Earth(ing) Kashmir: Geo-Tropicality as a Means of Thinking beyond Stratified Geopolitics

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3844

Keywords:

Earth(ing), Ontic (Trans)historicality, Stratified Geopolitics, Kashmir, Rhizomatics, Geo-Tropicality

Abstract

This article places the spotlight on remarkably differential nuances of Kashmir’s geo-tropicality only to subject them to a decolonial ethics. It seeks to disengage from colonial representational grammatology that approaches these nuances as alienatingly exotic and spectacular. It furthermore, argues that mutually disjunctive co-becomings of these nuances not only provide Kashmir’s geo-tropicality with a kind of a-humanist orientation, but also makes this tropicality an immanent zone of natural ethical violence. We go on to argue that it is only a kind of ‘smooth politics’ based on decolonial a-humanist ethics of earthing that can end the conflict arising out of governmental attempts at overcoding the chaosophical immanentism of Kashmir’s geo-tropicality.

Author Biographies

Saswat Samay Das, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

Dr Saswat Samay Das is an Associate Professor in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. He has co-authored Taking place of Language (Peter-Lang Oxford, 2013), and jointly edited Technology, Urban Space and the Networked Community (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming, 2022). Currently Dr Das is editing Deleuze Guattari and Terror (Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming, 2022) and Deleuze, Guattari and The Global Pandemic: Revolutionary Praxis and Neoliberal Crisis (Bloomsbury, Forthcoming, 2022). He has published in well-known international journals such as Philosophy in Review, Deleuze Studies, Cultural Politics, South Central Review, Contemporary South Asia and The Economic and the Political Weekly.

Abhisek Ghosal, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India

Abhisek Ghosal is a senior Institute Research Scholar at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. His areas of research interest include Deleuze and Guattari Studies, South Asian Literature, Critical Theory and Posthuman Studies, among others.  He has previously published in eTropic and written for the New Global Studies. He is currently working on Blue Humanities.

Ananya Roy Pratihar, Institute of Management and Information Science, Odisha, India

Dr Ananya Roy Pratihar is Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at the Institute of Management and Information Science, Odisha, India. Her research interests include Communication studies, Networking strategies, Deleuze studies, films, postcolonial studies, critical theory and literature. She has reviewed David Lapoujade’s Aberrant Movements for the Philosophy in Review (University of Victoria, Canada) and edited Technology, Urban Space and the Networked Urbanity (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming, 2022). She is currently editing Deleuze, Guattari and The Global Pandemic: Revolutionary Praxis and Neoliberal Crisis (Bloomsbury, Forthcoming, 2022).

References

Ahmad, R. (2011). Orientalist imaginaries of travels in Kashmir: Western representations of the place and people. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 9(3), 167-182. https://doi.org/10.1080/14766825.2011.620117

Althusser, L. (1971). Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses. In Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (Trans B. Brewster) (pp. 142–7, 166–76). Month Review Press.

Appadurai, A. (2021). Beyond Domination: The future and past of decolonization. The Nation. https://www.thenation.com/article/world/achille-mbembe-walter-mignolo-catherine-walsh-decolonization/

Bashir, S. (2014). The Half Mother: A Novel. Hachette.

Behdad, A. (1994). Belated Travelers: Orientalism in the Age of Colonial Dissolution. Duke University Press.

Bhan, M.& Trishal, N. (2017). Fluid landscapes, sovereign nature: Conservation and counterinsurgency in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Critique of Anthropology, 37(1), 67-92.https://doi.org/10.1177/0308275X16671786

Bhat, M. S. (2017). Geomorphological Field Guide Book on Kashmir Himalaya (Ed. M.N. Koul). Indian Institute of Geomorphologists, Allahabad.

Bull, M. (2004). “Smooth Politics.” Paul A. Passavant & Jodi Dean (Eds.), Empire’s New

Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri (pp. 220-233). Routledge.

