Capitalism Run Wild: Zizou Corder’s Lion Boy and Victor Kelleher’s Dog Boy

Abstract

While capitalism has long made highly efficient ideological use of Darwin's 'survival of the fittest' principle to justify ruthless business practices, this appropriation of animal metaphor has taken on new and considerably more problematic resonances in the wake of globalization. At a time when the negative consequences of corporate greed are becoming more apparent, as inequalities widen and power is shifted beyond governments and their borders, there is a spate of children's novels that explicitly challenges this new world order. As cases in point, Zizou Corder's 'Lion Boy' series (2003, 2004, and 2005) and Victor Kelleher's 'Dog Boy' (2005) demonstrate a concordance of fictional representations between the UK and Australia. Both stories navigate neo-liberalism by trading on the classic schism between nature and culture, using animal tropes and instinctive behaviours in response to the artificiality and unnatural cruelty of business enterprises.