“Dogism”: Fascism and the Philosophy of Violence in André Alexis’s Fifteen Dogs
Abstract
With Fifteen Dogs (2015), André Alexis presents the riddle of what it means to be human without prescribing his own solution. The task of deciding which of the hybrid dogs’ behaviours arise from which of their constituent elements—human or dog—is left up to the reader. This essay presents a theoretical exploration of the human-like violence found within Fifteen Dogs. I argue that the violence exhibited by the hybrid dogs is of a distinctly human quality and is fuelled by a fascistic ideology, which I call dogism. Attention is given to two particular manifestations of such violence: the sacrificial culling of the pack and the Garden of Death.
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