Reading the Animal in the Literature of the British Raj explores
representations of animals during British rule in India-the tigers,
elephants, boars, furs, and feathers that sometimes all but obscured the
human beneath and behind them, and that were integral in the creation
and maintenance of the hierarchies of colonialism. The book exists on
two levels: one offers a sophisticated view of how power and oppression
work within constellations of species, race, class, gender, and
nationhood, and the other is a deeply suggestive meditation on our
humanness and how we locate it within a spectrum of relations. Drawing
on a range of texts including hunting narratives, stories, poetry,
novels, photographs, journals, paintings, and cartoons, the argument
builds with a lucid and beautifully unobtrusive feel for the telling
example.