Reading the Animal in the Literature of the British Raj [Paperback]

Discusses the production and circulation of animal narratives in colonial India in order to investigate the constructs of animals played into a variety of forms of othering that took place in England during its imperial venture.Foreword * List of Illustrations * Glossary * Introduction: Why the Animal? Or, Can the Subaltern Roar, and Other Risky Questions. Some Theoretical Frameworks * Animals, Children, and Street Urchins * Herein the British Nimrod May View a New and Arduous Species of the Chase: Hunting narratives 17571857 * Our Rightful Claim to Superiority as a Dominant Race: Hunting narratives 18571947 * Animals, Humans, and Natural Laws: Kipling and Forster * Making Kingdoms Out of Beasts * Notes * Illustration Credits * Select Bibliography * Index

'This is a must read for scholars of nineteenth-century studies, postcolonial theory, history, and animal studies. Reading the Animal in the Literature of the British Raj is a fascinating, nuanced study that puts animals back into empire and empire studies. Provocatively arguing that the animal is the ultimate subaltern, Rajamannar demonstrates the imagined, physical, and political power of the hunt and the hunted through the lens of guns and cameras. At the same time, within a rich landscape of theory and history, animals themselves are treated as subjects who deserve attention.'-Teresa Mangum, associate professor of English, University of Iowa, director, Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

'Postcolonial studies have been vitally concerned with the constitution of human hierarchies of race and domination. Few, however, have paused to ask how those hierarchies extend to the hierarchization of species. What is the role of the animals so ubiquitous in imperial representations of the colony? Shefali Rajamannar answers this question with subtlety and telling archival detail, capturing in sharp and illuminating readings the ambiguity as well as the orientalist function of animals in the repl³-