LAUSR

ABSTRACT This article explores the figuration of animal personhood in Gerry Alanguilan’s graphic novel Elmer, in which chickens suddenly become as intelligent as humans. Alanguilan breaks with the visual tradition of anthropomorphising talking animals, challenging readers to reconcile personhood with an animal body. However, the intelligent chickens in Elmer conform to a fundamentally human-centric model of personhood. The text’s argument for the reclassification of intelligent chickens as persons is grounded in an assumption of an underlying sameness between chickens and humans. This assumption gives rise to a problematic vision of animal personhood, which in turn suggests a minority critique of human multiculturalism.