Subversion of Anthropocentricism: Study of the Representation of Animal in select Contemporary Assamese Poetry
Noesis Literary (ISSN : 3048-4693) Volume 1 Issue 2 (Jul- Dec) 2024, pp 49-68
Abstract: Animals have always been a matter of treatment in literature but the matter of concern is that this representation is very often been done from anthropocentric perspective being informed by the tendency of othering the animals in terms of the binary opposition of human/non-human. The human gaze often paves stereotyping of a particular animal; animals are often endowed with human emotion, guilt, pride and deviousness keeping aside their own instincts; animals are very often used as metaphor or symbol to describe human condition. Animals are seen being part of political and ideological construct even. All these together characterize the typical literary representation of animals in literature. With the rise of the ecocritical sensibility and environmental activism, resistance has been observed against such conventional depiction of animals though yet to be grown prominently. Such resistance can also be observed in some poems by a number of contemporary Assamese poets, where the binary and hierarchy of man-animal is minimized and emphasis has been put on exploring the intrinsic features and conditions of the animal being represented. Strong emotive voices have often been rendered to the animal and hence subverting the anthropocentric gaze which always sanction oppression. The poems are often informed by the realization on the part of the poetic persona as being the part of the same cycle of nature as the animals are. This realization leads to his or her identification with nature which is far more pragmatic in tone than the Romantic transcendence. A total number of five contemporary Assamese poets have been selected for the present study; the quoted parts of the poems under observation have been translated into English by the researcher himself and only for the research purpose. The selected poems have then been scrutinized in terms of the theoretical framework set for the present study which in turn leads to explore the different aspects and perspectives of the representation of animal in contemporary Assamese Poetry.
Key Words: Anthropocentricism, Subversion, Animal, Assamese Poetry, Representation.
Introduction:
Animals have always been a major subject in literature ranging from oral folk literature to contemporary written literature all through the globe; fable, animal tales etc. are the instances of man’s exemplification of understanding or rather perspective about the animal world. In fable and animal tales animal are often personified and so they can act and talk like human beings; in many instances animals are seen to be transformed into man and vice versa. In the course of representing animal in literature often a tendency of stereotyping the same has been observed; in Assamese folktales, for example, the fox has often been typified as a cunning animal who plots and succeeds in deceiving other animal and human through the apt use of its wit and cleverness (e.g. “The Fox and the Monkey”, “The Old Couple and the Fox” etc). In modern literature also animals have been often used as a metaphor for signifying particular human and cultural conditions and experiences. Animals and animal related matters have been observed in Assamese poetry all through the ages, but the animal representation is often been informed by a anthropocentric tendency. Animals are not active agent; their representation is often subjected to human gaze and subjectivity which are devoid of the reference to the intrinsic significance of the animal being represented. In such perspectives, the present study undertakes to read selected poems of five contemporary Assamese poets namely Dilip Phookan, Rajib Borah, Hilloljyoti Singha, Abani Kumar Bhagawati and Joyjit Deka, whose poetry is characterized by a voice of resisting and subverting the preoccupied anthropocentricism in representation of animal in discourses of literature, culture, politics and other fields. The referred poems show the futility of anthropocentric narrative by exposing the value dualism and self-contradictions of animal representation by man. It in turn invites the reader to review and revisit the course of animal representation in cultural discourses in akin to indispensible interrelation of man with animal and environment in general.
The Theoretical Framework:
In modern written versions of literature and in other cultural discourses, a good deal of politics of representing animals has been observed as most of the literary representation are seen being informed by the conventional dichotomy like nature/culture, man/animal, subject/object and so on. Besides references to animals are made only to represent the something related to man as if literary animals are mere signifiers signifying features of either man or culture. This anthropocentric perspective is overwhelmingly present almost all literatures where significance of the animal elements are seen significant only in terms of human subjectivity and eventually objectifying the animal in opposite to the human subject. Susan McHugh has delicately describes the real plight of the real animal in this course of such literary animal representation:
Everybody knows the disappearing animal trick: rabbit goes into the hat, magician waves wand, and presto! The magician displays an empty hat. Simplistic though it sounds, this old act illustrates how literary critics historically have rendered the animal a non-issue. Reading animals as metaphors, always as figures of and for the human, is a process that likewise ends with the human alone on the stage. Now you see the animal in the text, and now you don’t. (MacHugh 24)
Referring to this typical process of animal representation she sums up that these aesthetic structures of metaphors eventually supports the human subject but fails in bearing animal agency and this lack of animal agency in this whole process is a matter of great concern. Keeping in view of the lack and limitations of the literary representation of animal, she refers to the growing emergence of biopolitical perspectives in animal studies across disciplines subverting the anthropocentricism paving ways of establishing the animal agent as a cultural constant.
