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Zooësis and ‘Becoming with’ in India: The ‘Figure’ of Elephant in Sahyande Makan: The Elephant Project
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 10 February 2014
Abstract
I analyse Sahyande Makan: The Elephant Project (2008), a cross-cultural theatrical production in Malayalam and Japanese by the Kerala-based group Theatre Roots and Wings, as an instance of ‘zooësis’. The performance presents the state of an elephant in the space of a Kerala temple festival ritual, pooram. The elephant moves into a fantasy of the wild as it is under the physiological condition of musth. Approaching the question of the performing animal as intersectional, this performance challenges anthropocentrism and its assumed binary of human/animal, and draws a possible relation between domestic and wild, or the world of norms and freedom, both for elephants and for humans. I argue that by taking embodiment as the site of exploring discipline as well as imagining a freeing, and by positing an alternate way of ‘being worldly’ through affect and senses, the performance articulates what Donna Haraway has posited as the process of ‘becoming with’.
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References
NOTES
1 Kerala is a south Indian state, and Malayalam is the language spoken by Keralites; critics regard the work of Vailoppilli Sreedhara Menon (1911–85) as playing a crucial role in ushering in a change from romantic poetry to realism or occupying a critical position in the transitional phase in the rise of modernism in Malayalam poetry. See Raveendran, P. P., ‘Modernity as/against Colonialism: Emergence of the Modernist Canon in Malayalam Poetry’, in Satchidanandan, K., ed. Indian Poetry: Modernism and After: A Seminar (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 2001), pp. 54–65Google Scholar.
2 The director of Theatre Roots and Wings, Sankar Venkateswaran, is a graduate of the Calicut University School of Drama and Fine Arts, Thrissur (2002), and of the Intercultural Theatre Institute (formerly Theatre Training and Research Programme), Singapore (2006). Other productions by the group include Quick Death (2007) by the Australian playwright Richard Murphet, Bhasa's Sanskrit play Urubhangam (2009) and Mizu No Eki (Water Station, 2010) by Japanese playwright Ota Shogo; the Japanese actress Mikari previously worked in the Ku Na'uka Theatre Company.
3 For instance see reviews by Rishi Majumder, ‘Elephant Woman’, Tehelka Magazine, 21 November 2009; Aabha Raveendran, ‘Denouement of His Zest for Stage’, The Hindu, 29 September 2010.
4 Nettippattam is a golden shield worn by the elephants on their foreheads; people atop the elephant hold two aalavattam (circular shields made of peacock feathers used to wave to the idol of the deity), one on each side of the elephant deifying the deity; vencamaram is a wooden plank with cotton or jute fabric attached to it, with which people atop the elephant ‘fan’ the deity.
5 Chaudhuri, Una and Enelow, Shonni, ‘Animalizing Performance, Becoming-Theatre: Inside Zooësis with the Animal Project at NYU’, Theatre Topics, 16, 1 (2006), pp. 1–17, here p. 2CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
6 In the case of African elephants, both male and female elephants go through musth, a possible factor that led to the identification of the phenomenon of musth itself in African elephants only recently.
7 Sukumar, R., ‘A Brief Review of the Status, Distribution and Biology of Wild Asian Elephants Elephas Maximus’, International Zoo Yearbook, 40, 1 (2006), pp. 1–8, p. 3CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Sahyande Makan literally means ‘son of Western Ghats’, the mountain range that stretches from the border of Gujarat to Kanyakumari, the southern tip of India. As it runs through the entire stretch of the western side, it offers a natural boundary for Kerala.
9 The literary critic M. N. Vijayan has foregrounded the significance of the sense of smell in Vailoppilli's poems. His introduction to the poem is a landmark study introducing psychoanalysis in Kerala as Vijayan interprets the poem as having aspects of ‘anality’ and ‘sado-masochism’. M. N. Vijayan, ‘Sahyante Makan’, in Vijayan, ed., Vailoppilli Sampoorna Kritikal, Vol. II (Thrissur: Current Books, 2001; first published 1970), pp. 672–708. For an ecological reading of the poem see V. Jothikumari, ‘Deep Ecology as Motif in Seamus Heaney and Vyloppillil Sreedhara Menon’, unpublished dissertation, School of Letters, Mahatma Gandhi University, 2005.
10 These changes include the development of scientific knowledge and genetic experiments, emergence of species studies with racial assumptions, the establishment of modern colonial–scientific institution of study and exhibition of animals through zoos, and capitalist hyper-industrialization of meat production. Derrida, Jacques, ‘The Animal That therefore I Am (More to Follow)’, trans. Wills, David, Critical Inquiry, 28, 2 (January 2002), pp. 369–418CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
11 The critique here is that of the theological doctrines that articulate a fundamental superiority/right of humans over animals, and the philosophical assumptions based on an Aristotelian definition of the human as fundamentally distinct from animals as the former is uniquely endowed with language. In his seminal theorization, Agamben moves further by pointing out that even when the above assumptions are not made, the category of human is held in an inclusive/exclusive relation to the category of animal as ‘human’ emerges in ever-shifting (failed) efforts to make a clean cut from animal. Positing the term ‘anthropological machine’ to describe the process of ‘producing the recognition’ of human, he notes that ‘Homo is a constitutively “anthropomorphous” animal, who must recognize himself in a non-man in order to be human’. Agamben, Giorgio, The Open: Man and Animal (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), pp. 26–7Google Scholar.
