After establishing the theoretical framework, which is based fundamentally on the seminal studies of Donna Haraway, we will fully enter the textual analysis, focusing on two dimensions. Firstly, the conceptions of maternal instinct in both protagonists will be explored. Secondly, the vision of the non-human child will be studied, which entails a subversion and overcoming -albeit apparent, in Quintana’s case- of the concept of ‘companion animal’ in favour of a new multi-species framework, which allows us to understand human beings and the beings that inhabit the Earth as companion species.