The Precarious Alliance

Abstract

The present study analyzes conceptual and aesthetic consequences of the notion of “precarious life” (Butler, 2004) in terms of a post-anthropocentric reorganization of sensibility. It does so from two fundamental vectors: the reorganization of temporalities and the post-anthropocentric impulse that, as it is argued here, are contained in the concept of precarity. The essay focuses on the film La mujer de los perros (2015), by Laura Citarella and Verónica Llinás, that revolves around a human-animal community as a motif from which the precarious condition is explored as a terrain of disputes and reappropriations. In this exploration, the tension between “human” and “living” emerges as a decisive point of reflection on the precarious condition.