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Commoning of Human and Wild Animal Expelled by Enclosure: Ken Roach’s Kes

  • Journal of Modern English Drama
  • Abbr : JMBARD
  • 2021, 34(1), pp.177-204
  • Publisher : 한국현대영미드라마학회
  • Research Area : Humanities > English Language and Literature > English Literature > Contemporary English Drama
  • Received : March 7, 2021
  • Accepted : April 14, 2021
  • Published : April 30, 2021

Joo, Kee Wha 1

1건국대학교 몸문화연구소

Accredited

ABSTRACT

This paper analyzes the relationship formed between humans and wild animals expelled by the enclosure, a historical event in England, from the perspective of the commons in Ken Roach’s film Kes (1969). Billy is the descendant of commoners expelled by the enclosure, and his life is miserable and desperate. The kestral Kes, which has also lost its forest by the enclosure, is considered a harmful wild animal and is at risk. Together, however, they go beyond the enclosure and co-constitute cooperative values ​​such as joy, freedom, and vitality while occupying an enclosed field. This can be said to be the result of a material-affective-semiotic intra-action between Kes’s indifferent transcendence, pride, untamed wild, and Billy’s love, commitment, and yearning for skill. This allows Kes to man, and Billy to not only endure his hopeless situation but also mock and protest the social system and ideologies that suppress his life. They show well the commoning that creates an active and affective community, that is, commons while coexisting in the commons where humans and nature mutually transform. They are also lively, co-constitutive companion species, commoners in commons entanglements, and show human-nonhuman commoning, staying with the trouble in a ruined world by the global enclosure.

Citation status

* References for papers published after 2023 are currently being built.

This paper was written with support from the National Research Foundation of Korea.