Chandran, K. N. (2012). The Meaning of Freedom: ĀZĀDI, ALAS! ETC: A Review of

General Semantics, 69(3), 291-307. https://www.jstor.org/stable/42579198

Conrad, J. (2010 [1902]). Heart of Darkness. Tribeca Books

DasGupta, S. (2012). “Borderlands and Borderlines: Re-negotiating Boundaries in Jammu and Kashmir.” Journal of Borderlands Studies, 27(1), 83-93.https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2012.687210.

Davis, A. E., Gamble, R., Roche, G., Gawne, L. (2021). International relations and the Himalaya: connecting ecologies, cultures and geopolitics. Australian Journal of International Affairs, 75(1), 15-35.https://doi.org/10.1080/10357718.2020.1787333

Deleuze, G. (2001). Pure Immanence: Essays on A Life. Zone Books.

Deleuze, G. (1991). Bergsonism. Zone Books.

Deleuze, G. (1994). Difference and Repetition. Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1987). A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. University of Minnesota Press.

Deleuze, G. & Guattari, F. (1994). What is Philosophy? Columbia University Press.

Deshmukh, J. (2021). Terrorizing Muslims: Communal Violence and Emergence of Hindutva in India. Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, 41(2), 317-336. https://doi.org/10.1080/13602004.2021.1943884

Dutta, P. K. (2021, December 13). “From Kashi to Kashmir: How PM Modi has focused on temple renovation.” India Today, Para 22. https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/from-kashi-to-kashmir-how-pm-modi-has-focused-on-temple-renovation-1887210-2021-12-13

Ghosh, R. (2013). “Introduction: Making Sense of the Secular.” In R. Ghosh (Ed.), Making Sense of the Secular: Critical Perspectives from Europe to Asia (pp.1-28). Routledge. ttps://doi.org/10.4324/9780203111048-3

Hoffman, B.& Duschinski, H. (2014). “Contestations over Law, Power and Representation in Kashmir Valley.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, 16(4), 501-530. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369801X.2013.816077

Jay, M. (1993). Force Fields: Between Intellectual History and Cultural Critique. Routledge.

Khuroo, A. A. (2007). “The alien flora of Kashmir Himalaya Khuroo.” Biological Invasions, 9, 269–292. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10530-006-9032-6

MacCormack, P. (2020). The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of Anthropocene. Bloomsbury Academic. https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350081130

Macdonald, K. (2003). “Kashmir.” In J. Speake (Ed.), Literature of Travel and Exploration: An Encyclopedia (pp. 670-672). Routledge.

Margulis, L. & Lovelock, J. (1997). “The Atmosphere as Circulatory System of the Biosphere—the Gaia Hypothesis.” In L. Margulis & D. Sagan (Eds.), Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis and Evolution (pp.127-143). Copernicus.

Matts, T. & Tynan, A. (2012). “Geotrauma and the Eco-clinic: Nature, Violence, and Ideology.” Symploke, 20 (1-2), 154-171. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/491988.

Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478007227

Munshi, S. (2013). “Revisiting the Question of the Kashmiri Pandits: The Battle of the Narratives.” Economic and Political Weekly, 48 (35), 115-116. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23528762.

Nail, T. (2021). Theory of the Earth. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503627567

Nancy, J-L. (2000). Being Singular-Plural. Stanford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503619005

Nixon, R. (2011). Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. Harvard University Press. https://doi.org/10.4159/harvard.9780674061194

Protevi, J. (2013). “Geohistory and Hydro-Bio-Politics.” In J. Protevi, Life, War, Earth: Deleuze and the Sciences (pp. 41-58). University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/minnesota/9780816681013.003.0003

Puri, B. (2008). “Independence, Autonomy and Freedom in Kashmir?” Economic and Political Weekly, 43 (12-13), 20-21. https://www.jstor.org/stable/40277274.

Rashid, I. (2020). “Theatrics of a ‘Violent State’ or ‘State of Violence’: Mapping Histories and Memories of Partition in Jammu and Kashmir.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 43 (2), 215-231.doi: 10.1080/00856401.2020.1712774.

