Abstract

The unique symbiotic relationship that animals form with Günter Eich’s literary texts can deepen our understanding of Eich’s poetology and the general crisis of language in post-World War II German literature, shedding some light on the zoopoetic possibilities of animals in/as texts, their capacity to unsettle hegemonic power discourses, and their potential to expand language beyond the limitations of anthropocentric logic. Focusing on Eich’s later literary animals, this article explores how Eich’s zoopoetics reveal the role of language as cocomplicit in abusive power systems, as well as how animality in/as text enables a kind of writing that transcends power discourses and offers us a “line of flight” as postulated by Deleuze and Guattari.