Animal Studies, Postcolonial Literature, and Multispecies Modernity: Finding Postcolonial Freedom

In this third episode, Sundhya Walther, author of Multispecies Modernity: Disorderly Life in Postcolonial Literature, discusses the focus, intentions, and scope of her title. First, she explains the emphasis on Hindu-influenced literature, and her explorations of the (false) idea of India as a Hindu nation, in addition to various animal-human ideologies projected onto Hinduism. Sundhya also dives into why she limited the book’s scope to mammals of a “charismatic” nature, and the intention behind the brief moments of reflection or “provocations” included between each chapter, achieved through visual art. Last, she highlights Multispecies Modernity’s goal of finding a “postcolonial freedom” for nonhumans through “instances where animals…disturb the kinds of discourses that set out to define them, or put them in place, or categorize them as certain kinds of animal, where they might create kinds of disorder that even fleetingly or even only fictionally can allow a kind of freedom from that power, that colonization.”

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