The deconstructionist school of thought has already posed serious question against western metaphysics as well as western rationality. By subverting the conventional dichotomy like nature-culture, subject-object and so on by which human being endows a superior and privileged position, the western rationality has been criticized as a mere fragile construct. Derrida has questioned the absence of animal in the philosophical and cultural discourses of the west. By questioning the anthropocentric approach of the representation not reproduction of animal things in cultural texts, Derrida has talked of the animal gaze:
The animal is there before me…And from the vantage of this being-there-before me it can allow to be looked at, no doubt, but also- something that philosophy perhaps forgets, perhaps being this calculated forgetting itself- it can look at me. It has its point of view regarding me.(Derrida 2008)
By ascribing the ability of making sense and of addressing perspective to the animals, Derrida has debunked and dismantled the typical human-animal distinctions and the hierarchical structure that bedevils the man-animal relationship.
The growing ecological turn in literature along with the critique of the literary tradition of animal representation has created necessity and possibility for a holistic treatment of the issue. Susan McHugh in the above mentioned essay has summed up three possible and prevalent imperatives of animal studies in terms of literary representation: firstly, conceptualization of agency more than merely as a property of human subjectivity; secondly, recovering the “spectrum of agency forms represented in a variety of cultural tradition” which are often overlooked and subverted by the western humanism; lastly, a new materialistic approach of connecting the representational animals with the real material condition of the same. (McHugh 491)
Based on this theoretical framework, the present paper aims at looking at some of the selected poems of the contemporary Assamese literature where effort of subverting the anthropocentric approach to animals has been observed. These poems introduce and treat animal as an independent topic of literature assigning strong intrinsic and emotive significance to the animals being represented denoting autonomy. Animals are seen interrogating, advising and survival strategies to the human listeners and hence animal gaze has been put to the forth. The conventional dichotomy of man-animal, nature-culture has been severely put under critical revision. Many times the identity of the poets or/and poetic persona has been dissolute with animal and nature breaking the hierarchical distinctions made between man and animal. Animal thus plays autonomous role as an agency itself instead of being represented and described by the lens of human subjectivity. Man is just an agent; not the only one but one among many.
Breaking the Stereotypes:
The limitation and corruption of human gaze of animal has been severely exposed in Dilip Phookan’s poem written on cattle, which in turn points out the fact how animal representation in literature and other allied fields has been growing to be a “discursive formation”(McHugh 487). The cow becomes a political and ideological construct and this reduction of the cow is done with human interest overlooking the intrinsic significance of the cow. The dualistic and inter-contradictions of human perception of the same cow explicitly unfold the hollowness of human subjectivity and the exposed politics of representation inherent in human perception of animal eventually questions the typical superiority of human gaze and rational:
Wondrous this species
Religion blown through its veins
In life as well in death.
When It is alive
It is Hindu
It is worshipped for its dung and urine.
When it is killed
It becomes Muslim.
Tempting by its meat
Wondrous this species
Whose skin is secular
He who wears shoes of its skin
Is secular. (Cow) ( Phukan 36-37)
Thus it shows that the human projection of this particular animal has nothing to do with its material state of being; rather it has been reduced merely to a tool for religious and ideological construct. The possibility of having different perception and projection of animal in cultural discourses in terms of human interest and prejudices ultimately poses a heresy to human gaze of animal.
Another poem on cow by Rajib Borah entitled “Goru Bishoyak” (About Cow) deals with how the burden of religious and political ideological construct has problematizes the very material entity of the cow itself. Additionally how animal like cow has been objectified by the utilitarian approach of human being has been exposed by using sharp irony:
Does the cow get freedom from death
By virtue of fertile dung, milk and a little corp?
The politics of food and spirituality
Keeps ups and down or someone throws a knife. (Bora 2023)
This politics of spirituality and religion of man has overlooked the intrinsic significance of cow as man forgets in the course of ideological formation that cow itself is a four footed animals and man is not indispensable factor for the material life and existence of the cow. Rather it is the cow that becomes significant matter in the religious and political discourses of man, with which the cow has nothing to do:
Blurred in the smoke of incense sticks
Or bathed in the string of blood
Man forgets to remember that cow is just
One of the four-footed animals of the universe
What is the need of man for a cow to live? (Idem)
Bora’s tone is so ironic which enables him in grounding his arguments by exposing the incongruity between the represented and real entity of being which then compels the reader to revisit the associations of values bestowed upon animals by human imagination and projection. His poem “Paro Corair Kabita”(Poem of the Pigeons) exposes the fragility of the cultural narrative of metaphorizing the pigeon as the messenger of peace. This is all done only to subvert the anthropocentric construct of animals in cultural discourses:
Well, we return home
Knotting the burden of peace
In the feather of the innocent bird
And
Engrossed in getting rid of low blood pressure
Dinning with squab’s soup. (Bora 2021)
The involved human act of methaphorization and symbolization in the course of stereotyping the animals under representation has itself been contrasted by human material behavior to the said element and hence exposes the value dualism affecting the cultural representation of animal by man. Man’s gaze and proclaimed superiority of perception has thus been at stake.
