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

This 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.

Duke Scholars

Author Carlos Rojas Asian & Middle Eastern Studies