“A Dress Rehearsal” of Empathy with Non-Humans in Olga Tokarczuk’s Short Story

Abstract

The work reflects Olga Tokarczuk’s short story Dress Rehearsal which deals with the topic of apocalypse, climatic catastrophe, and climate change. The article is a part of a scientific work, which is a master’s thesis dealing with the complex issue of the subjectivity of animals and nature, as well as the common environment and post-environment, and the study of the relationship between humans and non-humans. In the work, the Nobel Prize winner comes under the influence of a ‘world-creator’ and an ‘intense observer’, thus human relations can be complicated in times of the end of the world and how human attitudes towards animals and the world change. This time of the end, marked by Giorgio Agamben with the messianic era, allows for a certain non-action towards reality, and empathy and compassion begin being a remedy for centuries of objectification of other beings.