Looking for Animal Agency and Shared Attributes between Man and Animal
The anthropocentric discourse dislocates the shared attributes of man and animal and stresses on the reemphasizing of the features that stresses the distinction between man and animal, which often creates space for animal oppression and othering of the same. Subversion of such tendency has been observed in a prominent way in some of the poems by Hilloljyoti Singha. The poet is more concerned with the common and shared attributes between man and animal and other natural matters, remembrance of which would strongly help in eliminating the growing alienation of humanity from nature and environment. The suffering of death is common to every living beings and it is this shared mortal nature of all living beings that brings them together amidst apparent distinctions:
If you are drowned to be
Killed, you will die of choking
It will also die of same pain
When extricated from water (Singha 2024)
Though the poet has metaphorized the condition of man through the depiction of the plight of the fishes, yet in this course his concern for material life and condition of the fishes can’t be overlooked. Man uses fishes as food, makes it homeless by snatching it out from its usual inhabitance-fish suffers but it never resists or rather it can’t. The above quoted lines pose a question to the reader that inevitably compels them to internalize the pain of the fish as the suffering and pain of the fish at the mouth of death has been synonymised. The internalization of this common attribute in turn prevail the futility of the man made hierarchy.
Derrida has talked about the problematic of Western Philosophy and Metaphysics in terms of its treatment and understanding of animals. He has severely questioned the perception of animal devoid of reason and logic. Singha’s poem “Jok” (The Leech) is about a speaking leech which is capable of rational understanding. The thought of the leech has been narrated to the leech itself; animal is thus treated as an autonomous agency. The anthropocentric epistemological superiority proclaimed by man has been put under severe critique when the leech demands that man doesn’t know many things about it. The claim of self-sufficiency of human knowledge about nature which is often informed by a tendency of stereotyping has been questioned when the leech proclaims:
You defame me as a harmful animal
Although in the medical science of past
I have played a pivotal role (Singha 2024)
The leech has addressed man as the superior most superior creature but the irony has been unfolded towards the end of the poem when it humbly request man not to compare it with blood-sucking human being:
O my feeder
I fully accept your
Hatred and disrespect towards me.
But my special request is that
I should not be compared
With the human blood-sucker
I feel ashamed so much! (Idem.)
The poet is deeply concerned with the degradation of environment and for it he held man as greatly responsible; the overtly occupied utilitarian mentality of human being towards nature leading to environmental calamities and its critique form the central theme of another poem of Singha titled “Aquariumat Bandee Mash” (Fish Prisoned in Aquarium):
Incessant research on fish
Water-bomb are being prepared in down-Subansiri
Explosion of the aquarium is imminent. (Singha 2024)
Modern Industrial capitalism based on scientific paradigm often subverts the intrinsic values of natural forces by subjecting it to man which often results in environmental degradation. The resolution of the environmental crisis comes out of the anthropocentric human behavior and treatment to nature hides in revitalizing man’s relation with nature. James William Gibson has pleads for this quest:
…humankind’s past, and, with it, the traditional unity between human and the rest of creation typical of premodern societies…Beyond any particular group’s connection to any particular creatures and places, the premodern cosmos possessed a kind of enchantment (Gibson 09)
This quest for a re-enchanted world by looking back at premodern way of life is one way a resistance to the overwhelmingly observed anthropocentric utilitarianism. The reference to folk way of life and folklore elements in the poems is very significant. The folk way of exemplifying human experiences is akin to nature and it resonates the close tie of man with nature. The frequency of the sound of the tokay gecko makes the poet’s heart trembled with a tune of Bhaoiya Geet (a traditional folk songs of the Koch-Rajbangsi Community) in the poem entitled Tokay Gecko. Thus the spectrum of agency of exemplifications inherent in folk-cultural traditions has been explored which in turn unfolds the residual kinship of man with nature.