12 Haraway, Donna Jeanne, When Species Meet (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), p. 5Google Scholar.
13 Ibid., p. 5.
14 Ahuja, Neel, ‘Postcolonial Critique in a Multispecies World’, PMLA, 124, 2 (2009), pp. 556–63, here p. 557CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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16 The Kerala model, first highlighted by Nobel laureate economist Amartya Sen, presents Kerala as an exemplary model as it has achieved high human development ratio even though economic development is low. Women have a constituting role in this narrative as the model highlights a better sex ratio, greater female life expectancy, lower infant mortality for girls and greater access to education for women in Kerala as compared to other parts of India and the Third World, even where economic development has been far higher. The critiques of the model, on the other hand, point out that rather than being any haven of gender parity, in Kerala there are low rates of employment and low property holding and property rights for women, rising dowry, higher rates of suicide, low visibility of women in public spaces and politics, and the highest rates of sexual harassment cases being registered. For more on the Kerala model and its gender critique see Sreekumar, Sharmila, Scripting Lives: Narratives of ‘Dominant Women’ in Kerala (New Delhi: Orient Blackswan, 2009)Google Scholar.
17 Cheeran, Jacob V.et al., ‘Tranquillization and Translocation of Captive Bulls’, in Baker, Iljas and Kashio, Masakazu eds., Giants on Our Hands: Proceedings of the International Workshop on the Domesticated Asian Elephant (FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, 2002), pp. 219–22, here p. 219Google Scholar. In 2012, the figure is around seven hundred to eight hundred. Economic Times Bureau, accessed 15 August 2013, available at http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2012-05-26/news/31860941_1_captive-elephants-elephant-population-heritage-animal
18 The ‘celebrity’ elephants are known by their names – their cutouts hang on the streets advertising festivals, and their biographies are widely disseminated through oral culture and media. Apart from ritual displays, practices in the public sphere include ‘paying homage’ to legendary elephants on days such as the anniversary of their death (a procession of elephants carry a photograph of the dead elephant and the current celebrity elephant places a garland on the statue of the legendary elephants), and television programmes such as E4Elephant biographically document the elephants. E4Elephant is telecast on prime time Sundays at 12 noon on Kairali TV and, as of this writing, has aired over three hundred episodes.
19 Some 418 under musth were tranquilized and translocated over the course of two decades, until January 2001. Cheeran et al., ‘Tranquillization and Translocation of Captive Bulls’, p. 219.
20 For the link between discourse around animal rights and Indian nationalism see Gandhi, Leela, Affective Communities: Anticolonial Thought, Fin-de-Siècle Radicalism, and the Politics of Friendship (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006)Google Scholar.
21 Sivasundaram, Sujit, ‘Trading Knowledge: The East India Company's Elephants in India and Britain’, Historical Journal, 48, 1 (2005), pp. 27–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
22 Ibid., p. 30.
23 Ibid.
24 Kutiyattam is the Sanskrit theatre performed in temples.
25 Chaudhuri and Enelow, ‘Animalizing Performance’, p. 5.
26 Haraway, When Species Meet, p. 4.
27 Ibid.
28 Sakata, Hiromi Lorraine, ‘Spiritual Music and Dance in Pakistan’, Etnofoor, 10, 1–2 (January 1997), pp. 165–73Google Scholar.
29 Nilakantha (of) Rajamangalam, The Elephant-Lore of the Hindus: The Elephant-Sport (Matanga-Lila) of Nilakantha, trans. Edgerton, Franklin (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1985; first published 1931), pp. 32–3Google Scholar.
30 Ibid.
31 Doniger, Wendy, ‘Zoomorphism in Ancient India: Humans More Bestial than Beasts’, in Daston, Lorraine and Mitman, Gregg, eds., Thinking with Animals: New Perspectives on Anthropomorphism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), pp. 17–36Google Scholar.
32 Ibid., p. 25.
33 Sukumar, R., Krishnamurthy, V., Wemmer, Chris and Rodden, Melissa, ‘Demography of Captive Asian Elephants (Elephas maximus) in Southern India’, Zoo Biology, 16, 3 (1997), pp. 263–72, here p. 2643.0.CO;2-8>CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
34 For instance, the Sanskrit text Manasollasa records, ‘Captivity, lashing, ailments, memories of the happiness of freedom enjoyed in the forest, staying in the captivity only physically with heart elsewhere, incompatible food, indigestion, exertion, and lack of sleep are basic causes of the diseases of the elephants’. ‘On Elephants in Manasollasa-2 Diseases and Treatment’, trans. Sadhale, Nalini and Nene, Y. L., Asian Agri-History, 8, 2 (2004), pp. 115–27, here p. 116, verses 628–9Google Scholar.
35 Doniger, ‘Zoomorphism in Ancient India’, p. 25.
36 Here the scene plays on possibilities ranging from simply a confused state of the tusker to even a notion of guilt arising from awareness, much like a scene featuring Lady Macbeth.
37 Berger, John, ‘Why Look at Animals?’, in Berger, About Looking (New York: Pantheon, 1980), pp. 1–26Google Scholar.
38 Chaudhuri, Una, ‘(De)Facing the Animals: Zooësis and Performance’, Drama Review, 51, 1 (2007), pp. 8–20Google Scholar.
39 Bakhtin, Mikhail, Rabelais and His World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984)Google Scholar.