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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

"Studying the Abject in Capitalist Ecology: Revisiting the Endosulfan Narratives from Kerala, India"

presenters

    Devika Krishnan

    Nationality: India

    Residence: India

    Ph. D. Research Candidate at the Department of English and Comparative Literature, Central University of Kerala

    Presence:Online

Understanding the ‘abject’ bodies/entities during capitalist ecological catastrophes without reinforcing the ideas of an anthropocentric nature has been a primordial concern in contemporary environmental politics. The scholarships drawing from the frameworks of the object-oriented ontology challenge the human ontological hegemony by regarding the ability to act (agency) as evenly exercised by everything throughout all ecological events. This framework delineates ecological catastrophes as ungraspable cosmic occurrences without any subjective/historical aspects. The following paper argues for a renewed political understanding of the capitalist ecological crises that decentralizes the concept of ‘human’ but does not dissolve the important boundaries/dynamics operating between bodies in ecology. Drawing from Julia Kristeva’s concept of abjection and Spinoza’s framework of affects, this paper will investigate the formations of the ‘abject’ bodies in capitalist ecological tragedies by looking at the affective expressions such as shock, disgust, hate, and fear captured in the literary narratives of the endosulfan pesticide disaster that transpired in Kerala, India. The diverse narratives produced during the decades-long slow violence of the endosulfan pesticide in Kerala, capture the minuscule and affective entanglements between humans, nonhumans, and inanimate bodies in the molecular experiences/practices of violence, care, and resilience. By studying the formations of ‘abject’ bodies from the affective interspecies encounters captured in these narratives, the paper tries to understand the dialectical relationship of inclusion and exclusion in capitalist ecological crises without harping on the anthropocentric tenets of environmental politics.

Keywords:

Abject, Bodies, Affects, Capitalism, Ecology