Sen, A. (2006). Violence and Identity: The Illusion of Destiny. Penguin Books.

Shah, A. A., Khwaja, S., Shah, B.A., Reduan, Q., & Jawi, Z. (2018). Living with Earthquake and Flood Hazards in Jammu and Kashmir, NW Himalaya. Frontiers in Earth Science, 6, 1-13. https://doi.org/10.3389/feart.2018.00179

Shapiro, G. (2006). “Nietzsche on Geophilosophy and Geoaesthetics.” In K.A. Pearson (Ed.), A Companion to Nietzsche (pp. 477-494). Blackwell Publishing Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/9780470751374.ch26

Sohal, A. (2021). “Pure Kashmir: Nature, Freedom and Counternationalism.” Modern Intellectual History, 1-28. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1479244321000470

Spate, M. (2019). “Reconsidering Archaeological and Environmental Proxies for Long Term Human-Environment Interactions in the Valley of Kashmir.” In L. E. Yang, H-R. Bork, X. Fang, S. Mischke (Eds.), Socio-Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road (pp. 123-149). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-00728-7_6

Tak, T. (2013). “The Term Kashmiriyat: Kashmiri Nationalism of the 1970s.” Economic and Political Weekly, 48(16), 28-32. https://www.jstor.org/stable/23527257.

Turner, J. S. (2004). “Gaia, Extended Organisms, and Emergent Homeostasis.” In S. H. Schneider, J. R. Miller, E. Crist, & P. J. Boston (Eds.), Scientists Debate Gaia: The Next Century (pp. 57-70). MIT Press. https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262194983.003.0007

Varma, S. (2021). “Affective Governance, disaster and the unfinished colonial project.” In S. Bose & A. Jalal (Eds.), Kashmir and the Future of South Asia (pp. 53-70). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003119357-5

Weber, S. (2021). Singularity: Poetics and Politics. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.5749/j.ctv1n1bs8x

Woodard, B. (2013). On an Ungrounded Earth: Towards A New Geophilosophy. Punctum Books.

Zia, A. (2014). “Postcolonial Nation-Making: Warfare, Jihad, Subjectivity, and Compassion in the Region of Kashmir.” India Review, 13(3), 300-311. https://doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2014.937281

eTropic logo

Downloads

Published

2022-03-30

How to Cite

Das, S. S. ., Ghosal, A., & Roy Pratihar, A. . (2022). Earth(ing) Kashmir: Geo-Tropicality as a Means of Thinking beyond Stratified Geopolitics. ETropic: Electronic Journal of Studies in the Tropics, 21(1), 28–50. https://doi.org/10.25120/etropic.21.1.2022.3844

Issue

Vol. 21 No. 1 (2022): Special Issue: Tropical Landscapes and Nature~Culture Entanglements

Section

Articles

License

Copyright (c) 2022 CC-BY

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Authors who submit articles to this journal agree to the following terms:

1. Authors are responsible for ensuring that any material that has influenced the research or writing has been properly cited and credited both in the text and in the Reference List (Bibliography). Contributors are responsible for gaining copyright clearance on figures, photographs or lengthy quotes used in their manuscript that have been published elsewhere.

2. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License that allows others to share and adapt the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.

3. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository, or publish it in a book), with proper acknowledgement of the work's initial publication in this journal.

4. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (see The Effect of Open Access or The Open Access Citation Advantage). Where authors include such a work in an institutional repository or on their website (i.e., a copy of a work which has been published in eTropic, or a pre-print or post-print version of that work), we request that they include a statement that acknowledges the eTropic publication including the name of the journal, the volume number and a web-link to the journal item.

5. Authors should be aware that the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) License permits readers to share (copy and redistribute the work in any medium or format) and adapt (remix, transform, and build upon the work) for any purpose, even commercially, provided they also give appropriate credit to the work, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. They may do these things in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests you or your publisher endorses their use.