Anthropomorphism and social criticism in The Heart of a Dog and Flush: A biopolitical reading

This study aims to analyse the biopolitical functions of anthropomorphism in literature by examining Mikhail Bulgakov's The Dog's Heart (1925) and Virginia Woolf's Flush (1933) through comparative literary analysis. In both works, animal characters are constructed not only as aesthetic elements of the narrative, but also as surrogate figures mediating the representation of social criticism, identity construction and power structures. In this context, anthropomorphic narratives have been evaluated as allegorical and political narrative strategies that enable rethinking structures such as genre, gender, class and social norms. In the theoretical framework, various critical approaches such as Marxist literary criticism, structuralism, poststructuralism and posthumanist thought were used. While Bulgakov's work criticises the early biopolitical interventions of the Soviet Union, the mechanisms of ideological domination and radical interventions in human nature with a grotesque language, Woolf's biographical narrative Flush inverts the class and gender-based normative structure of the English bourgeoisie by presenting it from the perspective of a dog. These two texts, produced in two different geographical and historical contexts, reveal the representational strategies carried out through the human-animal dichotomy in a comparative manner. The study reveals that anthropomorphic characters in literary texts are functional not only at the narrative level, but also in the context of ideology, subjectification and the politics of representation. At the same time, in the light of contemporary critical theories, it draws attention to the questioning of anthropocentric epistemologies and the potential of literature for multi-layered social criticism. In this respect, this study aims to contribute to the rethinking of modernity, power and identity through animal narratives and anthropomorphic fiction.