The postcolonial picaro in Indra Sinha's "Animal's people": becoming posthuman through animal's eyes

• Autores: Roman Bartosch
• Localización: Ecozon@ [Ecozona]: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, ISSN-e 2171-9594, Vol. 3, N. 1, 2012 (Ejemplar dedicado a: Writing catastrophes: cross-disciplinary perspectives on the semantics of natural and anthropogenic disasters), págs. 10-19
• Idioma: inglés
• DOI: 10.37536/ecozona.2012.3.1.446
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo
• Resumen
  • español

    Uno de los efectos de la erudición ecocrítica puede ser visto en el cuestionamiento de los intentos postmodernos de un constructivismo radical que entiende el mundo como un fenómeno discursivo y que contrapone cualquier noción de una "realidad" fuera de dichos entresijos discursivos. Teniendo en cuenta la crisis ambiental en particular, dudar de una realidad extra-discursiva parece inapropiado. Sin embargo, expondré en este ensayo que las narrativas de la catástrofe siguen retóricas específicas y exageradas, asimismo mostraré como "Animal's People" de Indra Sinha cuestiona y en última instancia deconstruye las mismas. Por medio del cuestionamiento radical de la idea de una realidad estable y de medios verosímiles para narrarla, la ecocrítica poscolonial en general y "Animal's People" en particular, engendra una sensación de tensión entre la realidad y la ideología representacional y proporciona un medio para experimentar este conflicto a través de los ojos de un posthumanismo ecológico.

  • English

    One of the effects of ecocritical scholarship can be seen in the questioning of postmodern attempts of a radical constructivism that understands the world as a discursive phenomenon and that opposes any notion of a "reality" outside those discursive entanglements. In light of environmental crises in particular, to doubt an extradiscursive reality seems inappropriate. However, I will argue in this essay that narratives of catastrophe do follow specific dramatising rhetorics, and I will show how Indra Sinha's "Animal's People" questions and ultimately deconstructs these. By radically questioning the idea of a stable reality and authentic means to narrate it, postcolonial ecocriticism in general, and "Animal's People" in particular, engenders a sense of the tension between reality and representational ideology, and it enables a way of experiencing this conflict through the eyes of an ecological posthumanism.

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