The Convergence of Posthumanism and ‘Deep Ecology’: A Critical Study 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/nature, and mind/body play a significant role in which humans are treated as more important than the non-human natural world. 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. It is time to reevaluate the usefulness of the conventional definition of the ‘human’ in the post-Covid-19 world, where the world is threatened by an ecological crisis. Since the rise of Cartesian thought, Posthumanism has been a way to criticize human rationality. It tries to think of the relationship between humans and non-humans as always changing and interacting with itself. The present paper explores some writings of Ruskin Bond from a posthumanist perspective to dismantle the notion of human exceptionalism. The focus will also be given to how Bond questions the traditional assumption regarding human identity to establish an alternative way of thinking for addressing the contemporary environmental crisis.