Critique of Modern Industrial Society:
The subversion of anthropocentricism is often accompanied by the critique of the binary of nature/culture. Nature and culture are not denial to each other but are complementary to each other. Let’s have a look of the observation put forth by M.H. Abrams:
Our identities, or sense of self, for example, are informed by the particular place in which we live and in which we feel that we belong and are at home. On the other side, human experience of the natural environment is never a replication of the thing itself, but always mediated by the culture of a particular time and place; and its representation in a work of literature is inescapably shaped by human feelings and human imagination. (73)
Our perception about nature is always formed being mediated by the cultural values and knowledge of a particular time and place. Our identity on the other hand is also informed by the environment we live at. This understanding inevitably debunks the hegemony of priorising culture over nature or man over animal preferring to emphasize the complementary relation between man and animal. For instance, in Abani Kumar Bhagawati’s poem “Bagh” (Tiger) , two versions of tiger have been talked about; one is the version of tiger the poet as a child perceives from reading story books, hunting stories and poetry and the other is the real tiger he sees himself at the later phase of life. Both the versions of tiger yoke together to form his perception of the animal. Hence there is no valid ground of upholding the binary of nature-culture in perceiving and representing animal. And on the other hand, it proves the fact that human gaze and perception are not absolute and pure so to say, but rather it is always informed and influenced by subjective elements surrounding man. Anthropocentricism is thus at stake.
The poet is criticizing the undue interruption on wild life by the utilitarian approaches to their environment, which often creates threat to the lives of the wild animals. Especially the growing industrialization and urbanization has pose threat to the natural inhabitance of the wild animals. It has already been mentioned above how the modern industrial and capitalist society the forces of nature has often been subjected to the utility of human race. Here also the poet is pointing out how the interruption of man has limited the inhabitance and sustainability of the wild tiger:
The city used to be wild
Bondajan-bank of Bharalu
Turning of hills-stone garden
Was blessed with wild animals
Caves were the hidden home of tiger
The invisible workshop of reproduction
We saw our god there
Hoisted flag high
Turned it into dharmasala enchanting mantra (Bhagawati 2023)
Again,
Now here
Aggression of long hand
Buildings of luxury
Colourful cinema of relaxation
Town after town
Man-woods after woods
Machine-woods
In the street
In the by-lanes
In the sky
In the wind
Scream of machine
Song like the fire
Victory song of Death. (Idem.)
Keeping man’s utility and interest at the top of priority is the characteristic features of modern industrial society but this proves to be fatal even to human race also at it cuts ways for natural degradation and calamities. Bio-diversity is at stake which is also a threat to the life of man too. Thus the futility and cunningness of anthropocentric attitude of human race has been severely exposed and attacked in this particular poem.
Animal Wisdom:
Animals in human discourses have often been represented as devoid of rational and wisdom. It is done only to proclaim the superiority of man over animal.
Dog is wise
Yodhistira knew it
Men don’t know
So dog bites men
Dog revolts
And barks
Only in hunger (Deka 2021)
The reference of the cause of revolt by dog is very significant; dog revolts for seminal issues like hunger, but if we look at human society they are running and struggling after some superficial matters. This shows that dog is not devoid of reason; rather it is a rational animal.
Conclusion:
From the above discussion, it has been observed that though in less in number, a few contemporary poets has put forth the seminal issue of man-animal relation and its literary representation. The poets have severely questioned the conventionally observed anthropocentric approach in culture, politics and other fields in terms of animal representation. The referred poems of Dilip Phookan and that of Rajib Borah aptly show how man uses animal only to construct political and spiritual ideology and absolutely ignores the intrinsic significance of the animal. They talked about animal only to highlight issue and interest relating to human life and culture. In this process animals are often stereotyped, which in turn resist the possibility of looking and exemplifying of the animals. Therefore they are given independent voice; the leech in the poem of Hilloljyoti Singha is granted agency and so it speaks on the theme of stereotyping and corruption quite rationally and man’s claim of being the only rational being has thus been challenged. His other poems explore the shared attributes between man and animal, which are often excluded in anthropocentric narratives. This in turn enables the readers to understand and reconsider their kinship with nature. The plight of the modern Industrial society in terms of its adverse effect on nature and animals has been put forwarded in the referred poem by Abani Kumar Bhagawati. It engages the readers to review and revisit its treatment to nature and environment. Joyjit Deka’s referred poem talks about animal wisdom in resistance to the anthropocentric narrative where man has only been recognized as the only rationale being. By subverting this anthropocentrism in the representation of animal in literary and cultural discourses, the poems engage the reader to explore other possibilities of exemplifications. This approach is pragmatic as these poems provide avenue of revisiting the cultural/ literary stereotyping in the treatment of animal in view of the intrinsic kinship of animal and man. This in turn will contribute in paving a way for sustainable and holistic approach of looking at animals in cultural/literary discourses.
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