Toxic Embodiments and Multispecies Justice in Animal’s People: An Environmental and Posthumanist Reading

Authors : Fatma Gamze Erkan

Pages : 349-362

Doi:10.47777/cankujhss.1725552

View : 224 | Download : 452

Publication Date : 2025-12-29

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :Animal’s People by Indra Sinha is a powerful novel that vividly portrays the enduring impacts of a Bhopal-inspired industrial disaster on both human and nonhuman lives. Through its depiction of a toxic environment and its marginalized inhabitants, the novel challenges traditional anthropocentric and humanist assumptions by foregrounding multispecies vulnerability, ecological interconnectedness, and the blurred boundaries between humans, animals, and environments. The narrative highlights how environmental degradation, speciesism, and ableism intersect within systems of structural injustice, offering a rich ground for posthumanist critique. The protagonist’s disfigured, four-legged body and defiant voice unsettle normative conceptions of identity, dignity, and justice, revealing the ethical urgency of recognizing shared embodied precarity across species lines. This study provides a critical reading of Animal’s People through the interdisciplinary frameworks of environmental justice, animal studies, and posthumanism. It argues that the novel not only documents the legacies of ecological and social harm but also calls for a reimagined multispecies ethics grounded in relationality, care, and resistance. By analysing the novel’s complex representation of toxicity and embodiment, the study emphasizes the necessity of an inclusive justice that transcends species boundaries in an increasingly damaged world.
Keywords : Environmental justice, animal studies, speciesism, multispecies vulnerability, posthumanism, Animal`s People, Indra Sinha

ORIGINAL ARTICLE URL