Untamed: Wilderness and Domestication in Zhang Guixing’s Elephant Herd

AbstractThis essay uses a dialectics of wildness and domestication as a prism through which to examine the first work in Zhang Guixing’s informal rainforest trilogy, his 1998 novel Elephant Herd (Qunxiang). Focusing on Zhang’s engagement with issues of nature, colonialism, language, and family, the essay argues that the novel pivots on a pair of intertwined impulses to domesticate wilderness, on the one hand, and to disrupt and figuratively “re-wild” these domesticated spaces, on the other hand. Even as wildness, in all its forms, is perceived as an existential threat that needs to be tamed, the resulting domestication process frequently involves patterns of violence that require new efforts of domestication in their own right. Notes1 Katherine Rosman, “‘Lethargic’ Alligator Rescued from Prospect Park Lake,” New York Times, February 20, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/20/nyregion/alligator-prospect-park-brooklyn.html.2 Katherine Rosman, “Alligator Rescued in Prospect Park Swallowed Tub Stopper, X-Ray Shows,” New York Times, February 22, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/22/nyregion/alligator-prospect-park-bronx-zoo.html.3 Michael Levenson, “Alligator Kills 85-Year-Old Florida Woman as She Walks Her Dog,” New York Times, February 21, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/21/us/alligator-attack-florida.html.4 “Fatal Alligator Attack: All Gators Removed from Senior Community,” TMZ, February 24, 2023, https://www.tmz.com/2023/02/24/alligator-attack-florida-removed-lakes-retirement-community-elderly-woman-killed/.5 Not only have alligators been living in what is now Florida for over 8 million years (which is more than four hundred times longer than humans have been in North America), but furthermore, it is entirely possible that the specific animal involved in this recent incident had been in the area since before the retirement community itself was built (the retirement community was established in 1988, while the alligator involved in the attack was a full-size male, which in the wild can typically live up to fifty years). For a discussion of the history of alligators in what is now Florida, see Stephanie Livingston, “A Reptilian Anachronism: American Alligator Older than We Thought,” University of Florida News, September 16, 2016, https://news.ufl.edu/articles/2016/09/a-reptilian-anachronism-american-alligator-older-than-we-thought.html. For average lifespan of alligators in the wild, see “American Alligator,” Smithsonian’s National Zoo & Conservation Biology Institute, n.d., https://nationalzoo.si.edu/animals/american-alligator.6 In Florida trappers are not allowed to relocate the alligators they capture. See Suhauna Hussein, “What Happens to all Nuisance Gators Taken from Florida’s Ponds? It’s not Good for the Gators,” Tampa Bay Times, September 14, 2018, https://www.tampabay.com/news/What-happens-to-all-those-nuisance-gators-taken-from-Florida-ponds-It-s-not-good-for-the-gators-_171765978/.7 In New York, it is illegal for individuals to own or sell alligators. See “Illegal Animal,” NYC 311, n.d., https://portal.311.nyc.gov/article/?kanumber=KA-02255.8 See Carlos Rojas, “Becoming Semi-Wild: Colonial Legacies and Interspecies Intimacies in Zhang Guixing’s Rainforest Novels,” PRISM: Theory and Modern Chinese Literature 19 no. 2 (2022): 438–53.9 Juno Salazar Parreñas, Decolonizing Extinction: The Work of Care in Orangutan Rehabilitation (Durham: Duke University Press, 2018).10 David L. A. Gaveau, et al., “Four Decades of Forest Persistence, Clearance, and Logging on Borneo,” PLOS One, July 16, 2014, https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0101654.11 Zhang Guixing張貴興, Elephant Herd (Qunxiang 群象) (Taipei: Ryefield Press, 2006). An English translation of the novel, by Carlos Rojas, is forthcoming from Columbia University Press (2024). The translations included in this essay are based on, but may deviate slightly from, this forthcoming Columbia University Press edition.12 Zhang, Elephant Herd, 40.13 Zhang, Elephant Herd, 16–17.14 “Population Distribution and Basic Demographic Characteristic Report 2010,” Department of Statistics, Malaysia Official Portal, July 29, 2011 (updated October 3, 2022), https://www.dosm.gov.my/v1/index.php?r=column/ctheme&menu_id=L0pheU43NWJwRWVSZklWdzQ4TlhUUT09&bul_id=MDMxdHZjWTk1SjFzTzNkRXYzcVZjdz09.15 Lim How Pim, “Sarawak’s Population Rises to Over 2.56 Mln in 2020,” Borneo Post Online, June 16, 2022, https://www.theborneopost.com/2022/06/16/sarawaks-population-rises-to-over-2-56-mln-in-2020/.16 Zhang, Elephant Herd, 21. Similar variations on this formula also appear several other points in the novel.17 Ibid., 30.18 Ibid., 175.19 Ibid., 36.20 Ibid., 133.21 Ibid., 81.22 Zhang, Elephant Herd, 89.23 Ibid., 82.24 Ibid., 180–81.25 Ibid., 89.26 Ibid., 146.27 Ibid., 73.28 Ibid., 170.Additional informationNotes on contributorsCarlos RojasCarlos Rojas is professor of Chinese Cultural Studies, Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies, and Cinematic Arts at Duke University. His research focuses on issues of gender and visuality, corporeality and infection, and nationalism and diaspora studies, particularly as they relate to China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the global Chinese diaspora. He is the author of three monographs: The Naked Gaze: Reflection on Chinese Modernity, The Great Wall: A Cultural History, and Homesickness: Culture, Contagion, and National Transformation. He is the coeditor of five books and the translator of numerous leading Chinese and Sinophone writers, including a translation of Zhang's novel Elephant Herd (forthcoming from Columbia University Press).