Dear Literary Animals,
I am thrilled to announce the first virtual event for The Literary Animal Project: A Conversation with Dr. Naisargi Davé and Dr. Yamini Narayanan about their brilliant new books on October 25, 2023, 7 pm EDT. See details below.
Indifference: On the Praxis of Interspecies Being, by Naisargi Davé (Duke University Press)
Mother Cow Mother India: A Multispecies Politics of Dairy in India, by Yamini Narayanan (Stanford University Press)
Naisargi Davé’s research “concerns emergent forms of intra- and interspecies ethics, politics, and relationality in contemporary India.” Yamini Narayanan is “focused on bringing forth animals as subjects and stakeholders of our co-shared and co-produced social, ecological and political worlds. Specifically, she addresses animals as stakeholders in urban spaces, and as subjects and instruments of nationalist politics in India, and elsewhere in South Asia.”
I am excited to discuss their work as literary animals, bringing animal lives in India to the page, while challenging the forces of Hindu nationalism, casteism, and capitalism. Naisargi asks “What does Cow Protection Protect?” and Yamini poses similar questions: “What and who does cow protectionism ‘protect’—and what and who does it render vulnerable?”
Through extensive fieldwork, interviews, and reportage on every aspect of India’s dairy industry, Yamini argues in Mother Cow Mother India that “ the framing of the cow as ‘mother’ is one of human domination, wherein the cow is simultaneously commodified for dairy production, and weaponized to create a Hindu state.” She was encouraged by an animal activist named Pradeep Kumar Nath to “focus on the cows.” He tells her, “The cow has become so political that the animal has been lost. The animal is lost even though it is in full focus. The cow is an example of how totally we can lose the animal even while making the biggest issue out of it.”
In Indifference, Naisargi explores the vast world of “animalists” in India, and her experiences documenting and working alongside activists. She argues for a practice of indifference, by which she explains is “mutually existing in difference rather than being different beings seeking to grasp, gaze, admire, and master the difference of others.” She playfully adds, “Let's be honest. There is no shortage of the opposite of indifference in our world, which is the desire for difference—finding, wrangling, and utilizing it. And where has this gotten us? Anthropology? Heterosexuality? Capitalism? Empire? Friends, I think we can do better.”
I hope to ask both of them about how they document animal resistance, what they notice and learn from animal bodies, and how they take care of their own animal bodies while doing this work. How do their scholarship, writing, and activism inform each other?
Their books are in conversation and I’m excited to bring them in conversation with you, where we can chat about bearing witness, contradictions, reading and writing animal bodies, and other literary animals who inform and inspire them. Let us explore as Naisargi does, “How might we listen through Queer Tongues?” and consider as Yamini does, “a feminist’s responsibility to tell stories…and to render ‘ungrievable’ lives ‘grievable.’”
In describing ways of being in difference, Naisargi invokes Audre Lorde’s poem “For Judith,” which ends with these lines:
“…at the watering hole/not quite together/but learning/each other’s ways”
I hope this conversation, too, can be a gathering at the watering hole where we can learn each other’s ways.
Register here.
The Literary Animal Project Presents: At the Watering Hole
A conversation about Animals in India with Naisargi Davé and Yamini Narayanan
Further Reading:
Excerpt from introduction to Indifference
Excerpt from introduction to Mother Cow Mother India
I had the pleasure of interviewing Naisargi Davé years ago for Satya’s: The Long View years ago. Here we discuss queer and animal activism in India, the distinctions between law and justice, holding multiple truths, and what Naisargi calls the “Tyranny of Consistency”:
The Ethnography of Activism: The Satya Interview with Naisargi Davé.
Culture and Animals Foundation interview with Filmmakers Nirupama Sarma and Gautam Sonti who are working on a film portraying a nuanced, secular and inclusive view animals rights against the backdrop of India’s current political landscape.
Other literary animal news:
About Place Journal just published “The More than Human World” Issue, edited by Nickole Brown & Erin Coughlin Hollowell.
Thanks again for reading and please share widely,
Yours for the animals,
Sangamithra