Tracing Ecological Relationality

A Posthumanist Critique of the Select Writings of Ruskin Bond

Abstract

Although the globe is currently experiencing environmental crises due to anthropogenic climate change and ecological destruction, dualisms of culture/nature, human/non-human, and mind/body play a significant role in which humans are treated as more important than non-humans. “The chronological and cultural growth of human beings as the most dominant and privileged species has resulted in a variety of complexity and divisions that have led to the formation of species supremacy” (Mallick & Dhar, 2024, p. 64). Based on the concept of self-fashioning, which necessitates the subordination of the racial, sexual, natural, and technological others, the Renaissance ideal of the human forms a hierarchy by positioning humans at the centre of all discourses. Hence, it is pertinent to redefine the conventional definition of “human” in the post-Covid-19 era, where the world is threatened by a climate disaster. Since the rise of Cartesian thought, posthumanism has been a discourse to criticise human exceptionalism. It tries to think of the relationship between humans and non-humans as always changing and interacting with itself. The present paper explores select writings of Ruskin Bond from a posthumanist perspective to dismantle the notion of human exceptionalism with a view to advocating the “intrinsic value” of nonhumans. The focus will also be given to how Bond questions the traditional assumption regarding the identity of humans to establish an alternative way of thinking for addressing the contemporary environmental crisis.